Sing Thankfully

In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God concerning you. --1 Thes. 5:18

The sermon this last Sunday was all about how to have a meaningful quiet time.  Our Pastor said when he was in his quiet time one day, he felt the Lord encouraging him to sing.  The first thought that came into his mind was, "Lord, have you heard me sing?"  God seemed to be saying, Yes, and I love it.  The second thought that came into the Preacher's mind was, "Well, what do you want me to sing?"  The answer was Sing the Song I put in your Heart this Morning.

I often have a song on my heart in the morning.  Last week, it was the old hymn Be Thou My Vision. You might remember that I put it in one of my blog posts.  So this week I have paid more attention to the first song on my mind in the morning.  I don't sing in the shower, but I do pray.  Many, many times a song pops into my head.  Lately it has been the old hymns.  Yesterday it was Come Thou Fount.  For those who don't know it, here is the text:

1. Come, thou Fount of every blessing, 
tune my heart to sing thy grace; 
streams of mercy, never ceasing, 
call for songs of loudest praise. 
Teach me some melodious sonnet, 
sung by flaming tongues above. 
Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it, 
mount of thy redeeming love. 

2. Here I raise mine Ebenezer; 
hither by thy help I'm come; 
and I hope, by thy good pleasure, 
safely to arrive at home. 
Jesus sought me when a stranger, 
wandering from the fold of God; 
he, to rescue me from danger, 
interposed his precious blood. 

3. O to grace how great a debtor 
daily I'm constrained to be! 
Let thy goodness, like a fetter, 
bind my wandering heart to thee. 
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, 
prone to leave the God I love; 
here's my heart, O take and seal it, 
seal it for thy courts above. 

Meditate on those lyrics for a moment.  Think of the Psalms, where David describes the blessings of God as streams.  Think of the little shepherd boy with his harp, tuning the strings so that he could learn to play so beautifully that King Saul summonned him to the palace to play his music. (See 1 Samuel 16:23).  Then think of the songs the angels sing in Revelation 5.  Exodus 24 talks about Moses going up on Mount Sinai, which was called the Mount of God, and staying there in the presence of God for forty days.  Wouldn't you like to be in God's presence that long, fixed in one place while He teaches and feeds and blesses you?  And that's just the first verse of the hymn!

The second verse begins with a reference to 1 Samuel 7:12.  Here it is in the New Living Translation: "Samuel then took a large stone and placed it between the towns of Mizpah and Jeshanah.  He named it Ebenezer (which means "the stone of help"), for he said, "Up to this point the Lord has helped us."  The hymn writer immediately goes to Luke 15, where Jesus compared His mission to leaving the 99 sheep and searching for the one that was lost. (You could also make the case for the Prodigal Son being the inspiration for the text in verse 2).

The last verse points to the grace of God, in that He freely gave up His Son for us, and how we owe him our lives and our fortunes forever.  We should willingly yoke ourselves to Him, because in Matthew 11:29-30, Jesus invites us to be paired with Him, because "my yoke is easy and my burden is light."  Even as our hearts tend to wander away from Him, yet we wear the seal of God on our foreheads (Revelation 9:4) which will mark us as His own at the end.

Today, the first song I thought of was Now Thank We All Our God, which I thought was appropriate with Thanksgiving Day just two days away.  If you haven't heard it, here is are the words:

1. Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices, who wondrous things has done, in whom this world rejoices; who from our mothers' arms has blessed us on our way with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today. 
2. O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us, with ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us; and keep us still in grace, and guide us when perplexed; and free us from all ills, in this world and the next. 
3. All praise and thanks to God the Father now be given; the Son, and Spirit blest, who reign in highest heaven; the one eternal God, whom earth and heaven adore; for thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore. 

 We must thank God always, because this is His will for us (1 Thessalonians 5:18).  Not just with our mouths, but with our hearts and our hands also.  We all know the phrase "heartfelt thanks".  This is how we know it is sincere.  But the hymnwriter goes even further than that, and tells us to Thank God with our hands, as well.  Whatever you set your hands to do, do it with all your might, as unto the Lord (Colossians 3:23).  Why?  Because of all the works He has done for us, from the time of our youth until now. "Since my youth, God, you have taught me, and to this day I declare your marvelous deeds." (Psalm 71:17).

The second verse is one of the hardest texts set to music I have ever sung.  The musicians among you will understand: there is a half-note above the rhyming words "Perplexed" and "Next", but there is no way to hold those words out on pitch and then cut off at the same time as everyone else in the choir or congregation.  Yet the verse is so deep, it could be borrowed as a prayer to recite over your Thanksgiving meal.  God is near to those who are near to Him.  That thought should give us everlasting joy, to think of the grace He so richly bestows on us.  And yes, we do sometimes get perplexed, and need His wisdom to guide us.

The last verse teaches the doctrine of the Trinity.  So many of the old hymns were used to teach the truths of Scripture in such a way that people (many of whom were illiterate) could remember.  God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all in one.  He is the Alpha and Omega, the One who was and is and is to come (Revelation 1:8).  No wonder we praise Him so!

Blessed Is He Who Comes In the Name Of the Lord

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.  From the house of the Lord we bless you.  --Psalm 118:26

When I was in high school I remember going to youth camp every summer.  We would have breakfast every morning, then go to devotional time, then do sports, have lunch, and have free time in the afternoon.  Every evening after dinner we would all meet together at the open-air auditorium and have a worship service.  There was usually a guest preacher called in for that entire week, so we would hear a series of sermons from someone who was not our pastor.

The worship services were structured very much like the Sunday services at the churches we attended.  There would be participatory singing of spiritual songs (not the stuffy hymns they sang in church), then some general anouncements, a soloist or band to sing a song to get us prepared to sit still, a prayer, and then the sermon.  One very vivid memory I have after almost 40 years was of one particular pre-sermon prayer.

You see, most of us had grown up in church.  We knew that during a prayer, we all reverently bowed our heads and listened.  The prayer generally began with "Dear Lord," or maybe "Our Heavenly Father," or sometimes the one-word beginning, "God."  We all knew we could check out mentally for a few minutes, until we heard the next code words, signalling that the prayer was almost over.  Those code words were, "In Jesus' Name."  Whenever we heard someone say, "In Jesus' Name," we knew that the next word would be "Amen."

But this one youth pastor got up to pray, and his prayer was a bit different.  He prayed that we would all live as intentional Christians.  He prayed that every thing we did from this moment on would be in the name of the Lord.  So he was praying along, and said something like, "Let us all live our lives in Jesus' Name."  Instinctively, half the group sat down.  We all jumped back up again when he started another phrase that didn't begin with "amen."  Some of us thought he might have remembered something or some one who needed special prayer, that he had forgotten.  So we listened a little more intently.  He said something like, "We want to do all that we do in Jesus' Name."  He wasn't doing what we thought he would do.  He didn't say, "Oh, before I forget, Lord, bless the guy who broke his ankle on the softball field yesterday," or "bless the kids from Friendship Baptist who all came down with food poisoning."  What he did say was different that any prayer we had heard.  So we all started listening a lot harder.  Thinking back, I'm sure he said the words "In Jesus' Name" at least ten time. When he finally did say "amen," we didn't know whether to sit, or stand, or sing Amazing Grace.

I have been thinking a lot about that particular prayer in that particular worship service that one summer at camp.  Last week, the leader of our small group Bible study said that God had given him a word for us that week, and the word he gave was "intentional."  Intentional living has been a theme in some of the radio sermons I have heard during rush hour this week.  So let's think for a few minutes about living intentionally, like Jesus did.

I mentioned praying.  We are taught in church to pray in Jesus' Name, because of what Jesus said in John 14:13-14:

And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.  If you ask me for anything in my name, I will do it.

Most of us equate this with praying.  We ask God for blessing and favor in Jesus' Name.  Unfortunatley, many of us go days without praying.  Even the most spiritual among us may go hours between prayers.  In 1 Thesalonians 5:17, Paul told us to "pray without ceasing."  If we are always in an attitude of prayer, then our thoughts and our words will always be in Jesus' Name.

Let's take this a step further.  What if we were all like David.  You remember the story of when young David came to the battlefield with provisions, and he heard the giant Goliath taunting the army of Israel.  David had heard that Saul the king would give great wealth to anyone who fought and killed the Philistine champion, and he was astounded that not one of the soldiers in the army of God would stand up to him.  David started trying to encourage the men.  Don't you want the king to give you his daughter in marriage, and don't you want for your family to be tax-exempt?  More importantly, don't you want to defend your king, your country, and your God from this heathen?  David didn't want great wealth, or to be Saul's son-in-law.  He stood up to face Goliath when no one else did.  And what did he say to him?  "You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel." (1 Samuel 17:45).

If we were all like David, we would face our battles in the name of the Lord.  If we were like Paul, we would always be thinking prayer and praise to God, in Jesus' Name.  I think, though, that God intends for us to do more than that.  He doesn't just want us to speak in His name when we pray.  He doesn't just want us to fight our battles in His name.  Micah 4:5 says, "All the nations may walk in the name of their gods; we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever."  Not just speak.  Not just fight.  We will walk in His Name.

That means everything we do, everywhere we go, we represent Him.  Whatever we say, we say in His authority.  Whatever we purpose in our hearts to do, we will do it with all our hearts, as unto the Lord (Colossians 3:23).  For some, this is a 180 degree change.  We are used to walking in fear.  But "perfect love drives out fear" (1 John 4:18), and "God is Love" (1 John 4:8, 16).  We are used to walking in shame.  Shame steals our confidence.  Philippians 1:6 says, "For we are confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ."

There is an ancient Irish hymn that many of us older Christians will remember;

Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart,
be all else but naught to me, save that thou art;
be thou my best thought in the day and the night,
both waking and sleeping, thy presence my light.

Be thou my wisdom, be thou my true word,
be thou ever with me, and I with thee Lord;
be thou my great Father, and I thy true son;
be thou in me dwelling, and I with thee one.

Be thou my breastplate, my sword for the fight;
be thou my whole armor, be thou my true might;
be thou my soul's shelter, be thou my strong tower:
O raise thou me heavenward, great Power of my power.

Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise:
be thou mine inheritance now and always;
be thou and thou only the first in my heart;
O Sovereign of heaven, my treasure thou art.

High King of heaven, thou heaven's bright sun,
O grant me its joys after victory is won;
great Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
still be thou my vision, O Ruler of all.

Look at that third verse.  It reminds me of Exodus 4:14, "The Lord will fight for you, you need only be still."  Each one of these verses begs our meditation, for they are steeped in Scripture and edify the faithful.  Echoes of the following scripture may be found in the text: Colossians 1:15-23; Colossians 2:2-3; Proverbs 9:1-6; Revelation 5:12.  I would encourage you to meditate on these scriptures while you reacquaint yourself with the hymn text.  I would also encourage you to live deliberately, in Jesus' Name--in all you say, in all you do; as you rise up and as you lie down; and in the battles you may fight from time to time, remember to come against the enemy in the Name of the Lord Almighty.  Be blessed.

Know Jesus, know peace

And my God shall supply every need of yours according to His riches in Christ Jesus.       --Philippians 4:19

What steals your peace?  The Apostle Paul wrote that "the fruit of the Spirit is...peace..."  You who have given your life to Christ, who are filled by the Spirit, can have your peace stolen, either by things you can control, or by things you can't.

In the news this week is a group of people who have taken up an injustice against one of their members.  A minority group on the University of Missouri campus took up the offense of one student who may have been called a racial epithet.  Details are sketchy, but this group of students came together and demanded change.  The president of the university resigned.  They were afforded "safe places" on campus where divisive terms and name-calling is not allowed.

About the same time this group was looking to affect more change in the name of justice, news came of a terrorist bombing in Paris, France.  In a coordinated effort not seen since 9/11, radical members of ISIS took the lives of 149 innocent people.  Hundreds more were injured.  The news cameras left the UM campus and began broadcasting images of frightened Parisians, French people whose peace was taken from them by an outside group.  Just days later, the good people of Paris are back in the street, showing the terrorists that they are not willing to have their peace shattered permanently.  They will not live in fear.

There are reports that the university students in the first story are upset about having the spotlight taken off of them.  They feel their grievances have not been fully aired.  They continue to choose to sacrifice peace for social justice.  Their focus is not on Society at large, but on the small part of society that intersects their own lives.

When Jesus taught here on Earth, he spoke about things that might steal your peace.  He spoke about nakedness and hunger and homelessness, things people worry about even today.  Stories abound about how most people are just one paycheck away from homelessness and despair.  Yet Jesus told us not to despair.

"If you decide for God, living a life of God-worhsip, it follows that you don't fuss about what's on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body.  Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God.  And you count far more than birds.  Has anyone by fussing in front of the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as an inch?  All this time and money wasted on fashion--do you think it makes that much difference?  Instead of looking at the fashions, walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers.  They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it?  The ten best-dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them.  If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers--most of which are never even seen--don't you think he'll attend to you, take pride in yoiu, do his best for you?  What I'm trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God's giving.  Peoplw who don't know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works.  Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions.  Don't worry about missing out.  You'll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.  Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow.  God will help yhou deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes."  --Matthew 6:25-34, The Message

Isn't that a fresh way to look at life?  "Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you as well."  All what things?  Things you worry about, like food, and clothes, and shelter.  Even things like injustice.  Even things like terrorists.

Fail-anthropist

On my way to work every morning I pass more than a few billboards showing the updated jackpots for multi-state lotteries.  I must admit it is very tempting to play for a chance to win more than one hundred million dollars.  Sometimes I daydream about what I would do with such a windfall.  Sometimes I bargain with God, praying that if He would just let me win, I would be a philanthropist.

As you know, a philanthropist is someone who spends his or her own money for the good of mankind.  The name comes from two Greek words:  phileo, or brotherly love, and anthropos, or mankind.  So ideally, a philanthropist would be able to show that he is a friend of all men, or that he loves mankind.  I could do that.

Unfortunately, there is no one person who is rich enough to help every person on earth.  So a philanthropist must be selective, even discriminating, on who should get the bulk of the funds available.  Should we underwrite cancer research?  How about children of prisoners?  Would we like to provide clean water to citizens of third world countries?  What about food for the hungry, or housing for the homeless, or education to help lift people out of poverty and ignorance?  There are so many needs, that even if I did come into millions, I would not be able to choose which charity is more deserving, or what people are more worthy of my help.

Sadder still is the fact that many philanthropists are not friends of people at all.  Many times they purchase a wing for a hospital to get their own name out there as a really giving person.  They give land to a community with the condition that the park be named after them.  They set up a Foundation or a Charity that bears their name, so that anyone who receives help from that institution would be indebted to them.  These people are better described by another term borrowed from the Greek: ego, or self, and maniac, someone who is crazy or out of control.

The only one with the means to help everyone, and the wisdom to know how much they need, is God Himself.  He recognized our greated need was spiritual, and out of His great love He sent His Son to die a sacrificial death so that we might have access to Him (John 3:16).  Yet when Jesus was here, the Jewish religious leaders accused him of mania, because He did not fit in their pre-determined box of what a religious person should look like.  They called him philos ton amartolon, a "friend of sinners." When He laid down His life for our sins, they rejected Him as Messiah, and saw his laying down his life as a sign of weakness, not of strength.  

The thing that the Pharisees (and some of us today) fail to realize is the depth of love that Jesus showed in laying down His life for us.  His love went way beyond philos, or brotherly love.  His love was better described by the word agapos, the highest form of love.  Romans 5:8 says, "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."  The great 19th century preacher Charles Spurgeon put it this way:

When Christ has renewed us by his Spirit, there may be a temptation to imagine that some excellency in us won the Savior's heart; but, my brethren, you must understand that Christ died for us while we were yet sinners. Not that infant washed and swaddled, not that fair maiden with the jewel in her ear, and with the pure golden crown upon her head, not that lovely princess, presented like a chaste virgin to her husband; no, that was not what Jesus saw when he died. He saw all that in the glass of his prescience, but the actual condition of that fair maid was very different when he died for her; she was cast out, unwashed, unsalted, unswaddled, in her blood, a foul, filthy thing. Ah! my brethren, there is no filthy thing under heaven so filthy as a filthy sinner. When there was not a ray of beauty to be discovered in us, when neither without nor within a single thing could be found to commend us, but we were morally altogether abhorrent to the Holy nature of Christ, then—oh wondrous grace!—he came from the highest heaven that the mass of our sin might meet on him.

Isaiah 53:6 says, "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all."  Think of the astounding mass of sin that must have been laid on Jesus, Him who knew no sin.  Again, Spurgeon says:

Now do not jump at it, and say, "Yes, the sins of the millions of his elect." Do not leap at that, get at it by degrees. Begin with your own sin. Have you ever felt that?—your own sin. No, you never felt the full weight of it; if you did you would have been in hell. It is the weight of sin that makes hell. Sin bears its own punishment in its own weight. Do you remember when you felt that the pains of hell get hold upon you, and you found trouble and sorrow? That hour when you called upon the name of the Lord, saying, "O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul!" Then you only felt as it were the little end of your sins, but all your sins, what must they weigh! How old are you? You know not how old you may be before you enter into rest, but all the sins of all your years he carried. All the sins against light and knowledge, sins against law and gospel, week-day sins, Sabbath sins, hand sins, lip sins, heart sins, sins against the Father, sins against the Son, sins against the Holy Ghost, sins of all shapes, all laid upon him; can you get the thought now? Now multiply that. Think of the sins of all the rest of his people; persecutions and murders at the door of such an one as Saul of Tarsus; adultery at the door of David—sins of every shape and size, for God's elect have been among the chief of sinners; those whom he has chosen have not been the best of men by nature, but some of them the very worst, and yet sovereign grace delighted to find a home for itself where seven devils had dwelt before, nay, where a legion of devils held their carnival. Christ looks abroad among the sons of men, and while a Pharisee is passed by, Zaccheus the publican is selected—and the sins of all these with their full weight laid upon him. The weight of sin would have crushed all these into hell for ever, and yet Christ bore all that weight; and what if I venture to say the very eternity and infinity of wrath that was due for all that mass of sin, the Son of God, marvellously sustained by the infinity of the Godhead within, bore and sustained the whole. I would like to stop a minute and let you turn it over, but when you go home perhaps you will spend half an hour very profitably in thinking that

"The enormous load of human guilt
Was on my Savior laid;
With woes as with a garment he
For sinners was array'd."

My friends, our ultimate aim should not be that of a philanthropist, as one who must love men.  Our highest aim should be that of agape-theist, one who loves the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength.  Anything less is missing the mark.