Monthly Archives: January 2009

Psalm 111:1 “I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart, in the company of the upright, in the congregation.”

Worship of God can happen anywhere. But we are not meant to worship God alone. The one who maintains that he is a believer and does not need to assemble with other believers, is: 1) deceiving himself regarding the saving nature of his faith, 2) deceiving himself regarding the health of his walk with God, 3) woefully ignorant of his own weaknesses and need for other believers, 4) ignorant of the Scriptures and their emphasis on the corporateness of worship, to name but a few.

We are meant to worship and serve our great God – together. We are saved into a body of believers. The New Testament knows nothing of believers who are not an active part of a community of believers. We do not really know the incredible damage done by the individualism that marks our culture.

In believers individualism has led to spiritual ruin because of a lack of accountability; it has led to aberrant theology because of the refusal or ignorance of being taught by the God appointed leaders of a church; it has led to depression, loneliness; it denies the death of Christ for the church and not just individuals. The list could go on.

The way we do church is rapidly changing these days. Some of that is needed and good, some may not be. But what cannot be changed is the fact that no Christian believer has real faith who refuses to be part of a fellowship of people who together practise the four chief marks of a church – commitment to studying and obeying the Scriptures, commitment to one another, commitment to observance of the Lord’s Supper and commitment to prayer.

Today, consider such texts of Scripture as Ephesians 2 and 3, I Corinthians 12 and Romans 12 and see there what God says about the church. Be thankful that He has brought us into a great community of faith that will one day sing the praises of our great God unhindered by sin.

Proverbs 31:1-4

4 It is not for kings, O Lemuel,
it is not for kings to drink wine,
or for rulers to take strong drink,
5lest they drink and forget what has been decreed
and pervert the rights of all the afflicted.
6Give strong drink to the one who is perishing,
and wine to those in bitter distress;
7 let them drink and forget their poverty
and remember their misery no more.
8 Open your mouth for the mute,
for the rights of all who are destitute.
9Open your mouth, judge righteously,
defend the rights of the poor and needy.

Proverbs 31:4 – The king should not be a slave to alcohol. The reason is that he needs his mental faculties to make wise and just decisions. However, in this verse the reason the king should not be mastered by alcohol is that when his faculties are impaired he will pervert the rights of the afflicted.

Rulers are to rule for the sake of those who suffer at the hands of others. Rulers are to protect the most vulnerable in a society. In verse 9 they are articulated as the poor and needy.

Our leaders should ensure justice for the weakest of our society – children, the aged, the poor, the abused, the mentally handicapped, the physically handicapped … and those in the most vulnerable place of all – the womb.

The fact that Canada has no abortion law is due to the fact that it would be political suicide. As wine intoxicates, so does power. The rights of pre-born children are being perverted and no matter how well our rulers rule none of them seem to see the need for protection of these defenseless ones.

And the saddest fact of all is that in this country there is no one not under the influence of what intoxicates them to say “this atrocity must stop”, because the vast majority of the country is providing the drink.

Today, pray that our leaders will be able to lead with justice for all, in a job that has powerful temptations to do just the opposite. Pray for the conversion of our leaders.

Proverbs 24:3-4

3By wisdom a house is built,
and by understanding it is established;
4by knowledge the rooms are filled
with all precious and pleasant riches.

By wisdom a house is built. How many people who have a lavish house have no real home life and conversely how many very modest domiciles are the envy of others because of the peace and love in it? The difference is the wisdom with which it is built and that wisdom is the fear of God ((1:7)

So, there are rich and poor who have enviable homes. There are rich and poor whose homes are places of anxiety, terror, lovelessness. The difference is the wisdom that begins with the fear of God.

What a reminder to us to chase after what is really important. People chase after money believing that their problems are monetary. Money will pay the bills but I would rather struggle to get them paid than have no financial woes and be plagued by lack of peace, lack of satisfaction and most of all, lack of Him.

Wisdom is often a reference to Christ in the Book of Proverbs. By Christ a house is built.

Today, take stock of your own family life. Is it built on faith in Jesus Christ and obedience to Him? Is the Word of God read in it and is it marked by prayer? It can be. He is here and He will hear you and receive you.

Genesis 11:1-9

1Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” 5And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

The idea behind the Tower of Babel is to prevent people from dispersing over the face of all the earth. This is in direct contradiction from God that people fill the earth. (9:7). The attempt is to build a tower to the heavens.

In verse 5 God “comes down” to see the tower. This is a rebuke against man’s attempt to reach God. God must “come down” to see a tower that was built to “go up” to the heavens. Man cannot reach God, cannot climb to God and cannot thwart the purposes of God (in this case, to fill the earth). The destruction of the Tower of Babel is obviously not an attempt to prevent people from succeeding in their attempt. No one is ever going to build a tower to heaven. The destruction of the tower is to get mankind back to the mandate to fill the earth, which the confusion of the languages accomplishes and the resulting confusion causes people to disperse. God gets His way, even if it is through the ungodly.

This account is one more that demonstrates the rebellion of man against his Maker. What is possible for them is to absolutely ruin themselves by accomplishing the tower and thinking that they have reached heaven and are independent of God altogether.

The question arises as to why God did/does not continue to thwart man’s efforts in similar ways when he arrogates to himself great exploits and forgets his God. The answer is that God indeed may be doing just that. We do not know how many times God has “come down” and put a monkey wrench into some grandiose scheme that sinners had hatched.

But the larger point is that Jesus Christ is the ultimate coming down by God for the purposes of thwarting human sin. There is nothing greater that God can do than He has done in Christ. And that is where this text and others ultimately take us. See the stubbornness of sinners throughout history and there is only one thing God can do and that is what He did. He came down again as one of us and provided the final and perfect solution to the problem – Himself. This story points us to Christ.

Today when you see evidence of the sinfulness of humanity all around the world and you hear of the many and varied ways that people talk about providing solutions to make the world a better place, remember this. Jesus Christ is God come down to save the world from its sin.

If you are a believer, rejoice that God has come and found you. Be committed to speaking and living for Him to others.

If you are not a believer, you need Christ before anything else. Your problem is sin and He is the solution.

Proverbs 28:1

1 The wicked flee when no one pursues,
but the righteous are bold as a lion.

There are two types of righteousness: the imputed righteousness of Christ to all who believe in Jesus Christ, and the practical righteousness of the faithful who live in obedience to God. The second type is the inevitable result of the first. There is no such thing, biblically, as a person made righteous by Christ who does not live righteously. This statement always gets the response about no one being perfect and sinlessness only being attainable in heaven, and that is true.

But we must never excuse our sin on the basis of its inevitability. The Bible is equally strong on the fact that true believers are changed people. They do not live as they once did. They live a righteous, albeit not sinless, life.

Such living brings courage. We are trusting God for the salvation of our souls. We are hanging on to Him through faith in Jesus Christ because we know that there is nothing we can do to merit salvation ourselves.

If we can trust God to do that immensely huge thing, then we should never be fearful of mere humans. Given what God has already guaranteed us for eternity the machinations of humans against us should never bother us.

Can there be a better comment on this than Jesus Himself in Luke 12:4?

4″I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do.

“All people can do is kill you”, Jesus says “so don’t be afraid”. We often think just the opposite. We fear those who can take our lives and live without thinking about what God has said.

Today, live in the knowledge that in Christ you are secure forever and that no one and nothing is going to stop you from living righteously, no matter what. After all – all they can do is take your life.

Genesis 8:20

20Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

“Noah… took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.” Noah was not a Jew. There would be no Jews for many thousands of years yet (or 2000 years if you believe in a young earth). But even here there is knowledge of clean and unclean animals fit or unfit for sacrifice to God. This knowledge, predating the Law by so many years, must have come directly from God. Perhaps God spoke it to Adam and it was successfully passed on. But given the moral state of the world it is unlikely that Noah was taught the law of God in any accurate way. We may assume, given 6:8 that even Noah’s parents were not righteous. So it seems that Noah was taught directly by God the difference between clean and unclean animals.

God has always seen to it that He gets worshipped properly. There is no excuse for anyone declaring that they did not know how to approach God. Even the wickedness on the earth that causes the flood is without excuse. God had spoken and the peoples of the earth were expected to obey. Noah preached righteousness, Peter tells us. This is a great testimony of God’s mercy. We need to see the establishing of standards, the declaration of those standards and the provision by God when the standards are not honoured, as mercies from God.

And He has spoken to our generation as well. God has given a record of His standards, our problem, and what He has done to fix it. The Bible is God’s record of creation, fall and God’s work of redemption of the fallen human race through the work of Jesus Christ in His life, death, resurrection, ascension and intercession at the right hand of the Father. He gave the Scriptures and entrusts the propagation of them to His people in every generation. And if the people of Noah’s day were without excuse, how much more so is that of people today?

What a warning this is to us. We were taught the truth. We have believed the truth . And we should make sure that the truth does not stop with us. The church is always one generation from extinction, at least in the sense that God has entrusted us with passing on the truth. We can approach God only through Jesus Christ and the world needs to hear it, for it is for them.

Psalm 97

6 The heavens proclaim his righteousness,
and all the peoples see his glory.
7All worshipers of images are put to shame,
who make their boast in worthless idols;
worship him, all you gods!

The old argument that the God of the Old testament was understood to be a regional god of the middle east only, and Israel in particular, simply does not stand up against the claims of the Scriptures themselves. Psalm 97 takes great pains to point out that the God who has revealed Himself to Israel is the only God there is in the whole world.

The Psalmist knew that there were many nations, tribes and peoples. And he knew that the God he served was the God of all those nations. Couple this with the call in Psalm 96 for the whole world needing to be told that there is only one God and He is glorious, then you have a very great thing happening: worship of one great God and the desire for all the nations of the world to know Him.

Israel was never meant to be the only people who knew the one true God. They were chosen to be the nation through which the Saviour of the whole created order would be born.  Jesus Christ came as a descendant of Abraham to save the world.

The fact that Christianity is widespread throughout the globe is testimony to God’s saving activity for all peoples. How we need to see God as the great God that He is and be so filled with Him that we cannot be silent about His glories to the people of the world.

Today, remember and rejoice that you are part of a plan God has had since before the world was made, to have a people from all the nations. And then remember with wonder that He calls those who know Him to tell others about Him and His incomprehensible glory.

If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, pray to be able to tell others of a great God who has done all that can be done to save them.