Month: May 2022

Most of us think that God is too busy to be interested in the things that happen to us. That we are far too insignificant to matter to Him…our troubles unimportant to the God of the universe…our distress inconsequential in the sight of all the pain and suffering in the world. But this Scripture shows us it’s all false thinking on our part. The Lord is near to those who put their faith and trust in Him, that He delights in His favor towards those who fear Him, and that God truly does listen and answer when we cry out to Him. A excellent example of this is Psalm 18:6,16,&19, “In my distress I called to the Lord, He heard my voice…my cry came before Him. He reached down from on high and took hold of me; He drew me out of the deep waters. He rescued me because He delighted in me.”

The Lord is open-handed and generous towards us…only desiring to satisfy our needs with His kind provision. He assures us that He will never abandon us…and at just the right time He will supply our desires. But this is where the sticking point comes…His timing apposed to when we think things need to happen. That’s when our impatience and worry take over rather than waiting with hope. God cares for us at just the right time…not too early…not too late…His timing is always perfect. Besides, anxious worry changes nothing. Jesus summed it up well when He said in Matthew 6:26, “Look at the birds of the air; they don’t sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”

This verse essentially tells us that the Lord is compassionate towards the weak and restores the erring. The fixed expression for poverty in the Old Testament was, poor and needy, but figuratively poor and needy was also used to express total dependance on God. Throughout the Bible we can see that God gives special attention to the cries of the oppressed…strengthening, sustaining, and protecting them as I Samuel 2:8 says, “He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap.” But the Lord is just as compassionate to those who are going down the wrong path, those bowed down with the weight of sin in their life. The Lord wants to lift those burdens and restore us back to a right standing with Him.

Deuteronomy 7:9 tells us about God’s reliability, ” Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; He is the faithful God, keeping His covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love Him and keep His commands.” When it comes to God’s covenantal promises, they are trustworthy, believable, and enduring. But our knowledge of this can never just be “head knowledge”… we must allow it to become “heart knowledge…pervading and shaping every aspect of our life. Or as Joshua 23:14 says, “You know with all your heart and soul that not one of all the good promises the Lord your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled; not one has failed.”

The communal thanksgiving and singing praises to the Lord may start in the Church…but it can’t stop at the perimeter of the its walls. It says here, “So that all men know of Your mighty acts and the glorious splendor of Your Kingdom.” The Church thus must leave the building and go out into the highways and byways telling all about God’s wonderful deeds…for how will they know if they’ve not been told? And how will the world be changed for the better if no one makes known to them the Lord’s sovereignty, strength, and power to deliver souls from hell?

When was the last time you stopped and really meditated on Who God is and what He has done in your life? To sit in quiet reflection…going over in your mind divine things…things that are beyond the bounds of human power or even expectations. It’s then that we can join in with Psalm 148:13 when it proclaims, “Let them praise the Name of the Lord, for His Name alone is exalted; His splendor is above the earth and the heavens.” But the verses here in Psalm 145 want us to take it a step farther by telling others about God’s glory, majesty, and power. We are to tell of His wonderful deeds, not hiding them from our children…but telling the next generation. (Psalm 75:1 & Psalm 78:4)

Passing on God’s Word to the next generation is far more important than we can conceive. At the end of the Book of Joshua all the elders of Israel and Joshua himself were dying. But unlike Moses who discipled Joshua, they had failed to mentor their successors…and as a result, the next generation succumbed to Canaanite idolatry. From this story we need to be mindful that as God’s people, we are only one generation away from renouncing God. This is why passing on and entrusting God’s Word to the succeeding generation is so vital. So how do we do this? Deuteronomy 11:19 shows us that sharing God’s Word needs to be deeply ingrained in our everyday activities and as natural as breathing. It tells us to teach His Word…explaining to them when we sit, when we walk together, when we lie down, and when we get back up. In other words, we need to be constantly commending God’s works and the Gospel Message to future generations.

It’s counterintuitive, but God blesses His people because of His promises, despite our sin. There’s never been a sin you’ve committed that’s greater than the blood of the Cross…there’s no amount of dysfunction in your life right now that God can’t work through for your good and His glory. You don’t even have to “fix things” first before you come to Jesus…He is waiting for you right now…ready, willing, and able to save your soul. All you need to know is this…The Gospel Message is the Good News that you can be saved and forgiven from your rebellion against the God who created you if you will turn from your sin and trust in the life, death, and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ.

There’s a wrong way to be right, and trusting in our own good works rather than in Jesus is one way legalism takes over our life. Paul wrote in Romans 3:20, “No one will be declared righteous in His sight by observing the Law; rather, through the Law we become conscious of sin.” Try as we might, we’ll never be justified in the sight of God by our good works…only by our belief in His Son, Jesus Christ. But even though our righteousness doesn’t hinge on observing the Law, it has very important implications in our life. The Law is a mirror reflecting who God is and our own sinfulness… it also reveals to us very clearly what pleases and offends God. Yes, there’s a wrong way to be right, and trusting in our good works isn’t one of them.

The New King James version of this verse says, “Lord, I will follow You, but first let me go and bury my father.” At times we too are very good at saying to the Lord, “Yes, but first…” as if our demands or desires really matter or will make a difference. In the culture of the time we know that it was the son’s responsibility to make the final arrangements for his father’s burial…which makes Jesus’ reply to him all the more shocking, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of God.” Jesus was saying to him, “Follow Me, not the world.” For anytime we answer the call of God with a “Yes, but…” we’ve taken our eyes off the eternal and onto the world. Our abiding fellowship with the Lord should then be about self-denial and self-restraint and a renouncing of the temporal.