We regularly hear that social media and governments have powerful tools which reach into so many aspects of our personal affairs – phone calls, email, social media and our online searches.

Psalm 139 tells us of another powerful source that looks into our lives – not just our activities, but into our very thoughts. In his psalm, sometimes described as the crown of Hebrew poetry, David speaks of a Watcher who is not a mere passive receptor of information, like the prying of cyberspace, but someone who knows and understands every detail of our existence. ‘You have searched me, you know me, God,’ David says.  ‘I have no privacy, no place from which I can exclude you. There is no corner of my mind where I can shut the door against you. Everything I do, everything I say, everything I think, is wide open to you.’
‘You hem me in behind and before, you have laid your hand upon me’, he continues.

At first it seems that David is saying, everywhere I go, every step I take, I feel you breathing down my neck. But the larger context indicates that he doesn’t see it this way at all. The words you hem me in can also be translated, ‘you guard me’ or ‘you encircle me for my protection.’ He doesn’t view God’s all-embracing knowledge as a threat, but rather as a refuge. He is not at all resentful of God’s all-seeing intelligence.

Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? he asks. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast, we read in verses 9 and 10. David’s imagery of taking the wings of the morning is that of traveling at the speed of light to a far place. Even there he will still find God. The instant the thought enters his head that he might escape God, he realizes how impossible it is.

Many of us have felt the same as David, but we might have a note of frustration in our voice: ‘God, I want to get away from you.’ Perhaps surprisingly, David isn’t trying to run away. His reaction to God’s all-embracing knowledge is one of deep-felt gratitude. For unlike human prying eyes, God’s eyes are pure and he is just in all his ways. For when we truly turn to him, his presence is not a threat or a cause for anxiety, but rather a joy. David understood that God’s presence means guidance and protection.

If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,”  even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you (vv.11-12). David was anticipating the possibility that in a moment of panic he might find himself saying, ‘God has left me and forgotten me.’

Rather he was saying, no matter how dark the situation seems, God has infra-red vision – he sees in the night just as well as he sees in the day. God’s reassuring hand is there in the tough times and in the good times. In another psalm (Psalm 23) David could say: Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.

‘Count your blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done,’ are the words of a Christian song. How easily we forget to thank God for the countless good things he provides for us. We take it all for granted.

But there is something else we often forget: King David wrote about it in Psalm 103. It seems he wrote this for the great choir he established in Jerusalem, in the context of his personal growth in his understanding of God.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, David began. What is interesting for us is that he did not go on to list all the specific things God had done for him. Rather he focused on features of God’s character that I can only touch on here – God’s grace, his goodness and his greatness.

God’s grace: God will not always accuse, nor will he keep his anger forever (v.9). Martin Luther once commented, ‘Wrath is God’s strange work.’ Anger is alien to God: it is his response to our failure to honor him and give him the thanks that is his due. There was a time when there was no anger in God; equally, there will come a time when there will be nothing further to rouse his anger.

God’s forgiveness: For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him (v.11). Children sometimes ask their parents, ‘How much do you love me?’ and they open their arms saying, ‘This much, or this much?’ When David said this to God, he realized that not even the expanse of the universe can illustrate the vast dimensions of God’s love. 

So he continues: As far as the east is from the west, so far he removes our transgressions from us (v.12).  We can’t watch the sun rise and set at the same time. We have to turn our back on one to see the other. Through the lens of the New Testament we see that through the cross of Christ, God found a way of detaching our sin from us, so he could condemn the one without condemning the other. The illustration means that when we ask God for mercy, he has to turn his back on our sin when he looks at us, because he puts us and our sin on two different horizons. 

God’s goodness and awesome power: We have even more reason than David to bless the name of God, for we live on the other side of the cross that once stood on Calvary’s hill. That cross is a far, far greater measure of God’s love than the unfathomable depths of the universe about which David spoke. The arms of the cross show us the grief that tears the heart of God because of our sin. In Christ, God not only lifts us out of the pit, he lifts us from the depths of hell and raises us to new life forever.

Is there any real praise of God in our hearts? It’s easy to go to church, to sing songs, and say Amen to the prayers, but to have no real personal connection with him. It’s easy to hear sermons that move us, but we’re not really listening to God because we’re more impressed with the preacher than we are with relating to God.

True blessing. Do you have a sense of God’s blessing in your life, a sense of connectedness with him that comes through knowing Jesus Christ? If you do not, then do what Jesus said: Ask, seek and knock. God promises to open our eyes to the truth.

People go to church where they love going to church. It’s a fact of life in our consumer society. They love the music, the architecture, and the popular preacher. What’s more, it’s the church where the family has its ties and friends attend. But going to church where we like going to church may not be the best thing for us. Psalm 96 tells us why.

Sing to the Lord a new song,… it begins. While new could be a reference to new music, there’s much more to it. The theme and tone of the psalm reveal that new refers primarily to God’s new work – beyond his work of creation – in rescuing fallen men and women. Further, it is a reference to God’s mercies that are ‘new every day’.

The words, the Lord touch on another theme that bubbles through the psalm: there is one creator and Lord. In Isaiah 45:5 we read: I am the Lord, and there is no other; besides me there is no god…  And Paul the Apostle writes, we know that “no idol in the world really exists,” and, there is no God but one (1 Corinthians 8:4). The implications of this are enormous – encouraging and frightening. It is encouraging because we learn we are not alone in the universe: there is a purpose and direction to life. It is frightening because all men and women are called upon to do business with this one and only God, for he alone is the Lord.

Putting these ideas together, God’s people will want to sing to the Lord a new song, and praise his name together: he is our Lord and Savior. Further, verse 3 tells us we are to sing so that the city and the nations will hear. From the time of Kings David and Solomon Jerusalem was a busy international city. In Jesus’ day the temple layout included a court for Gentiles (the non-Jewish people) where the songs of God’s people would have been heard.

The logic of the psalm is this: the majesty and glory of God are to be promoted throughout the world because there is only one God who holds out the gift of forgiveness, new life and new hope to men and women who are ‘trapped in the dark dungeon of their own ego’, as Malcolm Muggeridge once put it. So the focus of the exhortation shifts from the Jewish people to the nations (96:7-10). As God’s people sang of God’s mercies, people in Jerusalem would come to know Israel’s God, the Lord who made the heavens. 

Worship and witness. Through the flow of Psalm 96 we see a connection between worship and witness. True worship will manifest itself in witness. Inward-looking worship is just that – self-directed. Psalm 96 expects God’s people to be outward-focused – not only to God and one another, but also to the nations. We are to introduce them to the one true Lord. We are called upon to do this, not simply because God will one day judge the world (yes, verses 10-13 tell us this will happen), but also because there is only one Lord. Our reaching out to others is about stating a ‘reality’. 

Ask. We need to ask ourselves why we go to church. Simply to see our friends or fulfil an obligation? Or to hear afresh and be challenged and renewed by God’s Word? To sing of the majesty and the mercies of God? To encourage others by our presence, mutual confession of sin, and common profession of faith in Jesus Christ? Is your church welcoming to ‘outsiders’ providing a clear, unambiguous message that Christ is the one true Lord?

Wednesday, July 10, 2019

Doubt. One of the things I love about the Bible is its earthy realism. It understands the world we live in – the good and the bad, the joys and the sadness. It also understands how we feel about life’s injustices especially when we see people who mock the notion of God, enjoying success. Nothing ever seems to go wrong for them. And as well as the unfairness we often feel, there are the realities of droughts and famines, floods and destruction, earthquakes and despotic rulers. Why doesn’t God step in? It seems so out of character.

Questions. True faith will always have questions. In fact, the faith that refuses to ask questions is one that leaves itself open to the contempt of the skeptic. True faith will want to address tough questions and be willing to experience the doubts that arise.

To have doubts is not to lack faith for doubt is not the opposite of faith. Doubt and unbelief are two very different things. Doubt is something that only a believer can experience, for you can only doubt what you believe.

People who believe in God often find their relationship with him grows stronger and more intimate when they are willing to face their doubts by asking tough questions. Psalm 73 is a good example of this. The writer tells us that he came close to abandoning his faith in God: But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled; my steps had nearly slipped. Yet by the end of the psalm, he can say: But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge,… (73:28).

Through the psalm, he recounts his spiritual pilgrimage – how he progressed from doubt to a complete trust in God. He touches on his reasons for doubt and then the solution. One of the big questions for him is framed against the principle that God is good to the upright (73:1). ‘So why is it’, he asks, ‘that many who are godless find life easy while I suffer? Where is God?’

Solution. As he reflects on this, he perceived their end… God would bring about their downfall – and it would be eternal. The idea of a final day of accounting is often mocked today. But, as thoughtful people point out, if there is no final judgment, morality becomes irrelevant. Indeed, unless we see that there is a future accounting, goodness itself has no value.

Strategy. In Psalm 73:15ff we learn how the poet worked through his doubts. He went to ‘church’: When… I went into the sanctuary of God… I perceived their end. Good churches not only read God’s Word, they believe it to be God’s authentic, written, self-revelation, and teach it. Confronted with God’s Word the psalm-writer began to see what happens to those who choose not to believe: They are like a dream when one awakes; on awaking you despise their phantoms (73:20).

We today have all the more assurance about this because we have the evidence of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Without him we will not know life in all its fullness and joy. C.S. Lewis once put it this way: All your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness. The day is coming when you will wake to find, beyond all hope, that you have attained it, or else, that it was within your reach and you have lost it forever.

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© John G. Mason – www.anglicanconnection.com

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Getty Music Worship Conference: ‘Sing…!’ – August 19-21, 2019, Nashville, TN

Theme: ‘The Life of Christ’ – www.gettymusicworshipconference.com

John Mason speaking – Breakout Group: Monday, August 19, 3:00-4:00pm.

Topic: ‘Thomas Cranmer and Christ-Centered Worship. 

Wednesday, July 3, 2019

‘Downcast…?’ 

Hippocrates, the 5^th century Greek physician, identified four kinds of temperament: the sociable extroverts – the sanguine; the driven leaders – the choleric; the analytical and reflective – the melancholic; and the relaxed and inward looking – the phlegmatic. While medicine today has much more sophisticated models identifying the complexity of personality, certain characteristics may dominate.

Some people have a greater tendency to depression than others. This is just as true for professing Christians. Some of the great ones of the Bible, such as Elijah and Jeremiah, and later Christian leaders, such as the poet William Cowper, or the English preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, suffered from depression. It is simply wrong to dismiss a believer who experiences mood swings as having a spiritual problem. In fact, the reality of their faith is seen in the way they persevere despite their mood swings.

Psalms 42 and 43 illustrate this well. The writer(s), had been forcibly taken from his home city of Jerusalem into exile, either at the time of the Babylonian exile or, more likely, when king Jehoash of the northern kingdom of Israel defeated king Amaziah of the southern kingdom, Judah (2 Kings 14:14).

Far from home and from the temple in Jerusalem where he led the worship, the writer asks: Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you so disquieted within me? (42:5, 11; 43:5). He was depressed and disturbed. Any talk of joy and peace would have been empty and false. God seemed remote as we see in his cry: As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God (42:1-2).

Many of us today know what it is like to move away from the comfort and security of family and friends. A good part of how we respond will depend on our underlying temperament. And this can all combine to affect our spiritual awareness – as was happening in these two psalms.

The Psalm writer points us to the solution. When he says: I say to God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me? (42:9), we see that we should admit our feelings to God, even asking him questions. This takes courage. Further, we learn that we need to address our inner self, our soul.

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, a great English preacher wrote: ‘The main trouble in this whole matter of depression is that we allow our Self to talk to us instead of us talking to our Self.’ The psalm-writer’s soul has been depressing him, crushing him, so he stands up and says, ‘Soul, listen! I will speak to you: “Hope in God; I shall again praise him, my help and my God”.’ Don’t let your feelings dominate.

Throughout these two psalms we see the movement from depression, to admission, to self-exhortation, and then to prayer: Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people, the writer says; Send out your light and your truth; let them lead me… (43:1, 3).

Confident in God’s grace, he is assured of the day when, again filled with joy, he will sing songs of praise to God. Psalms 42-43 urge us to move beyond believing things about God, to actually sensing the living presence of God, whoever we are, and whatever our situation in life.

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© John G. Mason – www.anglicanconnection.com

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Getty Music Worship Conference: ‘Sing…!’ – August 19-21, 2019, Nashville, TN

Theme: ‘The Life of Christ’ – www.gettymusicworshipconference.com

John Mason speaking – Breakout Group: Monday, August 19, 3:00-4:00pm.

Topic: ‘Thomas Cranmer and Christ-Centered Worship. 

Wednesday – June 26, 2019

‘Joy…?’ 

C. S. Lewis once observed, ‘I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to “rejoice” as much as by anything else.’

Was he right? Is there real joy in our lives? I am not talking about a manufactured, false kind of joy – putting on a brave face when we are anxious or when things go wrong in life. I am talking about, and I am sure Lewis was talking about, the deep joy that springs from a clear conscience.

The concluding verses of Psalm 32 read:

   Many are the torments of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord.

   Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.

Why should we be glad and rejoice? What might motivate us to shout for joy?

David wrote Psalm 32 following the humiliating exposure of his affair with Bathsheba. While he wrote it about himself we too can benefit, for if we are going to find the kind of joy that he is speaking about we need to attend to his words. Verses 1 and 2 read:

   Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

     Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

Misdemeanors? Freud told us that guilt is a psychological hang-up. But King David tells us that it is something objective, something real that stands between each one of us and our Maker. The God who rules the universe is not simply an impersonal force. He is a moral being, a holy judge. However, we do not naturally lead godly lives, pray, trust God, and generally delight in honoring him. Our natural inclination is to try to cover up our sin, thinking of our failures as foibles and misdemeanors. So, we often compromise on issues we know are wrong, calling it tolerance; we slide into godlessness, thinking we are free.

In Psalm 32 King David is telling us that when we ignore God we offend him. This is one of the tough words of Christianity. Malcolm Muggeridge, a former editor of the English Punch magazine put it this way: The depravity of man is at once the most unpopular of all dogmas, but the most empirically verifiable.

Forgiveness. The only safe way, the only permanent way, to deal with guilt is to have it washed away. And there is only one person with the cleansing power needed to erase such stains – the Lord himself. David knew this: Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

We have a far better knowledge of the truth of David’s words because we live on the other side of the cross of Jesus Christ. Christ died for our sins, the apostle Paul wrote. And it is Psalm 32 that he quotes in Romans 4:6-8 where he argues that God, in his mercy, declares an amnesty for sinners who turn to him in faith. We are saved by grace alone, not by any intrinsic good within us or by any good works we have done.

Reason for joy. Too often our lack of joy comes because we have not been honest with God and opened our hearts to him. We have not truly grasped that in Christ our sins are washed away and that each day we can enjoy a fresh start in life.

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© John G. Mason – www.anglicanconnection.com

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Getty Music Worship Conference: ‘Sing…!’ – August 19-21, 2019, Nashville, TN

Theme: ‘The Life of Christ’ – www.gettymusicworshipconference.com

John Mason speaking – Breakout Group: Monday, August 19, 3:00-4:00pm.

Topic: ‘Thomas Cranmer and Christ-Centered Worship.