Thistletown Baptist Church

Psalm 46:4-5 -
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved;
God will help her when morning dawns.

Grab on to this. Psalm 46:4-5 is talking about the church, the people of God. The church is the temple of God. The church is the dwelling place of God. The church is the city of God. The church is the people where God is found. It is to be a people of  peace and safety and help and forgiveness and repentance. The church is the people in whom the healing waters flow – for the good of others. We are to be a place of refuge from a cold unfeeling world. We are meant to be a people and place where we find welcome and hope and help and understanding and love. We are meant to be who God performs His work of lifting and healing and restoring of soul. The people of God are not meant to be a place where we fight and argue and form little teams and cheer on ours while working for the other to fail. There are no teams here. There are no animosities. There is rescue from the mountains falling into the midst of the sea and the waters raging. For this is the place where God is doing His work of refuge and strength. It is the place where Jesus lives and does His work of healing and growing us more into His image. This church, dear people. My church, your church, are to be described by Psalm 46: 4 – 5. Oh what the church in the world has made the church. Let’s make sure that our churches do not fall for it. Let’s each one of us make sure that we are what God is using to bring refuge and strength to others, and that we are not what they need refuge from and strength for.

⁴ There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
⁵  God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved;
God will help her when morning dawns.
⁶  The nations rage, the kingdoms totter;
he utters his voice, the earth melts.
⁷  The Lord of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah

I preached from Psalm 46 yesterday and focussed on God’s command to us in verse 10 to “be still and know that I am God”. While studying the Psalm I came across a couple of good quotes regarding being still. The first one  is from Matthew Henry and and his comment that we can be depressed and not dejected is a real jewel. The second is from John Gill. Great stuff. Relevant, pithy, biblical. I hope you find them helpful, as I did.

Henry:

Let his own people be still; let them be calm and sedate, and tremble no more, but know, to their comfort, that the Lord is God, he is God alone, and will be exalted above the heathen; let him alone to maintain his honour, to fulfil his own counsels and to support his own interest in the world. Though we be depressed, yet let us not be dejected, for we are sure that God will be exalted, and that may satisfy us; he will work for his great name, and then no matter what becomes of our little names. When we pray, Father, glorify thy name, we ought to exercise faith upon the answer given to that prayer when Christ himself prayed it, I have both glorified it and I will glorify it yet again. Amen, Lord, so be it.

Gill:

“be still”; not that they should be like sticks and stones, stupid, indolent, and unconcerned at the commotions that were in the earth, and be unaffected with the judgments of God, and be wholly silent and inactive; but that they should not be fearful, nor fretful and impatient, or restless and tumultuous; but be quiet and easy, resigned to the will of God, and live in an assured expectation of the appearance of divine Providence in their layout. And “know”; own and acknowledge that he is God, a sovereign Being that does whatsoever he pleases; that he is unchangeable in his nature, purposes, promises, and covenant; that he is omnipotent, able to help them and deliver them at the last extremity; that he is omniscient, knows their persons, cases, and troubles, and how and where to hide them till the storm is over; that he is the all wise God, and does all things after the counsel of his own will, and makes all things work together for good to them; and that he is faithful to his word and promise, and will not suffer them to be overpressed and bore down with troubles

Ephesians 2:4-7 – But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,  [5] even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved— [6] and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,  [7] so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

Why has God lavished His grace on me? Ephesians 2:7 tells me why. So that He can show me the magnitude of His immeasurable grace in the ages to come. There may be much that is amazing about the grace of God that we are able to glean from the Scriptures and from our experiences on this side of glory. But there is so much more that we shall not, because we cannot, ever come to understand about what God, in Christ, has done for us, until we pass into the next life. God shows His love to us in His desire and plan to demonstrate to us in the ages to come the most glorious truth in all the created order. God plans to show us wonders beyond our imagining.

What would you think you were going to be shown if you were told that God was going to show you wonders beyond your wildest dreams? Stars being formed. Planets exploding. Strange acts of “nature” brought into being by God. The mind cannot comprehend the wonders that exist in a universe this immense. I think that for eternity we will be discovering things that right now we simply cannot handle and can’t begin to imagine. But do you know what God is going to show us that is more spectacular than that? He is going to show us the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. He is going to show us Himself at work in us in grace.

Maybe He is going to show us just how sinful we really were in thought and word and deed and then maybe He’ll ask us what someone who has transgressed that much should get from the God who was transgressed against. And we, with our faces in our hands and with tears in our eyes, will answer that such rebellion should get wrath poured out without mercy. And He will then show us the cross and say that that is exactly what He did. Maybe He will show us just how dirty and rotten our sins made us and then show us how He saw us after we had put our faith in Jesus – as pure and as holy as Jesus Himself. Maybe He’ll take us to the heavenly movie theatre and replay the times we knew to do the good yet chose to do evil instead. And maybe He’ll show us just what our hearts really looked like while such decisions were being made. And then he’ll show us the heart he replaced it with – and it will look exactly like Christ’s. And seeing all this will make us bow and cry and worship and thank Him for the wonder of grace. And then maybe He’ll show us what we will be for eternity now that we have been permanently rescued from the power and bent to sin. We cannot rightly imagine it now because all our imaginings are happening from a mind and heart still stained by the fruit of the fall (pun completely intended).

If I were to tell you that I had marvelous and stunning things to show you and then proceeded to show you something I had made or written and kept on babbling on about how wonderful it was, you could be excused for thinking that I had a bit of a problem with pride. But that is not true of God. It is not true of Him because nothing can be as great or as magnificent as anything that He does. Nothing can come close to being as glorious as He is. For God to be really kind to us and truly show us wonders beyond our wildest dreams, He must demonstrate Himself. And the greatest thing He can demonstrate about Himself to us will be the cross. It currently stuns angels. It ought to stun us and as much as we are amazed by grace now, one day it will make our hearts explode. God saved us to do the greatest thing He could possibly do – explain grace to us. And that is an indescribably great thing to look forward to.

Here’s a snippet from a Ligonier conference that I picked up from Challies recently. Alistair Begg and RC Sproul answer the question, “Why don’t Christians Care That They Sin?” It’s good, especially Begg’s comments about union with Christ and Sproul’s about our own ignorance of sin. Sproul’s answer in particular sparks several questions in my mind about knowing what our sins are and how much of our sinfulness we do know that is simply because of the cultural setting in which we find ourselves.  Sproul speaks about his own heart and sin and that is very refreshing.

Enjoy the video.

Psalm 56:9 – “But this I know, that God is for me.”

And the question that arises in one’s heart is “Why”? Why is God for me? And the upshot of the answer is, “Because He chose to love me.” It cannot be me. It cannot be my stellar performance. It cannot be my flawless obedience. It cannot be my insightful understandings of the Scriptures. It cannot be my wisdom that puts to silence all those who oppose me. I know it cannot be any of those things because I do not have any of those things. But God is for me. He is for me because I am His child. I am His child because He adopted me into it and made me His son. He adopted me because He chose me and He chose me because He loved me. And He loved me because He is love. When a person comes to grips with these great truths the heart sores, there is a desire  for obedience that such great grace creates in the heart (Titus 2:11-14).

How much of our angst, depression, pessimism and inner turmoil is due to not believing, or feeling, that God is for all He has saved? How often do we question his care and love because of the troubles we are enduring? David, in this Psalm, talks about being trampled (verse 1), afraid (verse 3), injured (verse 5), and opposed (verse 6). And yet he affirms that God is for him. He knows it.

How does he know it, given all that he is enduring? Because God remembers his tossings (verse 8), preserves all his tears and remembers them (verse 8), will turn back his enemies (verse 9). He knows God is for him because he knows that ultimately people can only do what God will allow to be done (verse 11).

These great sustaining truths about God’s care for him bring him to worship. David, because of God being for him even as he is greatly troubled, gladly does what we are all created to do (verse 12). He knows his soul is safe and that nothing that has happened to him can detract him from living in holiness (verse 13).

This text is over 3000 years old. It is amazing how real and up top date it is in its assessment of what it means to travel through life assaulted by all kinds of difficulties; what it means to live for God, be kept by God, worship God and find great consolation in God . Thank you Lord, for this text today.

Exodus 6:9 – “They did not listen to Moses because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.”

What an insight into the frail mind of human kind. The people are so crushed by their slavery and the new rule for gathering straw that was initiated in response to Moses’ first encounter with Pharaoh, that they will not listen and are more demoralized than they were before Moses hit the scene. Regardless of the rightness or wrongness of their response to Moses, the fact remains that a broken spirit is a powerful obstacle to doing what should be done. It effects the psyche, the body, the heart, the soul. It hinders from getting necessary tasks done. It makes people cynical and hard of hearing. It makes them love the misery they are in more than the hope of deliverance that could be theirs if only they would get up and do something. They need to see that hope really does exist and that the help they have spurned is serious. In dealing with people whose spirits are broken a great deal of patience is needed and a great deal of love for them, a great deal of work needs to be committed to and a great deal of failure needs to be expected. Moses will experience all of this and more but God is on a mission to rescue His people and a broken spirit will not be the thing that will stop Him from getting His mission accomplished. Of course, Moses does not know what God is up to and his response is so very human, hardly like the hero of faith that we normally portray him as being

Exodus 5:22-23 – Then Moses turned to the Lord and said, “O Lord, why have you done evil to this people? Why did you ever send me?  [23] For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this people, and you have not delivered your people at all.”

The first thing that God does when the people refuse to join in with Moses is simply tell Moses to continue on in the job he has been given. He reminds Moses that Moses is not God, He is. Things are going according to plan, even when things seem to be heading from bad to worse. God is not asleep, not surprised, and not inactive.

Exodus 6:1 – But the Lord said to Moses, “Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh; for with a strong hand he will send them out, and with a strong hand he will drive them out of his land.”

This will not be the last time that despondent, grumbling, unfaithful people will cause Moses to complain to God. Moses is reminded to look up more than around, to not let the despondency of these broken spirited people stop him. They will not join in right away. They want to get better and they want better circumstances, but they do not know everything and when we are dispirited, patience is not our most prominent feature. They have been given promises before and things got worse. They have had saviours parachute into their lives before only to see them depart rather quickly when those they were endeavouring to save did not welcome them immediately with open arms and good wishes. Broken spirit people can be helped. But the first task will be convincing them that the offer is genuine, that it will not make things worse, that their new helpers are in it for the long haul and that they really are valuable to and worth saving in the eyes of those seeking to help them. They need to know that God is not asleep at the wheel.

Finally, what an act of grace and faithfulness this whole rescue mission out of Egypt is. It is easy for us, 3500 years after the event to only see this in light of the whole salvation plan of God, which of course it is. But it is also the salvation of a grumbling, faithless, selfish, hard headed, hard hearted group of people. God demonstrates great patience, love and resolve in dealing with them. Kind of like the way He deals with me, and probably with you.

His name is Ken Brandt. He lives in Delafield Wisconsin in a lovely little house and property that he bought shortly before he retired around ten years ago. When he bought the property it was over run with weeds and bushes from years of neglect by whoever owned it before him. He started working on making a garden and beautifying the place but was struck with a severe stroke several years ago that put his work to a halt. While he was in the hospital receiving care for the effects of his stroke, he had to have a stint put in an artery leading to his heart to allow the blood flow in the way it was originally designed to do. Three weeks after that his appendix exploded and he had to have surgery to save his life from the effects of that. His life was in danger of ending right then. The stroke severely hampered his ability to move and he was placed in a nursing home for long term care. He began pining for his home in Delafield and for the garden that he wanted to finish. At some point during his care he was allowed home for a day to visit. The home visits grew into two and three days and before long he was allowed to go home for good. He testifies that it was doing a little bit of work in his garden each time he went home and the insatiable desire to get it finished in the manner he wanted, that hastened, even permitted, his healing to take place. He so wanted to make that garden a thing of beauty and was so taken up with wanting to get it finished that it aided in his recovery. Something to look forward to. Something to hope for. The walker eventually gave way to a cane and now he still puts in flower and vegetable gardens every year from seed he saves from his plants and keeps over the winter. He hasn’t purchased a seed in years.

The thing that attracted our attention to his property as Heather and I walked past his house was the number and variety of plants and flowers. The planning and layout is remarkable. Then we noticed the sign that this garden has been recognized as a natural habitat. We were in Delafield to spend the week at a Pastor’s Retreat Network retreat centre for pastors needing a break. We had arrived quite early and had decided to take a walk around the town. As we strolled past Ken’s house he noticed us from inside his house and came out to greet us. “Come to the back and see some more”, he said. He showed us the “banzai” trees he had formed by trimming back his cedar bushes. He showed us the artificial pond stocked with gold fish and the miniature waterfall, the bird houses and feeders. He told us of the joy he gets watching, from the bathroom window, the mother birds feeding their young. Robins this year.

Ken’s father came to the U.S as a World War I refugee in 1917 and settled in Appleton Wisconsin. Ken would grow up there and owned and operated a store in Appleton until his retirement. Most of his father’s family had stayed in Germany and he grew up seeing his father package up provisions to send to his family there. After World War II his relatives were trapped behind the iron curtain and the packages kept being sent. He still speaks German fluently even though he has never lived there.

He spent years helping a close friend who had Parkinson’s disease get over the trauma of that affliction by getting him working in his garden. His friend would tell Ken what to do and Ken would reply “This is your garden, not mine. You do it”. His friend would grumble, but  he eventually did it himself.  When his friend finally succumbed to the disease he left Ken some money and a note thanking him for getting him out of his bitterness and isolation by creating in him a love for beautifying a place with plants.

Ken loves Cocker Spaniels and the three he has in the house now are a grandmother, mother and daughter. The great grandmother died last December. One of his dogs is a “therapy dog”. He takes the dog to seniors homes to spend time with the residents there. Ken was warned not to try to do anything with a certain lady at the home but the dog gravitated to her and she started asking for him to come and visit. She improved so dramatically from the therapy offered by the dog that she was able to leave the home and live in her own with her daughter again.

Ken simply beams with delight as he tells Heather and I these and stories. He speaks of the value of community and that if everyone would simply use their abilities for the good of their neighbours then what a much better world it would be. He should know. He has helped make some people’s world a little better. A few years ago he convinced the ruling council of his church to turn a piece of their property into a community garden. People from Delafield are welcome to use a patch as their garden and as long as they work it, they are welcome to garden it as their own. Neglect it and it will be given to someone else who will use it. “The Good Lord gave us abilities to be used and if we don’t use them the way they are meant to be used then we are mistreating the world.”

We were with him for an hour or so and it was one of the best hours of my life. A complete stranger came out to encourage two wanderers who were admiring the fruit of his labours. When we left, which was not easy to do,  he thanked us for “making my day”. I tell him that my name is Ken as well and that gets him going on some new stories. “You know what Ken means?” I do, and I tell him – knowledge, intelligence. “Understanding” Ken adds. He is thrilled that I knew that and off he starts again. I suspect that the neighbours are watching him and us talking and saying “Ken’s found some fresh meat to chew on”. We know that he probably does this a lot. We know that some of the stories may be embellished a little. We know that this is a lonely old man who longs to tell his story to anyone who will listen. If they have to be visitors from over a thousand kilometres away then that is fine. Ken doesn’t ask us any questions about who we are or what we are up to. It isn’t important to him although he does seem impressed when Heather tells him that I am a pastor of a church. The language gets a little less colourful after that.

Ken wants to talk. He wants to tell people about himself. Call this selfishness and self-importance if you like, but you would be wrong. It is a desire to be heard. It is a longing for company. It is wanting to pass on a few of the lessons that seventy-five years of living have given a man and feeling the waste if no one else gets to benefit from them. It is having a sense of accomplishment about some of the things that have been accomplished and wanting others to know it. It would be a shame for no one else but the few in Delafield to know about Ken Brandt. So, I share a little bit of his story with you. We are planning to write Ken when we get back home. Maybe we’ll send him pictures of our garden or just get to know him better through correspondence. Kind of nice to have to write a letter with a pen and paper to a man who has no computer and will have the excitement of picking a real letter out of his mail box. And it is thrilling to think that we just might make it into one of his stories as he comes out of his house to greet some passers by who have stopped to admire his garden.

What seniors do you know who up until now you have never spent quality time with and just sat at their feet as they told stories that will be gone from the planet when they die? Let me encourage you to ask them questions about their life’s adventures, their accomplishments and failures, their joys and their sorrows. You won’t be disappointed. And you will do more for them than you will ever know.