BY GLENN PEASE
1. THE MAJESTY OF MAN Based on
Psa. 8
2. WE ARE BORN TO RULE Based on Psa. 8:1‑9
3. SANCTIFIED SILENCE Based on
Psa. 46:1‑11
4. SAINTS IN THE COMPLAINT DEPARTMENT
Based on Psa. 77
5. THE PLEASURE OF POSITIVE THINKING Based on Psa. 84
6. THE PLEASURE OF PASSION
Based on Psa. 84
7. THE PLEASURE OF PERFECTION Based on Psa. 84
8. THE PLEASURE OF POWER Based on Psa. 84
9. THE PLEASURE OF PROGRESS
Based on Psa. 84
10. REVIVAL Based on Psa. 85:6
11. A NEW SONG Based on Psalm 96
12. THIS IS THE DAY Based on
Psa. 118:6‑14
13. TURN ON THE LIGHT BASED ON
Psa. 110:105
14. A MOUNTAIN TOP EXPERIENCE
Based on Psalm 125
15. WHAT IS SIN? Based on Psa.
51:1‑2
16. CONFESSION OF SIN Based on
Psa. 51:3
17. HONEST TO GOD Based on Psa.
51:6
1. THE MAJESTY OF MAN Based on Psa. 8
King Louis
XIV of France was once reminded by the chaplain of his court that he was a
sinner and in danger of damnation. He
shrugged his shoulders and said, "All true, no doubt, but the good God
will think twice before He casts out so good of Prince as I am." Here was a man of pride who thought of
himself more highly than he ought. On
the other hand, when the medical student defines man as "A highly
developed vertebrate, a more or less clever and successful ape, who has worsted
his competitors in the struggle for existence," we say this is foolish
pessimism, and an all together too low a view of man. What is man anyway?
J. S. Whale
wrote, "What is the truth about the nature and end of man? This is the ultimate question behind the
vast debate, the desperate struggle of our time. Ideologies‑ to use the ugly modern jargon‑are really
anthropologies. They are answers to
that question which man has not ceased to ask ever since he began asking
questions at all: Namely, what is
man?" This question becomes even
more relevant when we think of the Incarnation, for our attention is focused on
the fact that God became a man. This
adds a whole new dimension to our thinking, for whatever man is in his
essential nature God became that, and because of it we have a human
Savior.
Several
millenniums ago David asked this question from the point of view of a
believer. He looked into the starry sky
and gazed attentively at the moon, and suddenly the majesty and magnitude of it
over whelmed him. In wonder at the
great contrast between all of this and himself he cried out in amazement to
God, "What is man that thou art mindful of him, and the Son of Man that
you visit him?" If David had cause
to wonder what made him an object of God's concern, how much more do we in our
age of astronomy? Fred Hoyle of St.
John's College says that our earth is only a speck of dust, for in our galaxy
alone there are ten billion stars as big or bigger than our Sun, and there are
more than one hundred million more galaxies.
Sir
James Jeans in his book The Mysterious Universe says that the majority of stars
could be packed with hundreds of thousands of our earth, and some giants are so
large that even millions of millions of our planet could not fill them.
We are so materially insignificant that the universe
would suffer no more loss by our destruction than a vast forest would suffer by
the burning of one leaf. Who can fail
to be humbled by such facts? Someone
might say that man has gone a long way by getting to the moon. But this does not change the picture in any
measurable way. It is like the boy who,
when he heard that the Sun was 93 million miles up, asked if that was from the
ground or the top of the house? When
you are dealing with the figures involved with astronomy, anything that man
does in space is relatively insignificant.
We can only stand in awe at the magnitude of it, and ask with David,
"What is man that you are mindful of him?"
In our
search for an answer to this question we find that men fall into two categories
in their conclusions. One group is
pessimistic as to what man is, and the other group is optimistic. This is an over simplification, and it does
not mean there are not all shade of differences. You can never divide men into two camps on anything, for they
have the capacity for a great variety of opinions. Someone said that there are only two kinds of people in the world‑those
who think there are two kinds of people in the world, and those who know
better. We know better, but we are
dividing them into two camps on this question.
First of all we will look at‑
I. A BIOLOGICAL VIEW OF MAN.
By biological
I mean those who, because of ignorance or false intelligence, cannot see that
man is anymore than an animal. They see
him strictly as a product of fate and evolution, and not of creation. In other words, it is a view of man that
leaves out God. The result is
pessimism, for although they recognize that man is the animal of supreme
intelligence, they also recognize he has a pathetically poor record of applying
it. He can develop all kinds of schemes
to protect himself, and then go to war and destroy everything he developed, and
himself as well.
Bernard Shaw said that the folly of man convinced him that earth was a
cosmic insane asylum where the people on other planets brought their cases of
insanity. H. G. Wells, who was an
optimist at one time, said, "At one time my faith was: Man must go on‑conquest beyond
conquest‑but now I see man being carried more and more rapidly along the
stream of fate to degradation, suffering and death." Without God the man who sees only biological
man has no goal, and all seems so futile.
Other pessimists express their futility by defining man as‑
"A bundle of cellulose matter on its way to
become refuse."
"A voice crying in the night with no language
but a cry."
"Some random mutation on a wayside planet."
"A pigmy among the giants of creation, a puddle
reflecting a star."
"The saddest of all beasts of the
field." Homer.
The
result of this strictly biological pessimistic view of man is the philosophy
that says, "Let us eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die." Man loses his dignity, for he is a mere
animal living on an animal level with his life being guided by the lust of his
body. This is what leads to all kinds
of open corruption on the basis that it is realistic. This is the way man lives, and so this is the way he should be
portrayed on TV and in movies. Without
the concept of God and the soul people never ask whether or not if what is
realistic is right. For biological man
what is right is determined by what is being done. To see man as a complex animal only leads to secularism,
materialism, and pessimism. Now let's
consider‑
II. A BIBLICAL VIEW OF MAN.
No view
of man's material origin can be lower than that of the Bible, for it tells us that
God formed man from the dust of the ground.
The Bible is also clear that all has sinned, and that the heart of man
is desperately wicked. If we looked at
the biblical view of man in his sin only, we might conclude that it too leads
only to pessimism. But the Bible gives
us a balanced view that leads to a positive perspective. In verse 5 we see that man is God made. It is true he was made of dust, but God
breathed into him the breathe of life and made him just a little less than
divine. The word here for angels is
Elohim, which means God. And so man was
made a little less than God, or a little less than divine. He was made in the image of God, and for the
glory of God, and for fellowship with God.
Therefore, man is of infinite value.
Leonard
T. Towers said, "It is not that we are worth it, but that God has made us
worth it." We are worthy of God's
consideration because He made us of infinite value. Man maybe small, but he is the crown of creation. He alone has the God like capacity to think
and to reason. All the wonders of the
universe do not compare with man, for he can appreciate the wonders and beauty
of creation and praise their Creator.
Not one of the billions of stars even knows that they exist. The heavens declare the glory of God and
show it, but only man can praise his Creator and know it.
The
mistake of the pessimist is that they think only in terms of quantity and not
quality. Man is materially
insignificant, but qualitatively he is of the first rank. Man ought to know better, for they will give
more for the paint on a canvas than for enough to cover a battleship, and more
for a pearl than for a huge bolder. Man
has a standard of values that prefers the smaller over the greater because of
the quality involved. Are we to believe
that God is of less intelligence, and that he prefers, in contrast to us,
quantity rather than quality.
Is God a child who prefers the nickel to a dime
because it is bigger? All of the
arguments for pessimism based on the smallest of earth and man are foolishness,
for in spite of his smallest man is greater than all the vastness which he
sees.
The
heavens declare the glory of God, but they declare it to man. All of the beauty of creation only has
meaning because of man's God‑given gift of intelligence. The Grand Canyon, sunset, snow covered
mountains, and flowers are all for nothing without man's capacity to appreciate
them. Does the crocodile admire the
beauty of the flamingo, or the sparrow that of the cardinal? Man even in his fallen state is great in the
sight of God because God made him, and gifted him with the ability to
appreciate what He has created. He is
corrupted and like a diamond in the mud, but he is capable of being restored to
shine again in great beauty.
In
verse 4 we read that God has not only made him, but is mindful of him, and
cares for him. In spite of man's
rebellion and fall God considers man to be of infinite worth. It was while we were still sinners that
Christ died for the ungodly. Why? Because even in his fallen state man was of
great value to God. Even ungodly man is
still the most God‑like creature.
The church was wrong for centuries in holding that the earth was the
center of the universe, but spiritually they were right, for it alone, as far
as we know, is the only planet with a cross.
It alone is the scene of the incarnation where God became man to redeem
him and restore him to the splendor in which he was created.
The
biblical view gives us a balance view of man in which we can see that he is, in
the words of Pascal, "Both the glory and scum of the universe." To God he was worth the cross. "He is divine grandeur mingled with
dust." It is true that he made
shipwreck and sank in the sea of sin, but he took with him the treasure of an
eternal soul of such worth that God was willing to seek its recovery even at
the cost of the cross. Christmas is
God's answer to the fall of man. Deity
descended to the depths to deliver man from damnation, degradation and death,
and to restore him to the dignity, which is rightfully his as the image of God.
God
so loved the world, that is the people and not the plains‑men and not the
mountains, that He gave His only begotten Son.
When the Christ child was born the brilliant star shown overhead. Which was the most precious to God‑the
star or the baby? In spite of its
material superiority certainly no one would say the star was more
precious. The Psalmist goes from the
heavens to the infants in verse 2, and the impression is, what a drop, but
after God has become a babe Himself in Christ, it is not a drop, but a
rise. In Christ man has been lifted to
the place of highest dignity. When
Christ ascended He did so as God‑man, and man was crowned with glory and
honor in the highest sense.
Christianity has always held to the high worth and dignity of man. When Constantine was converted and the Roman
Empire became nominally Christian, legislation was passed to abolish the
branding of criminals and debtors on the face because man was made in the image
of divine beauty. In contrast to the
practice of the day Christians loved all children. Adolf Deissman found and Egyptian papyrus containing a letter
from an Egyptian worker to his expectant wife in which he wrote, "If it is
a boy, let it live, if it is a girl, cast it out." It was a common practice to expose and
abandon any child, who was not wanted, but in 300 years Christianity abolished
all such degrading practices.
God
made man, He loves man, he redeemed man, and, therefore, anything that degrades
man and makes his life cheap is not the will of God, but is contrary to the
whole revelation of God. The
incarnation was the act of God whereby He said that man is the masterpiece of
His creation, and is just a little lower than divine. James Mackey said so wisely, "The baby came because God
could not get enough of Himself into anything else to show forth His true
nature. There is more of God in the
helpless infant lying in the hay beside the cattle then there is in all of the
stars and moons of limitless space."
Let the pessimist hang their heads and despair at the smallness of man,
but we will rejoice, for no man is small or worthless before God.
Muretus, the 17th century French scholar fell ill while he was in exile
for being a Protestant. He was taken to
a pauper's hospital in Lombardy. The
doctors who were consulting about him spoke in Latin thinking that this pauper
could not understand the tongue of the learned. One of them said, "Let us try an experiment with this
worthless creature." Muretus
startled them by saying in Latin, "Will you call worthless one for whom
Christ did not distain to die?" No
man is worthless for whom Christ died, and He died for all men.
It is true that man is a strange mixture
of deity and dust, and of love and lust.
He has the capacity to murder or to be a martyr; to live a life of crime
and ignorance, or of compassion or inspiration. Sin has made him abominable, but grace can make him
admirable. Christ can restore the
lowest to the place of man's original glory when God said, "Let us make
man in our image." A poet wrote,
Hark! The
Eden trees are stirring,
Slow and solemn to you're hearing!
Plane and cedar, palm and fir,
Tamarisk and juniper,
Each is throbbing in vibration
Since that crowning of creation. E. B. Browning.
The
whole story of the history of salvation is about God's acts in history on
behalf of man. The creation,
incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension are all for the
restoration and exaltation of man to the place of God's original intention,
that we might praise Him and fellowship with Him forever. The point is, that a Christian should have a
high respect for the dignity of his own soul, and of those of all people. Someone has said, "Self‑conceit
may be objectionable, but self‑contempt is ruinous." One can be humble and still have a great
sense of self‑respect, for both are essential to an adequate Christian
life. The pessimist looks at the
greatness of all God has made and says, "Man is a microbe clinging to a
grain of sand, and if there is a God, He is too great to care for
me." In contrast the Christian
looks at it all and says, "Such a God calls me to be great."
What
is man? He is that creature who is made
a little less than divine, but who fell from this exalted position through
sin. Nevertheless, like a diamond in
the mud he is worth picking up. Even as
a sinner he is precious in the sight of his Creator, and so God out of His
infinite love and mercy sent His Son to redeem man and restore him to
fellowship with Himself. This makes man
the greatest object of God's concern in all the wondrous magnitude of His
creation.
He is the only creature God ever made that was worth
the cross. The price which is paid for
anything determines its value. This
means that man is the highest valued part of the universe, for God paid the
highest possible price for his recovery.
This means that if your life is not involved in God's plan to rescue the
diamond in the mud and restore it to a place of beauty, you are missing out on
the highest goal in life. Your answer
to the question, what is man will determine so much of what your life will
be. The story of the Good Samaritan reveals
this clearly. The thieves said,
"The world is mine and I will take it." The priest and Levite said, "The world is mine and I will
keep it." The Good Samaritan said,
"The world is ours, and I will share it." He alone had the mind of Christ for he saw the value of man and
desired to contribute to his recovery.
May God help us all to have a Christ like view of what man is.
2. WE ARE BORN TO RULE Based on Psa. 8:1‑9
David did
not need a telescope to consider the heavens and the wonders of God's
creation. What he could see with the
naked eye left him in awe at the majesty of God. Today we go far beyond the vision of David, not only into the
macrocosm of the vast universe, but because of new instruments we know what
David could never imagine. We know of
the microcosm that God has created that is even more basic to life on
earth. Back in the late 80's Sallie
Chisholm, a biological oceanographer at MIT made a mind‑boggling
discovery about how God runs this world.
She and her colleagues discovered billions of trillions of zillions of
plants that man never even dream existed.
Man never dreamed that plants could be so small.
It was
only a few years earlier that Bob Guillard, the researcher who built up the
famous Bigelow collection of phytoplankton, said of these single cell plants of
the ocean that he discovered, "A hundred years of oceanography and the
most abundant being in the world wasn't recognized by anybody." But like some kind of sports record it soon
fell, and is no longer the record holder, for Chisholm discovered plants and
even greater abundance. There are as
many as 3 million of them in every ounce of ocean water.
They
were not discovered by a powerful microscope, but by a new tool called the flow
cytometer. Sea water is compressed into
a thin stream and the cells are marched single file two thousand per second
past an interrogation point where they are bathed in laser light which causes
them to fluoresce. The color of the
florescence indicates what pigment a cell contains. The cells then can be separated into species much like you would
distinguish a flow of Japanese and Swedes without looking at them if you had
information about their size and hair color.
If you had a flow of people all of whom had red hair, and none of them
over 4 feet tall you would know you had discovered a new people. That is how Chisholm discovered the new
plant. They are 30 millionths of an inch
across with a unique type of chlorophyll.
You
might say, "Who cares, and what difference does this make to
us?" First of all, God made them
the most abundant form of life on this planet.
Secondly, they keep us alive.
They harness the energy of the sun, and by the process of photosynthesis
they produce the food of life for all the creatures of the sea. They also take out of the air half of the
carbon dioxide we put into it. If they
didn't do it the planet would warm up by the green house effect, and we would
be the ones frying instead of the fish of the sea.
The point of all this is that man is ever
learning of the delicate balance of nature, and of how God has made all of life
to work together so that every part of nature is dependant upon every other
part. If man throws a monkey wrench
into this beautiful living machine he makes a mess of it, and he risks serious
damage to his own well being.
Christians are as likely to throw the system of nature into imbalance as
anyone. Christians have been major
supporters of the philosophy that says nature exists for our benefit, and so if
we want to abuse it and misuse it that is our privilege. Much like the Christian slave owners in
early America, they feel they have the right to use what is their property
anyway they please. And they feel they
have Scripture to back them up.
Here
in Psa. 8:6 it says clearly, "You made him the ruler over the works of
your hands; you put everything under his feet." Man is made the ruler of nature, and he is made king of creation
by the Creator Himself. If we go back
to Gen. 1:28 we read these first words of God to man: "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and
subdue it. Rule over the fish of the
sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves over the
ground." The lion is not king of
the beasts. It is man, and he was put
in charge by God and told to rule. None
can argue with this clear revelation. The
problem comes because of the fall of man.
He did not become the kind of ruler over nature that God intended. Just as many of the kings over his people
led them astray from his will, so man as a ruler over nature abused his God‑given
power, and he became an enemy rather than a friend to nature.
If we look
at Adam before the fall we see the proper role of man in relationship to
nature. In Gen. 2:15 we read, "The
Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take
care of it." You will note that it
is a perfect sin free world, and God has said of everything that it was very
good. And yet in this perfect
environment nature needed to be taken care of.
The implication is clear that even a perfect nature will deteriorate
without care, and man was to provide that care. Man was made to benefit by nature's abundance, and to reap a
harvest for his labor, but he was made to be a benevolent dictator over nature
and not a ruthless tyrant exploiting nature for himself with no concern for it
as a part of God's creation. In other
words, though it is true that God made man the ruler of nature, he made him to
be a benevolent ruler who would cooperate with God in keeping nature good,
beautiful, and beneficial in the way God intended.
Man in
his fall became a rebel and decided that his will was what mattered, and he
would use nature as he saw fit for his own good regardless of how God designed
it. In other words, man became an
irresponsible ruler. He abused his
power and position. It is the same
story as in every other area of man's dominion. God gave man dominion over women for the benefit of both husband
and wife. But man abused the power of
his position and made women slaves. He
turned tyrant and robbed women of the benefit of a benevolent leader and
perverted the purpose of God. No ruler
is ruling as God intended unless the ruled are greatly benefited by that
rule. Any ruler who exploits the ruled
for himself and does not make those ruled happy to be under that rule is a
rebel ruler and not the responsible ruler that God intends.
This
can be applied to nations, tribes, and families, or as we are considering in
this message, to nature. God's intent
was that man would rule nature in such a way as to make man and nature mutually
beneficial. Unfortunately, Christians
often feel that power means that you have the right to do as you please. If we rule nature, then we can do whatever
we want to it, for it has no rights whatever, and it is our slave. Francis Schaeffer in his book, Pollution And
The Death Of Man: The Christian View Of Ecology, agrees with the critics that
say Christians have been a major cause of the problem in our world today. Christians were duped into believing the
philosophy of Plato was more Christian than the Bible. Plato said that the material world is not
important. All that really matters is
the spiritual. This sounds so good to
be anti‑materialistic and pro‑spiritual that Christians felt it was
the superior view of life.
What
this led to was Christians who felt no responsibility for caring for the
material world that God created.
Christians became notorious for their indifference to the balance of
nature. What do we care about nature
was their attitude. "This world is
not my home, I'm just a passing through.
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue." So why should I care if we pollute and
damage the ecosystems that keep the earth in balance so that all life can
thrive? Under this false world‑view
man was permitted to destroy the handiwork of God. Christians did not care for the world, for it was all going to be
burned up anyway, and so why bother to protect and preserve what was going to
pass away? The whole idea of nature
having any rights was as foreign to Christians as was the idea of blacks having
any rights to Christian slave owners in the old South.
Schaeffer said that he sighted with the hippies in the 60's, for they
had a biblical view of respect for nature.
Christians, on the other hand, linked up with modern technology, which
said that man has the right to exploit nature regardless of the damage. Nature is not a friend we need to respect,
but a slave we can use or abuse as we please.
Schaeffer wrote his book to get Christians off that wrong track of
following Plato and back to a biblical view of nature and ecology.
God
created all things and said that it was very good. Creation is the handiwork of God, and just as we respect the
works of men, so we are to respect the work of God. We have something in common with all of nature. We are the handiwork of God. We are one in our origin, and one in our
ultimate destiny, for God will create a new heaven and earth to replace this
fallen world, and all creation will be a part of God's eternal kingdom. This means that a biblical view of nature is
not one of indifference to it, but it is one of respect. Our dominion over nature is not just so we
can exploit it, but like Adam, care for it.
We are to keep it operating according to the laws God has built into it
so that it benefits man and is a piece of art for God to enjoy.
Matter
is not evil as Plato taught. It is a
good work of God. Matter is so good
that God sent His Son to become flesh to redeem flesh and take the fallen body
of man into the kingdom of God where it will be made new, pure and
eternal. God did not reject the
material world in favor of the spiritual world. He sent His Son to become a part of the material world that it
might be saved and be a part of the eternal world. It is heresy to reject the material world, for God made it co‑equal
with the world of spirit. It is anti‑Christ
to reject the material world as evil, for nothing God has made is evil. The whole physical world is an object of His
love and plan of redemption. Nature is
good, and a biblical view of it leads to responsible rule where man cooperates
with God to care for it and respect it.
Schaeffer wrote, "A Christian is a man who has a reason for dealing
with each created thing on a high level of respect."
Only
after man came to realize that he was poisoning his own environment by his
disrespect for nature did Christians begin to realize the sinfulness of their
disrespect. Only in the last few
decades have Christians begun to address the theological issues for respect for
nature. The first Earth Day was on
April 22, 1970. Since then there have
been many conferences on the theological issues in environmental ethics. Christians are becoming more and more aware
that if God needed Adam to care for a garden in a perfect environment, how much
more does nature need care in a fallen world where sin, corruption, ignorance,
and pollution abound?
Bruce
Allsopp wrote the book, The Garden Earth:
The Case For Ecological Morality.
Ecology and religion newsletters were started and terms like geopiety
were born. The religious concern for
ecology has changed the history of ecology in recent years. The concern at first was just for the
economic issues of being nice to mother nature. It was costly to be abusive of her. Now there is what is called Deep Ecology, and it goes beyond the
shallow self‑centered concerns to a concern for nature herself. In other words, deep ecology says we respect
nature, not just because we can make more money if we do, but because she is
worthy of respect as God's creation, and it is right to be nice to her whether
we profit by it or not. It says nature
is a living thing, and like all living things, it has a right to be
respected. It goes even further and
says that even non‑living things have a right to be respected as God's
creation. Everything God made has a
right to be respected for what it is, and to be treated in a way that is
consistent with the laws God gave to govern it and its purpose.
In
1973 Congress passed the Endangered Species Act that guarantees the right to
existence of any species threatened by extinction. You have a right to make a buck, but if by so doing you send a
part of God's creation into extinction you are now forced to seek another way
to get your buck, and respect the rights of nature. Many creatures have been saved from extinction because of this
new respect for nature. Christians are
not always on the side of nature, and have often taken the side of the
humanists who say that man is the measure of all things. If it is good for man, then let nature
perish. Man is made in God's image, and
his good should take precedence over any other creature.
There
are many court cases where it is man versus nature, and it would hard to give a
vote for nature and save a bird, or some other creature, at the expense of
man's right to build condos and make a mint, but it is happening, and creatures
are winning because more and more people are agreeing that nature has rights
that are God‑given, and man does not have the right to trample them under
his feet. In spite of the growing
number of victories for nature, and a growing ecological awareness, the world
is getting worse. Man is still an
irresponsible ruler, and his abuse has lead to widespread pollution that is
casting thousands of species into extinction, and is killing people as
well.
Some
feel that man has gone so far in his irresponsibility that we can expect an
ecological Armageddon. An unknown poet
laments‑
I was born in the last years of comfort,
And I'll die in the first years of dearth,
When the fullness of plenty has vanished,
And poverty darkens the earth.
My grandson will wrestle with problems
That only a madman would crave,
And meet them with measures so ghastly
I'm glad I'll be snug in my grave.
Others
are optimistic and say that man can still become a responsible ruler. He can work with nature to overcome the
problems he has created. Garbologists
who do archeological digs in the garbage dumps of our nation have proven that
the idea of biodegradable is largely a myth.
Trash that is buried and compacted so air and moisture does not get to
it remains trash. They have dug up newspapers
buried in the 40's and they are as good as new. Newspapers are the largest percentage of all landfills. The American people are responding to this
waste and are now recycling, but millions of trees need to be cut down each
month unnecessarily because of the waste.
All of us can make some difference by recycling. It is the least we can do to show respect
for the world of nature that we help to rule.
When
God said to Adam to fill the earth, he did not mean to fill it with newspapers,
beer cans, and toxic waste. He expected
the world to be filled with people who could care for His creation. As American Christians we have a greater
obligation than most to develop and ecologically helpful life style. False views of Christians have been a major
cause of the present problems, and a more honest biblical view compels us to do
a better job in obedience to God's will.
A world is a terrible thing to waste, and if we are responsible rulers,
we can help keep even this fallen world a place where man and nature cooperate
to the glory of God, and provide an environment where men can discover the
abundant life and gain the assurance of eternal life in Christ.
The
ark of Noah was going to be abandoned by both animals and man, but do you think
they were careless with it while it was their only environment for living? Do you think they chopped or drilled holes
in it, or lunged against its timbers to see if they would hold? You can count on it that they took care of
their environment for their survival depended on their doing so. We need to see our whole world as the ark,
and see it as our responsibility to treat it with respect as the source of our
survival until God makes a new heaven and new earth.
Dennis
Hayes was 25 when he founded the first Earth Day. He drove a Honda and often road a bicycle. He took his reusable bags to the grocery
store. He was very conservative in his
use of natural resources. As chairman
of the 1990 Earth Day Anniversary he knew his small efforts would have little
effect on the global crisis, but he plugged away because he had a 14 year old
daughter and he cared about her future.
The Christian is to care about future generations also, for it is the
golden rule to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. You do not want the people who lived in your
house or apartment before you to leave all their garbage behind, and have
poison and toxic waste all over the place to hazard the life and health of your
family. The next generation does not
want this earth left that way either, and it is our responsibility to see that
they have a world where healthy living is possible.
Even if
we had no obligation to people, we do have an obligation to God. Psa. 24:1 says, "The earth is the
Lord's and everything in it, the world an all who live in it." As good stewards of God's world we are
responsible to use it and care for it so that it works as He made it to work,
and so that it will be a place for the good of man and the glory of God. A polluted world where life is being killed
and degraded is not for God's glory. It
is sinful abuse, and a Christian is to have no part in it. The Christian is to work to maintain the
health and beauty of all that God has made.
Professor Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University, who is a leading writer
in the field of ecology, says that one American does 20 to 100 times more
damage to the planet than a person in the 3rd world. The problem is not poor people but affluent people who are
wasteful and who do not care that their waste robs the rest of the world of a
better life. Some might argue that
there are greater issues, and there is much to support this, but John Alexander
writes, "In my experience people sensitive to the beauty of nature tend to
be sensitive to justice and compassion."
He also felt that the issues dealing with race and poverty were more
important for Christians to pursue, but he had to admit that people who do not
care about the world they live in usually do not care about anybody else in
that world. People who care about ecology
care about the whole of God's creation, and that includes plants, animals, and
people.
We are
born to rule. Our eternal destiny is to
rule and reign with Christ over a redeemed universe, but we are made to rule
now in this fallen world where the only hope of the good life is responsible
rulers. Nobody can do everything, but
everybody can do something, and the greatest something any of us can do is to
be responsible rulers.
3. SANCTIFIED SILENCE Based
on Psa. 46:1‑11
You can learn in silence what sound can never teach
you. Howard Thurman tells of one of his
University students who was a deep sea diver.
He wrote of his experience of being on the bottom of the ocean. The water was clear and he was in the midst
of a coral rock garden. He sat down to
look around. Occasionally a fish would
swim up to take a look at him, and then pass the word to his friends, for soon
there were many curious fish about him.
As he
sat there, the beauty of the garden became more intense. Plants had opened up revealing what looked
like blossoms. He felt like he was in a
beautiful flower garden. It was
wonderful. He enjoyed it for a long
while, but then he realized he could not stay there forever, and he started to
go about his business. As soon as he
moved all the flowers disappeared. They
were living things, and they emerged only when there was silence and
stillness. The activist sea diver who
comes splashing through such a garden would never see its full beauty. He learned that there are marvelous things
you will never see unless you sit in silence.
Professor Johnson from Bethel taught us this is true on land as
well. Tens of thousands of people visit
Como Park, but only a few ever see the Ruby Crown Kinglet. The only way to see this tiny little bird is
to crawl into the hedges and sit in silence.
Soon this pretty little creature will come flitting right up to you, and
give you a view that the noisy people passing by will never see.
The
point of Psa. 46:10 is that there are things about the Creator, as well as His
creation, that can only be learned by those who have developed the discipline
of silence. "Be still, and know
that I am God." An unknown poet
wrote:
In every life
There's a pause that is better
than onward rush,
Better than hewing or
mightiest doing;
'Tis the standing still at
sovereign will.
There's a hush that is
better than ardent speech,
Better than sighing or
wilderness crying;
'Tis the being still at
sovereign will.
The pause and the hush sing
a double song,
In unison low and for all
time long,
Of human soul, God's working
plan
Goes on, nor heeds the aid
of man!
Be still, and see!
Be still, and know!
The
Bible has a great deal to say about the value of quietness, but it is greatly
neglected in our culture because we are a sound oriented culture. We specialize in making everything that
makes sound portable so that we can have the sound even at the beach, or out on
the lake, or camping in the woods. We
have made it possible to escape silence completely, even if we find ourselves
in the most remote area. We have made
it possible to banish silence from our lives almost completely.
There was
a tunnel down in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida where radio waves did not penetrate,
and there was a 20 to 30 second break as motorists went through. A man got permission to set up a system
inside the tunnel to give weather information so drivers would not have to
endure the agony of that few seconds of silence. We live in a culture which is anti‑silence, and the result
is, even Christians have a very difficult time identifying with a Biblical
values of quietness. Eccles. 9:17 says,
"The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded than the shouts of a
ruler of fools." Because of radio
and TV we tend to hear the shouters and noisy voices rather than the quiet
ones.
Psa.
131:2 says, "But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child
with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me." The peace and contentment of a satisfied
child is an ideal state of mind. The
crying aggravated child whose hunger pain makes it a noise box of perpetual
disturbance is not the ideal.
Christians tend to fall into these two categories: The bawling baby always discontent, and with
spiritual colic, who disturbs the family of God continually, or the contented
child who feels loved and satisfied, and gives pleasure to the family by
perpetual pleasantness. It takes a lot
of silent feeding on the milk of the word to be such a contented child. Most Christians in our culture do not know
how to enjoy the silence of being still and knowing God in this way.
Paul
wrote in I Thess. 4:11, "Make it your ambition to lead a quiet
life." He wrote to Timothy also,
and urged him to pray for kings and all in authority. Why? Because he goes on
to say in I Tim. 2:2, "That we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all
godliness and holiness." It is
obvious that the noisy and riotous lifestyle is not a Christian ideal. We cannot look at all the Bible says about
the importance of silence, but we want to focus on the fact that God so often
does His greatest works in silence. And
anonymous poet wrote:
Silently the green leaves
grow
In silence falls the soft,
white snow
Silently the flowers bloom
In silence sunshine fills
the room
Silently bright stars appear
In silence velvet night
draws near...
And silently God enters in
To free a troubled heart
from sin
For God works silently in
lives
For nothing spiritual
survives
Amid the din of a noisy
street
Where raucous crowds with
hurrying feet
And "blinded eyes"
and "deafened ear"
Are never privileged to hear
The message God wants to
impart
To every troubled, weary
heart
For only in a QUIET PLACE
Can we behold GOD
FACE TO FACE!
Now,
lest we idealize silence too much, as if it was an inherent virtue, and always
of value, we want to see some of the negative side before we pursue the
practice. Solomon said in Eccles. 3:7, that
there is a time to be silent and a time to speak. If you are silent when its time to speak, it is no longer a
virtue. So for the sake of balance we
need to look at the negative side.
I. SILENCE
CAN BE DESTRUCTIVELY WICKED.
I once
knew a church leader who was a good one, and I liked him for most everything
about him. There was one exception, and
that was the way he used silence. His
wife would call me once in a while and say he had not spoken to her for a week
again. When he would get angry over
something he would punish her by silence, and it worked. She would cry and beg him to talk to her,
and nearly have a breakdown before he would speak again. I thought it was terribly cruel way to deal
with a problem. Silence can be just as
destructive to a relationship as harsh words.
Pascal, the great scientist and theologian, said, "Silence is the
worst form of persecution." Jews
are still angry that the Pope kept silent when a few words of protest may have
saved many Jews from Hitler's persecution.
Silence
can convey false messages. Robert Louis
Stevenson said, "The cruelest lies are often told in silence." The whole system of the Mafia is a system of
silence that lies by saying nothing.
Vincent Teresa in My Life In The Mafia wrote, "Silence is what
protects the Office. Each man is a wall
protecting the next guy higher up.
Let's say you want to do business with Tameleo. You can't do business with him. You got to do business with someone down the
line who does business with him or a guy between. We figured every man is a wall.
When you come to me, I'm a wall
and I stop. Let's say I did business
with you, and after that I did business with Tameleo. You would never know it.
You could turn me into the law, but the law would never nail Tameleo
because I don't talk about what I did with him."
There is
even the negative silence of sound without meaning. Simon and Garfunkel sold their song in vast numbers called The
Sound of Silence.
And in the naked land I saw
ten thousand
People, maybe more,
People talking without
speaking;
People hearing without
listening;
People writing songs that
voices never shared.
No one dared disturb the
sound of silence.
It was
all meaningless racket, and noise that was saying nothing. It was sound, but it was empty, and,
therefore, a form of silence, for nothing was being communicated. There has been a lot of study on noise
pollution in our world today, and it is a major factor in the stress of modern
life. But Americans are so conditioned
to it that even when they can escape they take their noise with them. I read a teenage girls statement that
describes for me an experience I once had.
She said, "When my brothers are upstairs screaming and yelling,
that's noise. When they're upstairs
playing a game, that's sound."
Driving
the young people to release time is often enjoyable, and I get pleasure in
their sounds, but this past week they were wound up and were just making noise
and racket. It was both tiring and
disturbing. The sounds of children
having fun are a blessing, but the noise of children just being noisy is a
burden. I learned one thing about kids.
If you want to know what they are really like, don't ask their parents,
and don't ask their teachers, and don't ask their friends: Ask their bus
driver. He or she sees and hears them
at their best and their worst.
The
weakness of this theory is that sometimes it is the parent who is also the
driver. Listen to this description of a
cartoon. "Mother is driving home
with her four small children, the family dog, and several bags of
groceries. On her face you can see a
combination of tension, frustration, anger, and near hysteria, as the steering
wheel begins to vibrate under her ever‑tightening grip. Behind her all four small children are
talking at the same time. Listen to the
conversation behind her: 'Tell Billy to
stop waving at the car behind us.'
'Daddy's good hat is back here, and Dolly's standing on it!' 'Which bag are the lollipops in?' 'Blow your horn and make that police car get
out of the way, mom.' 'Jan just dropped
the ketchup bottle in on top of the prune juice, and the bag's leaking.' 'Drive
faster, we're missing a good program on TV.'
'Stop bouncing the car, I can't read the message on the cereal
box.' 'It's cold back here, sitting on
this frozen food.' 'Who put the
fingerprints on the back window?'
'Why'd you turn the radio off?'
'Jimmy's opening the cookie bag.'
'You don't smile very much when you drive, do you, mommy?' " She
was being bombarded with the sounds of silence‑that is, disturbing racket
that does not contribute to life, but deprives it of pleasure.
Then
there is the destructive silence of not caring about injustice. Paul Rees wrote this back in the 70's. Twice recently I have seen a quotation from
Pastor Martin Niemoller so memorable in its diction and, in some respects, so
contemporary in its implications that I want to pass it on:
"In Germany, the Nazis
came for the Communists,
And I didn't speak up
because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I did not speak up
Because I was not a
Jew. Then they came for the
Trade Unionist and I didn't
speak up because I wasn't
a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Catholic and
I was a Protestant so I
didn't speak up. Then they came
for me....By that time there
was no one to speak up for
anyone."
Rees
goes on, "There are times when silence, far from being "golden,"
is craven.
There are times, too, when the noise we evangelicals make on the safe
issues (e.g., drugs and obscenity) makes all the more conspicuous our tight‑lipped
muteness or own low‑keyed generalizations on the gritty causes (e.g.,
civil rights, war, poverty, wasted) that are abrasively alive for millions of
Americans.
Psa.
32 is all about the folly of silence when one tries to keep it hidden. If we confess and deal with it, and get it
forgiven, then we are wise. If we keep
silent about it and refuse to confess it, we do ourselves damage. So with awareness, we must nevertheless
pursue the positive Biblical revelation:
II. SILENCE
CAN BE DELIGHTFULLY WISE.
Eccles.
3:7 says, "There is a time to be silent and a time to speak." It is often hard to know which is the best
at any particular moment, but there are some great examples of when silence was
the wise choice. A service station
attendant foiled a robber without saying a word. It was around three in the morning when the intruder walked into
the station, pulled a revolver and said, "This is a stickup." When the man didn't reply, the thief
repeated: "This is a
stickup." Again the attendant remained silent. This was too much for the thief, and so he turned around and went
out the door saying, "All right, then, I guess this isn't a
stickup."
The
ability to speak in several languages is truly an asset, but to be able to hold
your tongue in one language is often priceless. Thomas Carlyle once said,
"Silence is more eloquent than words." There were several occasions when Jesus
refused to speak. He let His silence do
the talking. In Matt. 27:12‑14 we
read, "When he was accused by the chief priests and the elders, He gave no
answer. Then Pilate asked Him, don't
you know how many things they are accusing you of? But Jesus made no reply, not even to a single charge‑to the
great amazement of the governor."
To be
silent in the face of such charges was a guarantee of conviction, but Jesus
refused to defend Himself, for He needed no defense for one thing, and
secondly, He was submitting to their crime for our salvation. Silence was actually a means to our
salvation. We were saved by the
Savior's silence, which sent Him to the cross.
In Luke 23:9 we read of Herod trying to get all he could out of Jesus,
and this was what he got: "He
plied Him with many questions, but Jesus gave him no answer." This was the Herod who put to death John the
Baptist; the one Jesus said was the greatest man of the Old Testament era. Jesus would not give him the pleasure of
answering a single one of his curious questions. Jesus illustrated that there is a time for silence.
These
illustrations might give the impression that silence is only a negative method
of non‑communication. Not
so! It can also be a positive form of communication. The best thing the three friends of Job did
was their first week with him. They sat
on the ground for seven days and seven nights, and Job 2:13 says that no one
said a word to him. Their silence was
golden, and it said to him, we care and we sympathize. It was only when they opened their mouth
that they became cruel and obnoxious.
In silence they were being true friends.
It is
good for us to remember that silent caring often means a lot more to people in
grief and suffering than some flimsy cliches, or thoughtless efforts to explain
things away. Joyce Landorf in her book
Tough and Tender gives a good example of what professional silence meant to
her.
"After our infant son
David died, I was recovering from a
Caesarian section and went
to our doctor's office for a
postnatal examination. I had not seen my doctor since David
died and I'll never forget
our meeting. It was soon after
surgery so Dick had brought
me to the doctors office in my
nightie and robe. I was very weak and the nurses helped me
up on the examining
table. Then everyone left me alone to
wait for the doctor. When he came in he said absolutely
nothing. He did not give me a phony, cheery greeting.
He merely walked over to me
and very tenderly put both
of his hands over mine. I looked up at him and with teary
eyes he turned his head to
the window and continued to
hold my hands‑but he
never spoke a word. What he
communicated in those brief
seconds spoke volumes to
my heart. It even brought a measure of healing,
because
I knew he deeply cared about
my loss; yet nothing was
said then or
ever."
The
point is, don't worry that you don't know what to say to people in crisis. That
can be your greatest asset as a comforter.
Silence can be healing. Leslie Weatherhead,
one of the great preacher of England, in his book The Significance of Silence
gives this testimony:
"I never realized how
dreadfully irrelevant and almost
vulgar words could be in the hour of grief until an
experience befell me in a
home where a little girl dearly
loved one particular
doll. The doll was broken by the
carelessness of a person who
turned on the little child
and said, in words that
seemed to sear one's brain as
they were spoken, "I'll
buy you another." A child's grief
is so real and so terrible
that it seemed as bad as saying
to a mother who has lost her
child, "Well, you have
other children," or to
a man who has lost his dearest
friend, "well, you have
other friends." No newly bought
doll, however expensive and
marvelous, could make up
for that dear treasure on
whom love had been so lavished
that the very paint had been
kissed off its face. There it lay
in cruel pieces, and nothing
on earth could replace it or make
up the sense of loss. With the sublime dignity and the
spiritual insight that made
Jesus Himself put a little child
in the midst of men, this
little girl looked up into her mother's
eyes and said, "Don't
talk about it, please, Mummy." She
wanted only to be
quiet. There was nothing that could be
said. The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and
healing for
that heart is silence."
A
picture is worth a thousand words because a picture conveys a powerful message
in silence. Sign language is vital for communication and it is done in silence.
The Quakers make a science out of silence, and by the power of silence they did
things others could not do. During
World War II they walked boldly into the Berlin Gestapo office of Himmler's
Deputy Chief Reinhard Heydrick. They
implored him to let them take persecuted Jews out of Germany. He listened, and then asked them to wait in
an adjoining room for his reply.
Unknown to them the room was wired, and Heydrick was listening, for he
expected them to criticize his cruelty, and blast the evils he perpetrated on
the Jews. But the Quakers sat silently
in prayer, and did not say one negative word.
Their silence impressed even this butcher, and he granted their
request. Many Jews were spared by the
power of silence.
Many Christians
would have been so busy condemning the evils of this monster that they would
have, by their mouthiness, condemned their Jewish friends to the gas
chamber. Only disciplined silence could
have saved them, and only rare Christians know how to be so disciplined. We live in an electronic age where silence
is practically a sin. The worse thing
that can happen on radio or TV is for there to be silence. It is called dead time. Any pause in sound is the equivalent of
evil. Silence is the feared demon, and
this spirit invades our culture. We
need to go against the grain and be non‑conformist to develop the
positive side of silence.
Silence
has the advantage of being a two way street.
By silence we speak to God, and also allow Him to speak to us. Silence is both saying something, and
listening to something being said.
Let's consider each of these:
The language of silence, and the listening of silence.
A. THE
LANGUAGE OF SILENCE.
Thomas a
Kempis said, "Thou, O Lord, hearest my voiceless tongue, and my silence
speaketh unto Thee." The Bible
urges us again and again to praise the Lord, and to sing and shout to Him in
expressing our joy. This is a vital
part of worship. But we forget that the
opposite of a good thing is not necessarily a bad thing. A liquid is not bad because it is not a
solid, and white is not bad because it is the opposite of black.
The
point is, silence can also be a means by which we communicate with God. By silence we can convey respect. If the president, or any dignitary, was in
our presence speaking, we would listen in silence, and not be blabbing away as
if what we had to utter was more important than listening to them. Hab. 2:20 says, "The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth be silent
before Him." Even praise has to
stop at times so you have a chance to listen.
Silence is saying that I love your Word Lord, and I desire to know your
will. I silently wait and listen for
you to speak and give guidance. As much
as God loves your flow of praise, He also loves it when you stop praising and
start listening. This will lead you to
ever fresh reasons to renew your praising.
Silence is a vital part of a total worship experience, for silence gives
God a chance to love you back.
Since we
are a sound oriented culture this is hard for us. We do not like silence, for to us it is like empty time. We have an urge to fill it with sound. In our culture everything that makes sound
is also made portable so we can take it everywhere we go, lest we find
ourselves stranded in some place of silence.
Silence on our part says to God, I am open to you to speak to me. I honor your right to have access to my mind,
and to give me that which you desire for me to possess. Psa. 46:10 says, "Be still and know
that I am God." Devotional books
use to be called the quiet time, and Christians recognized the need to be
silent before God. Eveleyn Underhill wrote,
"Most books on religion have thousands of words‑we need only one
word, God‑and that surrounded not by many words but by
silence." Christopher Crauch put
it in poetry:
Thou so far we grope to
grasp Thee,
Thou so near we cannot clasp
Thee;
All‑pervading Spirit
flowing
Through the worlds, yet past
our knowing.
Artist of the solar spaces,
And these humble human
faces.
Though all mortal races
claim Thee,
Though and language fail to
name Thee,
Human lips are dumb before
Thee,
Silence only may adore Thee.
B. THE
LISTENING OF SILENCE.
God listens
to us, and He appreciates it when we return the favor and listen to him. Often the answer to our prayer is received
by listening. The solution to many a
problem is found in having the mind of Christ, and this comes by listening to
His Spirit. Friendship between two
people is hard to develop if there is all talk and no listening. We miss the depth of the friendship of
Christ if we do not learn to listen.
A
typical worship service does give opportunity for listening. There is the choir and special music, and
there is prayer and the sermon. All of
these you listen to, and God can and does speak to us through them. But silence is seldom used as a means of
worship. The reason is because we are
not into silence as a way of listening.
The result is, it is not very effective on a public level. It is a value that has to be developed in
private. We need to learn to pray,
"Lord, what is your will for me today in these areas of my
life?" Then we need to listen to
hear if God puts any ideas into our head.
"Be
still and know that I am God."
There is a knowing of God that can be learned only in silence. Silence plays a major role in learning of
God, for we need quietness when we study and meditate on His Word. This is hard to do for us as Americans, for
we are conditioned to keep our minds busy.
Jamie Buckingham followed the footsteps of Moses and tells of being
camped at Mt. Sinai.
I lay on my back in my sleeping bag, my hands folded beneath
my head to cushion it from
the pebbly rocks, and stared upward
at the unbelievable canopy
of stars overhead. The outline of Jebel
Musa‑Mt. Moses‑was
an awesome granite shadow against the
glistening black of the sky
with its billions of flashing pinpoints of
yellow and green. It was cold‑and silent. I remembered something
an old monk had written,
hundreds of years before, of his first
experience in the
Sinai: 'It is the silence that speaks
the loudest.'
That night, looking up into the magnificent display of God's
creation in the heavens, a
cosmorama that yet defies description,
I, too, experience the
silence of Moses and Elijah‑an outer silence
that only accented the noise
within. It started when I heard, for
the
first time in my life, my
own heart pumping blood through my veins.
Turning my head, I could
hear the bones of my neck rasping together.
But it was the deeper noise
that caused the ultimate distraction.
The
moans of things left
behind. The clatter of anxiety for
things to come.
The ping of guilt. The rumble of fears. The sigh of memories. The
tearing sound of
homesickness. That night, at the base
of the holy
mountain, I understood why
God had to keep Moses alone for 40
days and nights before Moses
could hear him speak. For God speaks
in silence, and silence is
hard to come by."
He went
on to climb the mountain in silence, and experienced a unique sense of the
presence of God in that silence. But it
was hard, and some of his companion climbers just could not get into the value of
silence. I don't believe most American
Christians will ever learn the value of silence, but I share it with you
because it is a part of God's revelation, and a potential way to spiritual
growth that many have discovered.
Elizabeth O'Connor, on the staff of the famous Church Of The Savior in
Washington D.C., wrote a book called Search For Silence. In it she tells how silence is promoted in
their church. She recommends that you
start by being silent for five minutes a day.
Just withdraw from all activity of body and mind and listen to God. This silent focus will often save you time
and give you direction so that your day is concentrated on His goals. I have done this and know its value, but
even so, it is hard to do, and far harder to continue. May God grant us the power to heed his call
to be still and know that He is God.
May it be the blessing of some at least that they discover the deeper
life of sanctified silence.
4. SAINTS IN THE COMPLAINT DEPARTMENT Based on Psa. 77
It is
always a shock when an innocent little child all of the sudden lets loose with
a swear word, or some other sort of vulgar language. We are startled because we had no idea the pollution of the world
had seeped into their little mind. We
have the same emotion when we read the Bible, and all of the sudden we are
hearing unbelievable words of doubt, despair, and all kinds of negative
language of complaint. It is the Holy
Bible, and yet, the language at times sounds like it is coming from the gutter
of unbelief. It is like a sweet little
innocent 4 year old talking like a pimp.
The
Psalms are especially loaded with language that our Western ears find shocking
and inappropriate. The concept of
praising God by means of complaining and gripping is one we cannot grasp very
easily. Yet, we cannot really value
many of the Psalms unless we learn to enter into the Hebrew understanding of
emotions and worship. If I write a song
to sing in our service that went like this:
Lord you just don't seem to
care,
And you don't answer my
prayer.
I'm feeling so low and in
despair,
Because life is so very
unfair.
You would think its been too long since my last
vacation, and you would recommend I get away and rest my weary mind. But the fact is, this kind of blues song was
sung in the temple on a regular basis.
The Jews were really into the blues.
They sung about how they really felt, and they often felt down.
It was
a Jewish conviction that all emotions should be expressed, and none should be
suppressed. They did not leave any
feelings out of their songs just because they were negative feelings. If they felt hate, they sang about
hate. If they felt depressed, they sang
about depression. If they felt God‑forsaken,
they sang about it, or if they felt God was not being fair, they sang their
complaints to Him. They sang how they
felt, and they felt all the emotions, good and bad, and so they are all in
their Psalms.
It is
hard for us to buy into this. We prefer
to sing only the positive feelings, and go to therapy to deal with the negative
ones. The Jews had no therapists, and
so they had to bring all their feelings to God. God was the one they had to deal with to have mental health. They had to get all their negative feelings
out before God. They had to lay all the
cards on the table, and be open and completely honest before God.
Only a
secure people can feel free to complain to God and sing about it in worship, or
confront God with their complaints in prayer.
This sounds to us like being a rebel child, but the Psalms make it clear
that it can be the way of the secure child that knows he or she is loved even
if they do not understand God's ways, and tell Him so. The more intimate the relationship, the more
likely one feels free to complain without loss of love. Children develop bad feelings toward their
parents, and will on occasion blast out with words like I hate you, or your way
of doing things stinks, I wish I had been born to other parents. You can respond to these negative thoughts
with a whip, or you can say, I'm glad you could be honest with your
feelings. Let's talk about them, and
see why you feel that way.
Freedom
of expression is a key way to keep a family sensitive to each other, and it can
prevent long range resentments. This
does not mean that it is healthy to be ever complaining and shouting nasty
words, but it means that there is a legitimate place for complaining and communicating
negative emotions in the family. A
gripe session is not out of line for a Christian family. It was not out of line for God's people even
in church, for they knew how to praise God even in complaining.
Psalm 77
is one of these negative complaint type Psalms, and Asaph, who was apparently
gifted at lamenting and complaining, has a whole series of pessimistic
questions in verses 7 through 9.
1. Will the
Lord reject us forever?
2. Will He
never show His favor again?
3. Has His
unfailing love vanished forever?
4. Has His
promise failed for all time?
5. Has God
forgotten to be merciful?
6. Has He in
anger withheld His compassion?
How is
that for a half dozen depressing thoughts for the day? Asaph is obviously not very high on the
reading list for positive thinkers. He
is the patron saint of the pessimists.
It would be fascinating to hear the tune to which his gloomy message was
sung. It was not likely a very bouncy
or lively piece, but more likely similar to a funeral chant. We might have tough days when these awful questions
enter our minds, but we don't want to sing about it in public, or call God's
attention to such treasonous thoughts.
Who of
us has not gone through a night like he describes here? He has cried out to God, and there is no
response. It's like calling 911 and
getting a busy signal. The system seems
to be ignoring my need. God does not
seem to care that I am at the breaking point.
The burden is crushing, and no one gives a hand. God seems to be on vacation in some remote
part of the universe, and is indifferent to my petty life and problems.
Have you
ever complained to your mate after a restless night and said, "You kept me
up all night with your coughing or snoring, or your tossing and
turning?" Most mates have done
this at sometime or another. But who of
us has ever had the audacity of Asaph to blame God for a sleepless night? In verse 4 he point blank fires these words
at God: "You kept my eyes from
closing." In other words, it is
your fault God that I didn't get a wink of sleep. Asaph seems to have a gift for complaining to God. He wrote a dozen of the Psalms: Psa. 50 and Psa. 73‑83. If you read them, you discover he was the
expert in the complaint department, and a specialist in the art of
pessimism. He is the author of much of
the blues songs in the temple of God.
He sings
in Psa. 73 about almost losing his faith because God seems to care more about
the ungodly than about him. He felt
that trying to obey God and live a good life was not rewarded anyway, so why
not be like the wicked world? In Psa. 74 he writes of the depressing picture of
the days when the enemies of Israel came with axes and hatchets and smashed all
the beautiful art in the sanctuary of God.
All of the places of worship were destroyed and burned to the
ground. And fools mocked God all day
long. Then he writes a couple of Psalms‑75‑76‑that
have more joy and praise mixed with the negatives of judgment. But then he comes to 77, and all this
complaint, and Psa. 78 is his masterpiece of pessimism. It is the long history of all the stupid,
rebellious failure of God's people that lead them to experience the wrath of
God's judgment. It is one of the longest
of the Psalms, and full of the awful folly of God's people.
Asaph
was not likely ever the life of the party.
He was Israel's pessimist par excellence. How in the world could God's people allow Asaph to be one of
their song writers? And why would God
allow this sort of thing to be a part of their hymnal that they used in their
worship of Him? They actually set this
stuff to music and sang it to the Lord.
It is obvious that we have lost an awareness of how negative emotions
can be a positive part of worship and praise.
We would never dream of looking for a person who is often depressed, and
asking them to write out some of their feelings so we could sing them in the
morning service. The very idea would be
anti‑spiritual if we did not have
so many examples in the Bible. This is
a Biblical pattern of worship far more frequently referred to and illustrated
than dancing, lifting the hands, or speaking in tongues, but you don't hear of
many groups who are bragging that we complain more in our worship than most
others do, and so we are more Biblical than most other Christians who only
rejoice in worship.
One of
the most interesting revelations I have seen by studying the worship of the
Bible is that there is unbelievable variety, and there is no body of Christians
anywhere, that I am aware of, that uses all the Bible forms. Everyone picks those that most fit their
needs and comfort level, and ignore the rest.
The one we are looking at now, the praise through complaint, is probably
the most universally ignored of all. My
interest is not to try and revive complaining to God, anymore than I want us to
dance in the aisles. My interest is in
learning what values these complaining negative Psalms represent, so we can
reap the benefits of those values in our personal life of devotion.
First,
lets face the reality that every kind of personality can be used of God. Asaph does not seem the type we would want
to run our music program, but both David and Solomon chose him to be the chief
singer and music director for the tabernacle and temple. Almost all the music we have in the Bible
was arranged by Asaph, and when he died his sons carried on the orchestral and
choral arrangements. He was the music
man of the Old Testament. Spurgeon
writes of Asaph, "Asaph was a man of exercised mind, and often touched the
minor key; he was thoughtful, contemplative, believing, but withal there was a
dash of sadness about him, and this imparted a tonic flavor to his songs. To follow him with understanding, it is
needful to have done business on the great waters, and weathered many an
Atlantic gale."
In other
words, his songs are not always relevant for all times. They are songs for the suffering and the
depressed. They are songs of sadness,
anger, and frustration. They express
what you feel when you feel terrible.
The question then is why is it good to sing about how you feel when you feel terrible? Wouldn't it be better to just stay home, brood, and mope around
until the clouds break and the sun shines again? Then you can come to church again and rejoice. This is how we think, but this is not how
God thinks, and thus, not how the Hebrews thought. Worship was to them not only a praise to God, but it was therapy
for them. Worship had a dual
purpose: to exalt God and glorify Him,
and to bring healing to His people.
The
healing can happen when we feel forgiven of our sins, and when we feel God's
love and care through His people. But
what we forget is that healing can also come through confession. Confession is the catharsis of getting all
the poison out of our spirit. We get so
much contamination in our soul that we are full of irritation and
frustration. We get angry at life, at
God, and at His people. We are full of
spiritual poison that saps the joy out of our life, and makes us bitter and
resentful. The Psalms of lament and
complaint tell us this kind of negative pollution needs to be poured out so we
can be cleansed, and filled with a new spirit.
It is like an oil change in your car.
You get the old stuff out so you can have a fresh supply of clean oil
that will protect your engine. If you
did not have a way to get the old out, it would lead to a break‑down. If your car can get sick without getting rid
of its inner pollution, so can you.
The God
who built us this way is telling us by these negative Psalms that we have to
get rid of the poison or we will have a breakdown. Our health on all levels: physical, mental, and spiritual,
depends on our being able to remove the pollution from our inner life. How do we do it? We complain to God. We
sing about our anger and frustration, our envy and jealousy, and all the negative
feelings that we harbor in our soul.
Here is the amazing thing, modern studies are revealing that what the
Hebrews did for all those centuries in worship took the place of psychologist,
psychiatrists, counselors, and therapists of all kinds.
Listen
to some of the facts that doctor Bernie Siegal has revealed in his book, Love,
Medicine And Miracles. An internist,
Dr. D.M. Kissen studied smokers with lung cancer and discovered that those who
had a personality where they withheld their emotions and had no outlets for
their discharge, got cancer with far fewer cigarettes. In other words, people who can express their
emotions can resist damage to their body far more effectively than those who
cannot complain and get the poison out of their system.
Dr.
Morgan Jensen, of the Yale Psychology Department, found that women with breast
cancer die far faster when they cannot be honest about their complaints. They are the ones who smile and say they are
fine, even though their world is collapsing.
Since this is how Christians really feel they should be, it means
Christians would tend to die faster than those who, like a good Jewish woman,
could complain her head off about the unfairness of life. Her realistic facing of negative facts and
emotions actually helps her live longer.
We would never dream of giving a Christian friend who is dying of cancer
a collection of the songs of Asaph. But
the fact is, we could be giving them life by doing so. We are locked into the superficial theory
that only positive thoughts should be our food in time of crisis. We follow the theories of men and ignore the
Word of God, and by doing so we rob people of the therapy that could be
healing.
Dr.
Siegal says the best chance of winning the battle with cancer is being totally
and frankly honest about the enemy. It
is a frightening monster that we need to fear and fight with all our
might. Those who smile and pretend
there is no battle suppress their emotions, and in doing so they die more
quickly. Asaph would be crying out,
"Why my Lord? Why do I have to be
rotting with this stinking disease? It
isn't fair, and I feel cheated and disgusted with the whole lousy
plan!" He would not be saying this continually, for he would
also be praising God for the life he has,
and for his family, and for the service he has had the privilege to
perform. He would express his
thankfulness to God also, but would not suppress the negative emotions when
they came. The result would be, he
would have a better chance of survival.
Dr.
Siegal says, "Lack of emotional outlet is a common theme in the history of
cancer patients. It is probably the
reason cancer is more common in convents than in prisons: In jail you can
at least act out your frustrations."
The Hebrew people had a powerful preventative medicine right in their
hymnal. They could go to church and
sing out their awful negative feelings, and they could get rid of the stress
and poison that could damage their bodies and minds. They got rid of their poison, but we store it up, and the result
is, Christians have lost a major tool for good health right in the Bible.
Now let's be clear about this. Pessimism and depression are not good
things. They are just real feelings
that all people, including God's people, have.
It is not a blessing to have them, but the point is, when you do, it is
okay to sing about how you feel. Asaph
is not recommending that you feel down, forsaken, and cheated by life. He is recommending that when you do, you are
to be honest about how you feel, and tell the Lord just how you feel. You say, "I'm going to pour out all
this poison before you because it is there, and I want to get rid of it, and
who else but you can take this putrid poison and cleanse me, and make me whole
and happy again by filling me with your Spirit in place of this awful one I now
have?"
The goal
is not to have a mess of sorry saints who are full of complaints, but rather,
victorious saints who have gone beyond their complaints to a spirit of
rejoicing. If you always take the
shortcut and go right to praise without getting the poison out of your system,
you can rob yourself of the joy of praise, for you will still have the
suppressed anger and bitterness in your soul.
Your praise will not be real, for the negative feelings will be there
cutting down the energy of your joy.
The joy of the Lord is your strength, but when a major portion of your
energy is devoted to keeping your inner negatives suppressed, you will have
very little left to empower your joy.
You are draining away your power source. Get the negatives out and expressed so you can have your full capacity
for rejoicing.
Dr.
Howard Macy, who got his PHD from Harvard, and who is an outstanding Quaker
scholar, writes in his book Rhythms Of The Inner Life these words we need to
hear.
"Many modern teachers gloss over this reality. From
the Cathedral of the
Perpetual Smile to First Happy
Baptists, there are plenty
of people who would mistakenly
have us believe that the
life of faith is basically one long
joyride. To sustain this illusion and the quest for
the Holy
Grin, they transform the
church program into a religious
amusement park hawking a
thrill‑a‑minute, fun‑filled
experience, complete with
emotional roller coasters,
religious variety shows,
verbal trick mirrors, and more.
Such teaching is a half‑truth
at best, a shoddy imitation
of authentic joy in
faith. Both the Scriptures and our
experience refute it.
The fact is that the life of faith includes struggle.
We suffer dryness and
"the dark night of the soul."
We hear the piercing
question, "why?" and blush at
not having a tidy
answer. We cringe and cry out when
life seems hollow and
unfair. We smart under the sting
of mockery and lies aimed at
us. We sometimes plead,
"My God, My God, why
have you forsaken me?"
But even when we see the struggle in ourselves, we
are tempted to conceal
rather than disclose it. Some‑
times we even put on our
brave face before God. After
all, to admit struggle seems
to be admitting that we have
failed as disciples. So while we feign joy, we trudge on,
silently stooped by our
burdens, and we secretly waste
away. What we need to do, instead, is to unmask
our
struggle and despair and to
learn, as people of faith, how
to encounter them.
At this point the Psalms are a helpful guide, for songs
of struggle‑the laments‑are
the most common type of song
in the Psalter. The Hebrews singers often sang "the
blues,"
and the way they did it can
teach us about our own times
of darkness and how to open
them to the light."
I do not
think the blues will ever be as popular in the church as it was in the temple,
but we now have the whole Bible available to us in print. We don't have to go to the temple where
there was just one copy. We can benefit
by the psychology of the Bible in our privacy.
All we need to learn is that it is okay with God if we are honest about
how we feel. We don't have to like how we feel, or want to so feel, but if we
do, we can share that honestly with God, and He will not be offended. The
people He loved the most, often felt rotten, and they told Him so. Moses said to God, "Why do you treat
your servant so badly?..." "If this is how you want to deal with me,
I would rather you killed me!..."(Numbers 11:11,15) Elijah, Jeremiah, Job
and others complained, argued and even accused God. They trusted God's love enough to know He loved them even with
their negative feelings, just as a good friend would. They knew that in the end
all would work out and God would come through, but they felt terrible at the
time, and they let God know they did not like His timetable on doing things.
When
Jesus cried out on the cross that He felt forsaken, He entered the human world
of depression and despair. The
overwhelming negative feelings that can enslave the minds of men had their hold
on Him. He was loved by the Father and
was soon welcomed into the Father's presence.
His complaint, however, was legitimate, and it was how He really felt in
baring the sins of the world. We are being
Christlike and wise to bring our complaints to God, for if we don't get rid of
the poison in His presence, we will make ourselves sick, as well as make those
around us sick of us. The way to
perpetual praise is to get rid of the poison of complaint. Sometimes even complaint can be positive, as
we see in these lines by Cowper.
Lord, it is my chief
complaint
That my love is weak and
faint.
Yet I love Thee and adore;
O for grace to love Thee
more!
May God's Word help us all understand that complaint
has a valid place in our prayer life when we are going through hard times that
we do not understand. It is not lack of faith, but confidence in God's love
that enables us to complain to Him, and know that He will heal the negative
feelings and give us peace.
5. THE PLEASURE OF POSITIVE
THINKING Based on Psa. 84
Have you ever watched a movie or play that ended with some basic
problems unresolved? It is a great let
down, for we expect that no matter how bad the situation is the bottom line
will be a happy ending. We are
conditioned to this. It is a part of
our heritage through our fairy tales, novels, and most movies. Walter Kerr writes of an experience he
had. "Not long ago I spoke to an
articulate woman who is a fervent
theatergoer and disliked, intensely, the position in which a certain
play had put her: She felt obliged to
dismiss it in spite of its obvious merits and her obvious emotional involvement
with it. Yes, she agreed, it had caught
her interest.Yes, it had created a lump in her throat. 'But when I came out of the theater, the
lump was still there!' She
expostulated, angry and dissatisfied.
She had been moved, but she remained moved, in a way she did not like;
some further agent ought to have intervened to dissolved that lump, to
distribute that emotion in some meaningful way."
Where do we get the idea that every story should have a happy
ending? We get it from the Bible, which
has influenced our whole culture. Even
wise secular authors, movie makers, and play writers will conform to the
Biblical pattern of coming to a positive conclusion. The Bible is filled with sin, folly and tragedy, but the bottom
line is always victory over sin, suffering, and Satan. The Bible ends, and they lived happily ever
after. God's grace is always sufficient
to guarantee that the final act is one of
triumph. The result is, the
Bible is the world's greatest source of positive thinking. Nothing can be so bad that God cannot bring
it out right. Nothing can be so dark
that God cannot make it bright.
Positive thinking is an absolute necessity for anyone who
calls themselves a Biblical
thinker. What a pleasure it is to live
in a fallen world, where there is no end of things to complain about, yet,
still be able to fill life with praise, because of trust in God. This is where the Psalmist is in Psa.
84. He has his negatives to
endure. He is temporarily cut off from
the temple, and envies the birds who can chirp the praises of God in that
lovely environment. He has to plod
through the valley of Baca, and figure out how to make it a place of springs. This can be hard work and a challenge, and
he cries out to God to hear his prayer for strength to press on. He finds himself in a lowly position as a
door keeper in the house of God. There
are many notes in the minor key in this great song, but the over all theme is
in the major key of positive thinking.
Positive thinking does not mean, if you always think positive
nothing will ever go wrong. That is
wishful thinking, and it won't work.
Positive thinking is telling yourself that even when things do go wrong,
that is never the last word. They can
be fixed, modified, overcome, or
scrapped, but whatever, life goes on and God's will can be done on earth as it
is in heaven. Positive thinking is the
conviction that God always has the last word. Nothing can go so wrong that He will be at a loss to bring good
out of it. Jesus said we are not to
fear those who can kill the body and that is all they can do. The worse thing that can happen in life is
somebody killing you. That is a
seriously negative in anyone's book.
But Jesus says that is all evil forces can do. That is the limit of their evil. Don't sweat it, for you are still in the hands of God, and the
story does not end as a tragedy, but as a triumph, for in Christ you enter His
kingdom where all pain, sin, and folly is gone forever.
Paul suffered terrible things in his life, and was finally
killed as a martyr. His positive
thinking was not a superficial philosophy that said, everyday in every way the
world is getting better and better. His
positive thinking was that he trusted in God and was confident that God would
write the final chapters of his life, and they would be chapters of
victory. That is why he practiced what
he preached: Rejoice in the Lord always
and again I say rejoice. Paul was a man
of praise because no matter how much he suffered, he had the perpetual pleasure
that comes with positive thinking.
Positive thinking is just a descriptive way of saying faith or
trust. Psa. 84 ends with, "O Lord Almighty blessed is the
man who trusts in You." That is,
happy is the man of faith, or, happy is the positive thinker. Heb. 11:1 says, "Faith is being sure of
what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see." Faith thinks positive about the future even
when the present finds you in the valley of Baca trying to survive. Faith
reaches out to that happy ending and brings the power and joy of it back into
time. God says he will work in all
circumstances of life to bring forth good.
Positive thinking is trusting in God to do just that, so that even when
you are feeling the pains and sorrows of this fallen world, you are also
anticipating the pleasures of victory.
Getting to this blessed state of trusting God is a process,
and sometimes we are the man who said to Jesus, "Lord I believe, help thou
my unbelief." He had a mixture of
faith and doubt, and that is where we often find ourselves. We are thinking positive, but the negative
is there trying to take over and dominate.
Rhonda Kelly in Divine Discipline tells of her lesson in faith.
"Several months ago I
was suddenly confronted with the meaning of faith. I arrived by taxi early one morning at Victoria Station in
London. I loaded all my bags on a cart
and headed toward the train for the airport.
When I couldn't find an elevator to go downstairs, I asked the janitor
for help. He told me to push my long
cart onto the escalator and release the handle. What a foolish idea! I
knew the luggage cart was much to big and much to heavy for me to manage on a
escalator. And I wasn't about to risk
all my earthly possessions. But he insisted, "push the cart down the
escalator and let go." There was
no one else around to reassure me, and my plane was to leave before long. So, finally, I stepped out in faith. I pushed the cart on the escalator; and as
it moved down I released the handle. My heart raced. I worried to death. But
do you know what happened? The escalator steps flattened out to hold my cart
and my luggage was safely carried down. The escalator was specially designed to hold luggage carts. However, the escalator could have never
worked for my cart if I had not given it a chance. I often wonder how many times my lack of faith has limited God's
power to work."
I had a similar experience with the computer. I would type a poem and then save it, but I
was always fearful that it would not save the work I had done. So I would go instantly into the program to
open up the file to see if it did, in fact, save the poem. I had doubts, and only after seeing that it
did save what I asked it to, did I get confidence that it would do what it says
it will do. My doubt turned to faith
and I am a more positive thinker about what the computer will do. My faith is growing by a process by giving
the computer a chance to do what it says it can and will do.
So it is with God. The
positive thinker puts his trust in God, and grows in his assurance that God
will work in all things for good with those who love Him. Not everything is good. Much is bad and messed up in this world, but
by the grace of God good can come out of every mess, and every valley of Baca,
for those who have learned to enjoy the pleasure of positive thinking. In II Tim. 1:12 Paul puts the negative and
positive side by side, and lets the positive dominate. He writes, "That is why I am suffering
as I am. Yet I am not ashamed, because
I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that He is able to guard what I
have entrusted to Him for that day."
Paul does not have faith in life, history, fate, circumstances, or human
nature. So much positive thinking is
superficial and Pollyanna because it is faith in something, rather than faith
in someone. Paul says, "I know
whom I have believed."
John Oxanham stresses this in his poem:
NOT what but WHOM I do
believe.
That, in my darkest hour of
need,
Hath comfort that no mortal
creed
To mortal man may give.
NOT what, but WHOM.
For Christ is more than all
the creeds,
And his full life of gentle
deeds
Shall all the creeds
outlive.
NOT what I do believe, but
WHOM.
WHO walks beside me in the
gloom?
WHO shares the burden
wearisome?
WHO all the dim way doth
illume,
And bids me look beyond the
tomb
the larger life to live?
NOT what I do believer, but
WHOM
NOT WHAT
BUT WHOM!
Positive thinking that does not rise to the level of trusting
in God the ultimate WHOM is going to fall short, and does not come with a
guarantee of a happy ending. This Psalm has a happy ending because it ends with
faith in God. The Bible has a happy
ending because God is the one who determines the last chapters. We can, therefore, press on confident that
the best is always yet to be. Robert
Crumly has captured the message of trust and positive thinking in the kind of
poetry I can really enjoy. He wrote-
Far out at sea, at close of
day,
A lonely albatross flew by.
We watched him as he soared
away--
A speck against the glowing
sky!
Thought I : This lordly
feathered one
Is trusting in the faithfulness
Of wind and tide, of star and
sun;
And shall I trust the Maker
less?
O soul of mine, spread wide
thy wings:
Mount up; push out with courage strong!
And--like a bird which,
soaring, sings--
Let heaven vibrate with thy
song!
SPREAD WIDE THY WINGS, O
SOUL OF MINE,
For God will ever faithful be:
His love shall guide thee;
winds divine
Shall waft thee o'er this troubled sea.
Though dangers threaten in
the night,
Though tides of death below
thee roll,
Though storms attend thy
homeward flight,
SPREAD WIDE THY PINIONS, O
MY SOUL!
Though shadows veil the
verdant shore,
And distant seems the
hallowed dawn,
Spread wide thy
pinions--ever more
Spread wide thy pinions, and press on.
The poet recognizes the reality of the negative, but his focus
is on the positive, and this is the Biblical perspective on life. Evil is real, but only good is eternal. The
success of Walt Disney was due to his recognition of this truth. Ann Ortland tells of being in Disneyland
watching a film of Walt Disney explaining his philosophy. Listen to what he said.
We were sitting in a little
theater in Disneyland
Watching an old film clip of
Walt Disney philosophizing
On what makes a good
movie. Back he leaned in his
leather chair. "Nobody could have predicted how well
Snow White was going to do,"
he said. "Not in our
wildest dreams. Heady with success, we put together
another, Alice in
Wonderland. But do you know-it
never went over very
well. So we sat back and tried
to analyze why. And we came to the conclusion that
Snow White- and every
successful production-had two
ingredients: Laughter and tears. That was a milestone
discovery. After that, everything we turned out had to
have both laughter and
tears."
He had discovered the Biblical perspective that made him
famous, and one of the greatest entertainers in history. Be realistic about the sadness of this
fallen world, and portray its evil, but always come to a happy ending where
evil is defeated, and good celebrates the victory. The whole movie industry has learned that human nature cannot
tolerate a story that does not end with good defeating evil. Man is made in the image of God, and by
nature he is made to feel that any story in incomplete until good is
victorious. No matter how much people
may enjoy the cleverness and violence of an evil person, they expect the good
guy to win in the end.
Positive thinking is built into human nature. It is part of the image of God that man does
not lose even in his fallen state. But the
problem is that it has no personal value until people find the foundation for
this conviction in God. Blessed is the
man who trusts in you, says the Psalmist.
People can watch all the good movies in the world, and see all the good
plays, and read all the good novels, with all the happy endings, and yet never
be happy themselves because they have never made a personal commitment to trust
in God. They believe good will always
win, but they are not on the winning side if they do not trust God and receive
His plan of escape. God has given man a Savior and the assurance of being on
the winning side when the battle is over.
Jesus Christ is God's gift to man, and those who receive this gift by
trusting Him as Savior will have eternal life.
They will have the happy ending.
The negative side of positive thinking is that it can deceive
masses of people into thinking they are secure, and everything is okay because
they are basically good people. They
are not like the evil people they see on the screen, but more like the good
guys who win. This gives them a sense
of false security, and they do not feel any need for a Savior. Their positive thinking leads them to trust
in human nature to come out okay in the end.
This is what humanism is all about.
It is positive thinking about human nature with God left out because He
is not needed. This is the way of
disaster. Positive thinking for the
humanist means man will make everything come out okay in the end. Positive thinking for the Christian means
God will make all things come out okay in the end.
The Christian agrees with the humanist that the good will be
victorious over the evil, and the story will have a happy ending. The Christian disagrees as to why this will
be. The humanist says it is because man
is basically good. The Christian says,
yes it is true the basic image of God is still there, and man even in his
fallen state has the God-like love for the triumph of good over evil, but he
cannot pull it off on his own. He can
never save himself. Without a Savior he
is sunk and will go down in defeat before the forces of evil.
Man's only hope is to trust in God. Jesus said that he was the way, the truth, and the life, and that
He was the only way to the happy ending.
C. S. Lewis concludes the last of his Chronicles of Narnia like this:
For us this is the end of
all the stories, and we can
most truly say that they all
lived happily ever after.
But for them it was only the
beginning of the real
story. All their life in this world and all their
adventures in Narnia had
only been the cover
and the title page: Now at last they were beginning
Chapter One of the Great
Story, which no one on earth
has read: Which goes on forever: In which every
chapter is better than the
one before.
The humanist has no such hope. This kind of happy ending is the hope only of those who accept
the Biblical revelation of God's victory over all evil in Christ. Only those with this hope can fully enjoy
the pleasure of positive thinking.
6. THE PLEASURE OF PASSION
Based on Psa. 84
Dick Van Dyke in his book, Faith, Hope And Hilarity tells of
the Sunday school teacher who was struggling with how to explain the complex
concept of the Trinity. She got the inspiration to go to the church kitchen and
come back with an egg. She said,
"Class, imagine God the Father is the yolk of this egg, and Jesus His Son
is the white of the egg, and the Holy Spirit is the shell. They all combine to make one." To show
what she meant she broke the shell over a small bowl and out came a double-yolk
egg. Murphy's law strikes again. Her simple experiment only led to more
complexity. She learned, however, that
you cannot assume an egg only has one yolk.
Words are like this too.
You cannot assume a word only has one meaning, for you will often break
them open and discover a double yolk. I
mean by this, they will have two meanings, and often the meanings will be
complete opposites. Instead of being
identical twins like most yolks are, they will be completely different. This is the case with the word passion. In the Bible and out of the Bible passion is
most often a reference to what is negative.
It is the lust of the flesh and all that is called worldly. Lust and passion are just not positive words
in Christian circles.
But then we pick up this word in the Greek which is 31 times
translated lust, and we break it open, and out comes a double yolk. We discover that this word for strong desire
and intense emotion is a virtue as well as a vice. We read, for example, that Jesus said in Luke 22:15, "I have
eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer." Jesus used the same word used all through
the New Testament for lust to describe His passionate desire to eat the final
Passover with His disciples. He had a passion
for the Passover. Paul had this same
passionate desire to be with his Lord.
He uses the same word in Phil.1:23.
"I am torn between the two:
I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by
far." Paul had a lust for, or a
passion for, heaven.
Paul was a man of intense emotion, and he uses the word again
to describe how he felt about getting to see the Thessalonians. He wrote in I Thess. 2:17, "Out of our intense
longing we made every effort to see you."
There are other words that describe the strong emotions of Jesus and
Paul, but this is the very word for lust, and so we are forced to see the
positive side of passion. All of us are
moving in the direction of our ruling passions. What we most enjoy and desire is the force that determines how we
spend our time and resources. For
example:
1. Some have a passion for music, and so they are often at concerts,
or before the radio, or listening to CD's.
2. Some have a passion for sports, and so they are often at sporting
events, or glued to their TV.
3. Some have a passion for reading, and so they are ever with their
nose in a book.
We could go on endlessly, for there are people with passions
for everything imaginable. The point is, passion is a strong desire
that may be for what is evil or for what is good. Christians have used the word so often for evil that it is hard t
accept the reality that you can also be passionate for good. It is Biblical and Christlike to lust for
the pleasure of those things that are pleasing to God.
Most everything you find on lust and passion deals with the
negatives of sex and anger. Issac
Watts, the author of many of our favorite hymns, wrote one for children that went like this:
But, children you should
never let
Such angry passions rise.
Your little hands were never
made
To tear each others eyes.
And Moore wrote this warning
to adults:
Alas! Too well, too well we know
The pain, the penitence, the
woe
That passion brings down on
the best
The wisest and the loveliest.
It is true, and only the spiritually blind can be unaware of
the dangers of passion ,but for now we want to focus on the other yolk-the
positive reality of the pleasure of passion.
It is not just in this Psalm, but in many of them that we see the
passion for worship. In verse 2 we see
a man possessed by passion. "My
soul yearns, even faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry
out for the living God." This is
not the language of the uncommitted.
You don't hear these words from those who say we have nothing better to
do, so let's go to church. This is the
language of one who longs for the presence of God like one longs for a lover
who has not been seen for a long time.
The Psalmist for some reason is not able to get to the temple
of God to worship, and he is filled with envy for those who do have access to
the temple. He even envies the sparrow
and the swallow who build their nest in the temple area, and even more so, those
blessed ones who dwell there, and can praise the Lord continually. He would be greatly rewarded if he could
spend one day in the house of God as a mere door keeper, than if he had a
thousand days in the plush tent of some wealthy man of the world. Here is a man with a passion for
worship. It is a source of his greatest
pleasure. I found a similar testimony
of one outside the Bible. Leonard
Griffith of the St. Paul's church of Toronto, Canada said this in a sermon on
Psa. 84. "Ever since I was a child I loved to be inside a
church. I think it's my favorite place
in all the world. A theater comes close
second, then a baseball park, but first the church. I mean the sanctuary, the
place where God is worshiped, where the mightily organ sounds and the congregation
rises to sing. I like a church even
when it's empty,
though I prefer to see one
full."
I can imagine a lot of people envying this pastor when he is
at the theater. And plenty would envy
him when he is able to get to the ballpark, but it is hard to imagine many who
would envy him for being able to go to church and worship. This is not a popular passion. Jesus had it when He was just a boy of
12. You recall when His parents left
the city to journey home He was discovered missing. When they finally found Him He said, "Did you not know that
I must be in my Father's house."
From a youth Jesus had a passion to be in the place of worship. He desired strongly to grow in grace and
knowledge. He followed His dominant
passion, and was faithful all His life to be in the temple or synagogue to
worship. He found pleasure in His
positive passion.
Think about it! The
main reason church is so boring to many people is for the same reason
trigonometry is. There is no passion
for it. If a Christian does not feel the
strong desire to praise God and get more light from His Word, going to church
is just another obligation to get out of the way, so you can get on with what
you have a passion for. When Christians
feel this way they are deprived of one of the greatest pleasures of time and
eternity-the pleasure of worship. This
will be one of the great pleasures of eternity, and we can get a taste of the
things to come by developing a passion for worship in time.
We learn to enjoy many things in life with passion because we
get to know the rules of the game, or the values of the music, or hobby, or
whatever it is we get pleasure out of.
The point is, it is a Christian obligation to learn how to get pleasure
out of worship and praise. The
Christian is not truly mature until they have the pleasure of passion for
worship. When this is the dominant
passion of life, all other passions will fall into place, and not be
idols. But as long as we lack the
passion for worship, we will be in danger of idolizing all other passions. They may be legitimate in themselves, but
they become competitors with God when we lack passion for Him.
Passion is the fire that motivates us, and the wind that
catches our sails, and propels us toward the goals we long to reach in life. If we lack enthusiasm for the things of God
we will be fired up by other passions that lead us away from the things of
God. So we need to fight fire with
fire. We need to build fires of
positive passion to protect us from the fires of negative passion. If we let the fires of godly passion go out
we will soon be burning with some secular passion that will burn us out and
lead to pain rather than pleasure.
Thomas Aquinas, the greatest theologian of the middle ages
wrote, "No one can live without delight and that is why a man deprived of
spiritual joy goes over to carnal
pleasures." God made us to desire
pleasure, and if we do not find it in what He delights in, we will find it in
what is not pleasing to Him. Stefano,
the young husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco, had a passion for power boat
racing. He knew it was dangerous, and he told a reporter, "I am traveling
at speeds of 110 miles per hour and more.
It is much too fast and I realize it is getting much too dangerous. I am afraid, many times I am afraid, but it
is my passion." Such a passion
becomes one's god. A couple of months
after he made this statement he sacrificed his life to this god of racing,
leaving his wife and three children under six years of age. There is power in passion to propel people to pursue a goal at any
cost.
When people get a high level of pleasure out of any activity
they find the time and the energy to pursue it. There is an intense interest and desire that produces and inner fire
that gives power for pursuit. In 1958
Van Cliburn won the Chaikousky competition for piano. The man who came in second was Liu Chi Kung of China. He was later thrown in prison during the
cultural revolution in China. He had
seven years with no access to a piano.
Yet, when he was set free his skills had improved. It was because he had a passion for the
piano. He explained after his release
how it was possible to improve without a piano. "Everyday I
rehearsed every piece I had ever played, note by note, in my mind." His passion motivated him even in a very
negative setting.
When people have a passion they are able to do the
unusual. Ida Grovald had a passion to
get her bachelor's degree. What made
this unusual was she was 69 years old.
She had leukemia and her husband had Alzheimer's. These handicaps did not stop her because she
had a passion. She had an accident and
needed fifty stitches in her face. She
fell another time and broke two ribs.
But her passion empowered her to press on, and five years later at the
age of 74 she graduated. She had a
passion, and it motivated her to overcome all obstacles to achieve her
goal.
If you read the history of anyone who has accomplished
something great, you will be reading the history of a passion, for without
passion people do not achieve significant goals. Achievers are not like the six year old who was asked to name his
favorite Bible verse, and he said, "I like the one about the multitude
that loafs and fishes." This was
not the spirit of Louis Pasteur who at age 46 suffered a stroke that left his
arm and leg permanently paralyzed. This
did not put out the fire of passion he had to solve medical problems.
He went on to prove
the germ theory of disease, and that sterilization and antiseptics can cut the
death rate radically. He proved the
value of vaccinations and developed the process of pasteurization. His passion for fighting disease is probably
one of the main reasons many of us are here and alive right now. He knew God
had blessed him with a passion. He
described it with the word enthusiasm: "The Greeks have given us one of
the most beautiful words of our language, the word enthusiasm--a God within. The grandeur of the acts of men are measured
by the inspiration by which they spring.
Happy is he who bears a God within."
The Bible describes this fire God within with many different
terms, but one that runs through both Old Testament and New Testament is the
phrase "with all your heart."
Serve Him with all your
heart.
Trust in the Lord with all
your heart.
Seek me with all your heart.
Rejoice with all your heart.
Love Him with all your
heart.
Whatever you do, work at it
with all your heart.
The point of Psalm 84 is,
there is great pleasure in worship for those who have a passion for worship,
and cry out for it with all their
heart. The Psalmist does have this
passion, and his heart and flesh cry out for the presence of the Living
God. He has a passionate hunger for the
courts of the Lord.
Like one dying of thirst in the desert longs for the water of
the oasis, so his thirsty soul longs for the water of life. For him it is a pleasure to get to the house
of God.
It is pure pleasure to
praise God. It is not a mere custom of the
culture with him, it is a solemn duty, but also a pleasurable privilege to go
to the house of God and praise his Creator and Redeemer. Psa. 122:1 says, "I rejoiced with those
who said to me, let us go to the house of the Lord." Do you think such a passion for worship
leads to greater pleasure in worship?
You can count on it, for there is already pleasure in the passion. A Swedish song says--
What joy there is in coming
to God's own courts so fair,
Where faithful souls are
blooming like lilies in His care!
Outside the world outside
makes merry, unhappy 'mid its joys;
But in God's sanctuary the
soul finds heav'nly joys.
When we let the pleasure of passion fade the fire goes
out. This is true in marriage also when
passion fades. If any relationship
ceases to be pleasurable, it will cease to be a motivating power. Friendships fade, marriages decay, and
spiritual fervor for Christ burns out.
Why? Because there is no
passion. Someone said, "too many
Christians worship their work, work at their play, and play at their
worship." This is not what we see
in the Psalms. These are songs of
passion with intense desire to worship.
Psa. 27:4 says, "One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek Him in
His temple." This is equivalent to
a love song. The parallel of the
romantic and the religious is not just in the Song Of Solomon, but in the
Psalms as well.
Passion for pleasure is everywhere, and all of us have
it. We lust for certain foods. We lust for the pleasures of sex. We lust for acceptance or recognition. We
lust for a higher degree of wealth to satisfy the lust for other things. Lust or passion is the motivating fire in
all of our pleasures, but where is the lust for worship: The passion to praise God? Jesus said in Matt. 5:6, "Blessed (that
is happy-filled with pleasure) are those who hunger and thirst for
righteousness, for they will be filled."
Passion is the key to the happy life.
If you can develop the same passion for the things of God as you have
for the things of the flesh you will have the highest level of happiness this
life can offer, and you will be prepared for the ultimate happiness of the life
to come. May God help us to develop a
passion for worship that we might more completely enjoy the pleasure of
passion.
7. THE PLEASURE OF PERFECTION Based on Psa. 84
Christians have always had
mixed feelings about pleasure. They
know God made us to enjoy many pleasures of life, and yet there are also the
forbidden pleasures. These are often
just extremes of what is acceptable.
Sex is good, but immorality is bad.
Food is good, but gluttony is bad.
Abundance is good, but excessive luxury is bad. Power is good, but tyranny is bad. Every pleasure seems to have a danger zone
where it goes to far and become a negative.
It is like the heat gage on your dash.
It is necessary for your car to develop heat, but when it keeps rising
it goes into a danger zone, and is then a threat to your car. A good thing gone to far is a bad
thing. So it is with pleasure.
Adam and Eve had all the pleasures of paradise, but when they took
the forbidden fruit they went into the danger zone, and that pleasure was very
costly, for it led to great pain.
Christians tend to focus on one aspect or the other of pleasure‑the
fair or the forbidden. The Puritans
spent much of their energy focused on avoiding the forbidden. They even passed laws forbidding laughter on
Sunday. Their idea of entertainment was sitting on a hard wooden bench
listening to a three hour sermon. They
feared pleasure lest it be taken to extremes.
They felt the best way to avoid extremes is to avoid even the legitimate
pleasures of life. They found pleasure
in avoiding pleasure.
Modern Christians have rejected this approach, and feel the
Christians should take advantage of the pleasures God has made available. It is obvious we are made to enjoy a great
many pleasures. God has given us taste
buds to enjoy many tastes, and then provided us through nature a multitude of
foods to stimulate these taste buds. A
major part of our joy in life is the pleasure of eating. God built us with a nervous system designed
to enjoy the pleasures of sight, smell, touch, and sound, and not a day goes by
in which we do not experience pleasure by our senses. These are all legitimate and motivate us to seek ways to add to
our pleasures.
This may be more healthy than the Puritan approach, but it
faces the same danger of lack of balance.
Christians can get so caught up in the pursuit of pleasure that they neglect
their spiritual life. The Psalms are
God's gift to His people to prevent this, and promote the pleasures of the
soul, so that we maintain a balance between the pleasures of the flesh and
those of the inner man. The pleasure we
want to focus on is the pleasure of beauty, and more specifically, the pleasure
of God's beauty, or the pleasure of perfection.
Psalm 84 begins with an expression of pleasure in God's
dwelling place. "How lovely is
your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty."
There is a deep longing in this song to experience again the pleasure of
being in this lovely environment where the presence of God could be felt. We are made in the image of God, and so
there is a magnetic attraction to what is lovely, beautiful, and perfect. When we see perfect beauty we are compelled
to praise. Why do you think millions
are spent to make cars look beautiful, and why beautiful women are used to
advertise them? It is because what
motivates people to buy things is the beauty and pleasure of perfection. We all
want to own beautiful things with perfect shape, perfect colors, perfect
efficiency. The perfect price is
unachievable, of course, but we will pay the price if
the beauty is near enough to
perfection.
Anybody selling anything uses beauty to promote the
product. Better Home and Gardens gives you
pictures of what is a perfect home and garden.
This produces in people a desire to possess such perfection. The love of perfection is built into us, for
it is part of God's image, and that is why the classics never die. They are classics because they never lose
their appeal, for they are aesthetically pleasing to our ears or our eyes. Truly beautiful music and art are permanent
for they appeal to human nature in every age, and will continue to do so for
all eternity.
God expects man to have pleasure in worship, for it is to be
experienced in an environment of beauty.
The Temple was designed by God to be filled with the beauty of colors,
artwork, sculpture, and gold to appeal to the eye. The vast choir was to produce music appealing to the ear. The incense was to appeal to the nose.
The sacrifice was to appeal
to the taste. Worship was to be sense
oriented so that the whole body, mind, and soul of man would experience the
pleasure of perfection, and out of that pleasure praise the God of perfection.
The reason most churches are built with an attractive
sanctuary is because beauty is a stimulus to worship. Beauty makes us feel nearer to the Creator of beauty. Ugliness makes us feel nearer to the
Lucifer, who by his rebellion brought ugliness into the perfect world of
God. Disorder, dirtiness, and anything
that repulses us is a hindrance to worship.
That is why we must work at keeping the environment of worship one that
appeals to our aesthetic nature. God is
everywhere at all times, but we do not always sense His presence. It is beauty and perfection that produce in
us the sense of His presence.
We may never achieve perfection in this world, and all we do
may always have defects and flaws, but it is still our duty to strive for
perfection and seek to provide an atmosphere that gives pleasure to the
senses. It is possible to worship and
praise God in a muddy foxhole or in a dusty bamboo hut.
From every place below the
skies
The grateful song, the fervent prayer
The incense of the heart,
may rise
To heaven, and find acceptance there.
There is no atmosphere where God cannot be praised, but the
Bible stresses the beauty of the house of God as an ideal environment in which
to worship. Beauty is an aid to worship
for God is the most beautiful of all beings.
David in Psa. 27:4 writes, "One thing I ask of the Lord, this is
what I seek: That I may dwell in the
house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord,
and to seek Him in His Temple."
You may not be aware of it, but for centuries the highest goal of life
for Christians was the beatific vision.
This is the vision of God's beauty, which we will see when we behold God
in all His glory on the throne. John in
the book of Revelation got a preview of this beauty, but all Christians will
get this vision and experience forever the pleasure of perfection which will
lead to perpetual praise.
Worship is to be a foretaste of heaven. It is a sip of that cup of pleasure we will
drink for eternity. If we come to
church and do not get any pleasure we have not worshiped. If the truth of God's Word does not reveal
to us any beauty to appreciate; if the music does not give us pleasure by the
message or the tune, then we have missed the essence of worship, which is to
praise God for the pleasure of His beauty.
If there is no pleasure in some aspect of beauty you will not be
worshiping, for worship is expressing pleasure in who God is and what He has
done.
The purpose of coming to church is to experience more of the
beauty of God. Augustine called God
"the beauty of all things beautiful": "The most beautiful": "The fairest of
all." He said of God's Word:"
Thy truth, bright and beautiful above all." He wrote, "I was borne up to thee by thy beauty." He came to Christ after a life of sin and he
lamented, "Too late have I loved thee, O thou Beauty of Ancient
Days." Beauty is an aid to worship
because it is a reflection of the beauty of the One we worship.
Fortunately we can rise
above our environment and worship God even in very non‑beautiful
surroundings. Corrie Ten Boom had to
worship God in a concentration camp where there was ugliness of the physical
and spiritual. The sin of man's nature
was never more ugly there, yet she worshiped the God of beauty there. But when she was asked to help develop
housing for the homeless after the war she directed the rehabilitation of old
factories and buildings. One was a
former concentration camp. She ordered
that the barbed wire be removed and that everything be painted with bright
colors, and every window have a flower box.
She knew the awfulness of a bleak environment, and she was determined
that sorrowing families have some beauty in their lives.
Beauty is basic to pleasure, and pleasure is basic to
happiness. Every realm of life is
affected by the beauty, or lack of it that we experience. That is why the goal of coming to church is
to experience the pleasure of beauty.
But since beauty is in the eye of the beholder, that is why there is a
need for variety. Some people see
beauty in old songs, and some see the beauty in new songs. Some see beauty in the King James Version,
and others see it in the Living Bible.
Some see beauty in the solo, and others in the choir. Some like hand clapping, and others prefer
silence. Variety is a part of beauty,
for there are many different tastes.
The history of the church is a history of the struggle to find
balance in beauty. The Catholic Church
went wild and spent fortunes in building great cathedrals with ornate art work
and stain glass windows. The Puritans
rebelled against this excess, and built plain churches with no art. Some went so far as to forbid paint. Even today some Christians refuse to wear
ties because their beautiful colors detract from the attention we should give
to God.
All agree, God is beautiful, but they disagree as to how to be
made aware of that beauty. Some say use
physical beauty to symbolize God's beauty.
Others say ignore all other beauty so God has no competition. Probably both work for different
personalities. The Old Testament focuses
more on the use of external beauty as an aid to worship. The New Testament Christians did not have a
temple or church building and so their stress was on the beauty of the
spirit. There is no escaping the fact,
however, that the environment has a powerful effect on our spirit and makes us
more aware of certain truths about God.
The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament His
handiwork says Psa. 19:1. The Psalms
are loaded with references to nature being a cause for praise. The beauty of
what the artist has made makes you want to praise the artist. That is why creation is an aid to
worship. It's beauty provokes us to
praise its Creator. Abraham Lincoln,
one starry night, experienced what we all at sometime have experienced. He looked into the starry heavens and said to
his friend Captain Gilbert Greene, "I never behold the stars that I do not
feel that I am looking into the face of God." The awesome beauty of the universe compels a believer to be aware
of the presence of God. That is what
Psa. 84 is all about. It is about
experiencing the pleasure of God's presence by means of the pleasure of beauty.
Wherever beauty is it should be an aid to worship for the
Christian who is being sensitive to all beauty as God's gift. The problem with the pagan world was that they
saw the beauty of creation as an end in itself, and they worshiped the creation
rather than the Creator. This was their
folly. But we are to get pleasure in
the beauty and perfection of creation that leads us to praise God as the author
of that beauty. This is worshiping God
in spirit and in truth, which Jesus said is what God is seeking in us. God wants us to recognize that He is the
author of all that is beautiful. The
goal of all beauty is the praise of God, and not the praise of beauty.
Pleasure is not
perfected until it leads to praise.
When it leads to praise it is the pleasure of perfection, for you are
pleased enough with something that it makes you think of the perfection of
God. If you do not get that far, but
stop short by just admiring the beauty of the setting, or song, or whatever,
you have robbed yourself of the highest pleasure. You will note that the Psalmist in verse 2 makes it clear that
the goal he longs for is not the beauty of the dwelling of God, but God
Himself. His heart and flesh cry out for the living God. He does not want to get to God's house
merely for the aesthetic pleasure of seeing the beauty of it. He wants the pleasure of perfection; the
pleasure of the ultimate beauty; the beauty of God's presence. The practical implications of this are
clear.
We need to make a constant effort to look past both men and
nature to see the perfection of God.
Man is fallen and so is nature.
But man still has the image of God, and nature is still a marvelous
revelation of the wisdom and beauty of God, but both are far from perfect. The pleasure of perfection comes to us, and
makes our worship authentic, when we see all we do, and all that nature
reveals, as a sign pointing to the God of perfection. The song will not be perfect, but it can have a degree of beauty
that makes us think of the perfect beauty of God. The sanctuary will not be perfect, but it should be pleasant
enough to make us think of the perfect setting of God's presence.
The point is, as we worship we need to use the inadequate
beauty of time as a stepping‑stone to the infinite beauty of
eternity. This means worship takes
effort. You have to love God with all your mind, and by mental concentration
let the imperfect beauty of your environment lead you to the pleasure of God's
perfect beauty. This is often forgotten
in our modern culture where the focus is on self‑pleasure and
entertainment. We are gluttons for
entertainment because it draws the crowds.
The problem is entertainment is self‑centered and not God
centered. The issue is did I feel good,
and not, did I meet with God and worship Him.
It is not that feeling good is bad, but when that is the goal it takes
the place of worship.
One of the leading authors on worship is Robert E. Weber. He writes in his book, Worship Is A Verb,
"We must let go of our entertainment expectations and remind ourselves
that we are not in church to watch a Christian variety show. We have gathered together in worship to be
met by God the almighty. God, the
Creator of the universe, the one who sustains our lives, our Redeemer and King,
is present through proclamation and remembrance. He wants to communicate to us, to penetrate our inner self, to
take up residence within us. And as we
go through the experience of meeting with Him in this mystical moment of public
worship, we are to respond." His
point is, worship is not just something that happens to you, it is something
you do. You use the environment as
stepping‑stones to get to God.
The music and the message are not ends in themselves, but means to the
end of experiencing the pleasure of God's perfection.
I do not profess to be an expert in worship. I know for a fact that I hear many a soloist
and many a choir, and my pleasure ends with their performance. I experience pleasure in the music, but I do
not let it lift me to the pleasure of perfection. I fail to rise on the wings of the song and sore to the presence
of God, and praise Him. My worship
becomes self‑centered, and my focus is in how the music is affecting me,
rather than how it is lifting me to praise God. It is hard to overcome the conditioning we develop by our habits.
I read this story that illustrates the problem. "A young family took a vacation to the
South Western part of the United States, taking along grandparents who had just
retired from farming. As they stood
over looking the Grand Canyon, everyone made delightful comments about its
beauty. They were overwhelmed with the
variety of colorful hues and the magnitude of this vast gorge. They noticed that grandpa wasn't saying
anything, however. They soon learned
his silence was not a result of awe when he said, "You can't grow much corn here!" An opportunity to sense the awe of God's
wisdom and beauty was lost because of a self‑centered focus.
Because of this you can have the most beautiful setting
possible, and be in a sanctuary that is an architectural wonder, and still fail
to worship, because worship is not a matter of state of the art, but a matter
of state of the heart. You need to come
to God with a passion to praise Him, and a passion to worship Him, and a
passion to sense His presence, and then you will experience the pleasure of
perfection.
8. THE PLEASURE OF POWER Based on Psa. 84
Every day of your life you enjoy the pleasure of power. The power to flip switches and give light in
the darkness, and heat in the coldness.
The power of electricity is the source of abundant pleasure. When we lose that power we are deprived of
all our electric devices, and it is a major pain. All of us have electrical devices and gadgets that no longer
work. They look just as nice as they
did when they worked, but they are powerless to give us pleasure anymore.
All the pleasures of life revolve around some kind of
power. Life itself is a form of power,
and when that power ceases we are just like an electrical device that no longer
works‑we are dead. Power is life
and power is pleasure. The Sun is the
source of the power of life on the physical level. God made it that way, but He is Himself the Sun of our spiritual
solar system, and all of our power to have life, and to enjoy it, comes from
Him.
The Psalmist says in verse 11, "For the Lord God is a sun
and shield, the Lord bestows favor and honor; no good thing does He behold from
those whose walk is blameless."
God is our sun, the source of all our pleasure, because He is the source
of all our power. Power and pleasure
are linked together as one. This theme
is everywhere in the Psalms. Here is
Psa. 84 verse 5 he says, "Blessed are those whose strength is in
you." Then in verse 7 he says,
"They go from strength to strength."
God is the source of all our power, and the whole point of the Christian
life is to grow in that power, for that is what the abundant life is all
about. It is about power to achieve the
purpose of God in our lives. Paul said
he could do all things through Christ who strengthened him.
This theme is found often in the Psalms.
Psa. 22:19, "O Lord, O
my strength haste Thee to help."
Psa. 71:16, "I will go
in the strength of the Lord."
Psa. 18:1, "I will love
Thee, O Lord my strength."
Psa. 18:32, "It is God
who guideth me with strength."
Psa. 27:1, "The Lord is
the strength of my life."
Psa. 28:7, "The Lord is
my strength."
Psa. 59:17, "Unto Thee,
O my strength will I sing."
There are many more, for this theme is one of the major themes
of the Old Testament. God is the source
of the power to experience all that is good and pleasurable. Without Him we are like an electrical
appliance that is not plugged in. We do not function to produce pleasure for
God, for others, or for ourselves.
Norman Vincent Peale in most famous book, The Power Of
Positive Thinking, tells of the husband and wife who went through a terrible
trial. Bill was the vice president of
his company and expected to become the president. But when the time came he was passed over by a man brought in
from the outside. His wife was furious
and insisted that Bill tell them off and quit.
He was reluctant to do so.
Doctor Peale was a good friend, and so they sought his advice. He urged them to sit in silence before God,
and ask Him to give them the power to choose the right way. They were to plug
into their power source, so to speak, and see how the power of God flowing
through them would help them function in a way that would please them. As they waited on the Lord the wife had a
change of spirit. She realized
anger and not wisdom was controlling her.
She agreed to encourage Bill to work with the new man to see
what would happen. It turned out that
Bill really liked the new president, and the new man consulted with Bill
often. Two years later the president
was called to an even better job and Bill became president. He and his wife were so grateful they did
not let the power of anger decide their future. They let the power of God do it, and the result was great
pleasure.
Power to do the will of God is one of life's greatest pleasures. Weakness that lets the flesh determine our
direction in life is one of life's
greatest pains. The great battle of
life is between pleasure and pain, and which one dominates is determined by our
source of power. That is why verse 5
says, "Blessed are those whose strength is in you." Happiness in life means God is the source of
our power. This theme breaks into many
parts. There is‑
The power of praise.
The power of prayer.
The power of passion.
The power of priority.
The power of participation.
The power of pursuit.
The power of persistence.
The power of purpose.
The power of possessions.
The power of purity.
The power of prevention.
The power of positive
thinking.
All of these and more are
themes of power and pleasure in Psalm 84, and the rest of the Psalms. Power and pleasure are linked to just about
any theme you can imagine.
The Bible makes it clear that how we look at life makes all
the difference in the world in how much power we have to enjoy the pleasures
that also please God. The power to
focus, for example, is a key power for enjoying the pleasures of life. Jesus said in Matt. 6:34, "Do not worry
about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus is saying the power to focus on today,
and the problems in front of your face
right now, and not be filled with anxiety about the future, is a key to the
good life.
The Pilgrims in Psa. 84 are focused on making every day a day
of praise, and a day of victory. Even
in those days where they must pass through the valley of Baca, the focus is on
making it a place of springs. The power
to make every day a day of progress is a basic pleasure of life. Alcoholics Anonymous has used this principle
to help millions of drinkers get power over their lives again. They teach them to break their life down
into manageable segments. One day at a
time is their slogan. Don't worry about
staying sober the rest of your life, but just stay sober today, and just start
by staying sober this hour. Success
comes by the power to gain control of your life by taking hold of small enough
chunks of it. Try and deal with all of
life, or even a year of it, and you lose control. Just grab hold of now, and do what is best, and you will grow in
your power to control your life.
Those who ride bicycles say it is easier to ride a bike up a
hill at night than in the day time.
Some terribly hard hills have been negotiated at night that are
practically impossible in day light. The
reason being, at night the cyclist can only see the few feet his lights hit in
front of him. He feel he can go that
few more feet, and so he keeps on. But
in the day light he sees the whole hill, and the whole problem at once. He is
overwhelmed by the enormity of the task, and his strength is sapped. The power to keep going is increased by
focus on just a little at a time.
Likewise, the power to live the
Christian life is more available when we take it step by step, or at most, a
day at a time.
If you go through life asking yourself what I would do if
atheism takes over our nation, and I am forced to choose my faith or be cast
out of the country, you are loading down your emotion system with burdens that are
folly, and which Christ has forbidden you to carry. It is not your responsibility to worry about what might be. Just
do today what you know is right. Every
day you live in obedience for that day will make you stronger so you have the
power to do what is right when a testing time may come. Worrying about it before it comes weakens
you for the day it does arrive. Power
to do the will of God comes with focus.
Paul had no control over how other people would treat
him. Often they treated him badly, and
he found himself in the valley of Baca.
But Paul always made it a place of springs. His best letters were written from Roman jails. Some of his greatest songs of praise were
sung in a dungeon. He had the power to
experience pleasure in the most painful of situations because of his ability to
focus on the positive. John Bunyan
wrote Pilgrims Progress while in Bedford Jail.
It became the best selling book next to the Bible for many decades. He had the power to focus on the real issue
which was, how do I make this barren desert produce life? He did it and gave pleasure to millions.
Helen Keller is quoted by millions because of her
determination to make her barren desert a place of beauty. She did it and brought pleasure to herself
and masses of others. She said,
"The one resolution, which was in mind long before it took the form of a
resolution, is the key note of my
life. It is this: Always to regard as mere impertinence of
fate the handicaps which were placed upon my life almost at the beginning. I resolved that they would not crush or
dwarf my soul, but rather be made to blossom like Aaron's rod with
flowers."
The power to find a positive focus in every situation is the
potential for every child of God. It is
not automatic, however. It has to be a
conscious desire. Paul was an expert at
it, but he says as a mature Christian in Phil. 3:16, "I want to know
Christ and the power of His resurrection...." Paul is ever seeking the power to make springs in the desert
valley. He is ever seeking ways of
bringing life out of death, as Jesus did in the power of His resurrection.
Easter is the greatest celebration of power in the Christian
year because Jesus on that day produced the greatest pleasure‑the
pleasure of endless life. His power to
do that is the foundation for all the pleasures of the Christian life. Paul says without the power of resurrection
all else is worthless. But in that
power we can make springs in every valley.
Cooper wrote, "Brave your storm with firm endeavor, let your vain
repining go! Hopeful hearts will find
forever roses underneath the snow."
J. Oswald Sanders in his book Spiritual Problems writes,
"We live in a power‑hungry and power‑conscious age. Every heart, whether regenerate or unregenerate,
craves for power in one form or another."
We have power to do things today that our parents never had. Several months ago I had only the power to
plug in a computer and play some games.
In just a few months I had the power to search the entire Bible and do
marvelous studies with the power of the computer.
There is great pleasure in growing in power. Every Christian should be hungry for power
to be more effective in living the Christian life. The Gospel is the good news that the powerless people of the
world can still have the greatest power in the world, the power to get right
with God, and experience His forgiveness and the joy of salvation. Many of the early Christians were slaves who
had no power whatever in society, but they had the power in Christ to
experience all the pleasures of salvation and the abundant life. They had the power to love God, to love
their neighbors as themselves, and to fill the whole vast valley of this fallen
world with the springs of pleasure.
The Bible has much to say about power. Look at just a few key verses: Prov. 24:5, "A wise man has great
power, and a man of knowledge increases strength." Knowledge is power, and all Christians
should be determined to get knowledge, especially knowledge of God's Word. One of life's greatest pleasures is knowing
the will of God. Peter says in II Peter
1:3, "His divine power has given us everything we need for life and
godliness through our knowledge of Him..." We have the power to know all we need to know for the good
life. It is found in the Word of
God. It takes time and effort to get
that knowledge, but great pleasure awaits those who seek, for seekers will
find.
We have to deal with the reality of Christians who are
constantly burning out. They labor long
hours and put forth great effort to serve the Lord, and often it seems to be
all for naught. It gets discouraging
and they lose their energy and the will to press on. Pastors and Christian leaders drop out continuously because they
lose their power. Paul had to deal with
this in his day. In Gal. 6:9 he writes,
"Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will
reap a harvest if we do not give up."
Sadly, however, many weary Christians do give up. They come to the end of their rope and they
throw in the towel. But this does not
need to happen if they tap into the power that God provides.
We read in Isa. 40:29‑31, "He gives strength to
the weary and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but
those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will sore on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be
faint." How do we get in on this
revitalization and rejuvenation when our batteries are almost dead? Is there a spiritual energizer that will
enable us to keep on going and going?
Yes there is! The Holy Spirit is
the believer's energizer, but like any source of power, the Holy Spirit does
not work in us if we are not plugged in.
We must first of all trust in Christ as our Savior, and ask Him to be
Lord of our lives. When we invite Jesus into our lives as Lord we become
capable of receiving the power of the Holy Spirit.
We then have to open the lines for that power to flow, and we
see the Biblical way of doing this is by means of praise. David had a pattern in his life of praising
God to begin his day, and, thereby,
tapping into the strength of God. In
Psa. 59:16‑17, he says, "I will sing of your strength, in the
morning I will sing of your love; for you are my fortress, my refuge in times
of trouble. O my Strength, I sing
praise to you; you, O God, are my fortress, my loving God." David links power with love so that to be
always loving is the same as being always strong. When we are not full of love for the people or the project we are
into, we become weary with it. It is
all work and no joy. But when love
fills us for the people and the purpose we have power, and there is pleasure in
what we are doing. God's power flows
through love, and so if you do not love you short out the flow of His power,
and have to operate on human strength alone.
This soon leads to burn out.
This is why praise is so essential to power. Praise is what keeps us in love. As soon as you cease to praise, your love
begins to decline. This is true for
mates, for friends, and for children of God.
Show me a weak marriage, and I'll show you people who seldom praise each
other. Show me a weak Christian who no longer
has time and energy for the things of God, and I'll show you a Christian who
has ceased to praise God in the morning, or any other time of the day. Praise is love expressed, and love expressed
is the equivalent of plugging into the source of power. Cease to praise and you cut your power
lines. Praise often, and you open up
more lines for greater power and more pleasure.
The Christian life begins with power. By faith in Christ we are empowered to
become Children of God. Then growth
comes as a matter of increasing in power, and becoming stronger in the
Lord. Just as a new born child grows
stronger until it can roll, then sit up, and then walk and talk, and ever
growing in power. So the Christian is
to be ever growing and able to do for God this year what they could not do last
year for lack of power. The prayer of
Paul for believers in Eph. 3:16 is, "I pray that out of His glorious
riches He may strengthen you with power through His spirit in your inner
being." Pray for power, and praise
for power, for it is God's will for believers to be ever advancing in their
enjoyment of the pleasure of power.
9. THE PLEASURE OF PROGRESS Based on Psa. 84
Spain once controlled both sides of the Mediterranean Sea at the
Straits Of Gibraltar. On her coins were
stamped the two Pillars Of Hercules.
They represented the two great rocks, and the words NE PLUS ULTRA=no
more beyond. As far as they were concerned, Spain was the end of the
world. Paul wanted to get to Spain, for
that was the end of the known world, and he wanted to touch the whole world for
Christ. But then, brave men developed
the courage to sail beyond these pillars, and they discovered a whole new
world. Spain was forced to change their
coin. They just took off the first word
and left PLUS ULTRA=more beyond.
There is always more beyond, because God has written the
principle of progress into His plan for man.
Progressive revelation characterizes the Bible. God does not tell man everything all at
once. He first gives the law, and later
the Gospel. Jesus said to His
disciples, "You are not yet ready for all the Holy Spirit will teach you.
It will come when you are ready."
They first followed Him and became loyal to Him as Lord. Then they were filled with the Holy Spirit,
and empowered to carry the good news into all the world. The body of Christ started small, but grew
until it was a world wide organization.
The principle of progress is everywhere in the Bible. We start as babes in Christ, and then press
on to become mature servants in Christ. Growth, advancement, development,
improvement, and progression are the very essence of the Christian life. Jesus said to His disciples that they would
one day do even greater things than He did.
Every Christian is to be pressing on to gain that more in
Christ that can never be exhausted.
Progress is to be a permanent part of the Christian life. There is no level where we have arrived at
the end of our potential. Paul said we
know only in part. In fact, progress is
eternal so that even in heaven we will be guided by the motto-more beyond. The idea of a static heaven where there is
no more progress is contrary to the nature of God. It would be mean we would exhaust the infinite creativity of God,
and be stuck in a perfection where nothing new and exciting could be added to
our experience. This is a denial of the
infinite, which by definition has no level beyond which it can not go. If it cannot go further, it is finite and
not infinite. By definition progress is
eternal with an infinite God.
The saints and
theologians of history have all agreed that heaven will be a place of
progress. For progress to cease we
would all have to become equal with God, and that can never be. We will, however, be ever moving in that
direction. The poet was right who
wrote-
Thank God! There is always a land beyond
For us who are true to the
trail;
A vision to seek, a
beckoning to peek,
A farness that never will
fail.
I like that phrase, for those who are true to the trail. This is one of themes of Psa. 84. Progress in Psalm 84 is portrayed as a
pilgrimage in verse 6. They are called
blessed who have set their hearts on pilgrimage. These are people who have determined their lives will be a
journey, which will draw them ever closer to God. That is their goal says verse 7, to appear before God in
Zion. For the Old Testament saint this
meant getting to Jerusalem. For the New
Testament saint it is getting to the New Jerusalem in heaven. In either case, life is a journey through
some tough places, like the valley of Baca, but they never quit. They go from strength to strength, that is,
they get stronger with every challenge they face and overcome. They keep on keeping on, making progress
until they arrive at their goal.
So the main thing we see about Biblical progress is-we need a
goal. You cannot define progress
without a goal. If you are on highway
35 heading South at 65 miles per hour you are making good time, but there is no
way to know if you are making progress until your goal is known. If your destination is North, we know you
are not making progress, no matter how fast you are going South. If you are only going 20 miles per hour, but
you are going North, you are making progress.
It is not the speed, but the goal that defines progress. It is the goal that makes any race
meaningful. Without a goal you only
have motion and action, but no progress, for a goal is necessary to measure
progress.
The goal is the
motivating power that keeps you on the journey. It has to be something you really want to achieve, or you will
turn back when you come to the valley of Baca.
The key to progress in your Christian life is to set goals that you know
are consistent with the will of God, and then, like Paul, press on until you
reach that goal. We need to do it as
individuals, as families, and as churches.
Goal setting is a crucial process in the journey of making progress for
the glory of God, and our own pleasure in living for God.
The question Christians so often debate is whether the world
is getting worse or better. The fact
is, every new person on the planet adds to the sin level of life on this
planet. So with over 5 billion more
people on the earth since the New Testament was written, you have billions of
more sins. The crime and immorality of
man is multiplied by the billions of more sinners. Of course, the world is worse today than it ever was. But it always has been, for every generation
produces more sinners. Paul Harvey said, "In times like these it helps to
recall there has always been times like these."
Yet, on the other hand, there are more people to respond to
the Gospel than ever before. Billy
Graham can see more people come to Christ in one crusade than Paul saw in his whole ministry. There are more churches in the Twin Cities
than there were in the whole world in Paul's day. There are more Christian schools, Christian organizations, and
Christian missionaries fulfilling the great commission than Paul could have
ever imagined. Of course, the world is
better than ever before. There are more
Bibles, more Christian videos, and more Christian resources of all kinds
flooding the world than ever before in history.
There is more sin, and more holiness today than ever
before. Both good and evil have made
great progress in our world. This is
not surprising since that is just what Jesus said would be. He said the wheat and the tares would grow
together until the end. So you a right
to be pessimistic about the growth of evil, but you also have an obligation to
be optimist about the growth of the wheat.
The great commission of Christ to His church is being carried out. The Word of God is reaching millions every
day, who before, had no light. The goal
of the church is to give everyone on the planet a chance to hear of Jesus, and
that goal is being achieved.
This goal never would be happening if Christians had not
gotten together to set goals. Many
Christian organizations have set goals to reach the worlds unreached peoples by
the year 2000. The year 2000 is a time
goal, and the unreached peoples are a number goal. Whether all are reached by that time or not, there will be
progress toward that goal just because the goal was set.
Do you want more pleasure in your Christian life? You need to set a goal. Do you want to grow? You need to set a goal. Do you want to please God? You need to set your hearts on pilgrimage,
and get on a trail leading to a goal.
You need to be persistent, and not quit when you go through the
valley. Progress means change for the
better. It is not progress if cannibals
eat with folks and knives. It is just
more efficient and more sophisticated, but it does not make the evil less
evil. The crook who steals millions by
means of a computer seems less threatening than the thug with a pistol, but it
is not really progress, for the evil heart is not changed, and God's will is
being disobeyed just the same.
Technology makes
radical changes in our lives, but they are not progressive unless the better
means to reach a goal are aiding us to reach goals that are pleasing to
God. G. MacDonald said, "All
growth that is not toward God is growing to decay." The Prodigal Son thought he was making
progress. He was independent, free of
his father's house, and he could do as he pleased. He could spend his money
on wine, women, and song,
and nobody could tell him to stop. He,
no doubt, felt really grown up and mature.
He interpreted all this change as progress, but he could not see he was
heading for the pig pen. His goals were
not God's will for his life, and the result was, he was regressing and not
progressing.
The paradox is, he had to go back to get ahead. Progress for him was to back track and get
on the right trail. If you miss the
road, and take the wrong turn, you can't make progress no matter how far or
fast you travel. You have to be on the
right road, and so progress sometimes means going backwards. He went back home and got on the right
trail. The story ends happily because
he set new goals that were consistent with the will of God. Here was a case of getting back to the
future. He had to get back to his past,
and get on the right trail to have a good future. The good news is, nobody has to stay on the wrong road. They can get off a road of regression, and
get on the road of progress anytime they choose to set goals that are pleasing
to God.
Paul was on the road to Damascus with the goal of arresting
Christians, and punishing them for being followers of Christ. But when he was confronted by the risen
Christ, he changed his goals, and became a servant rather than an enemy of
Christ. Conversion involves a change of
loyalties and goals. Paul changed from
desiring to wipe out the body of Christ to being the greatest builder of the
body of Christ. He was zealous as an
angry Pharisee persecuting Christians, but he was not making progress for his
goals were out of God's will. You can
only make progress when you are moving toward a goal that is in God's
will. Paul was building fires in the
valley of Baca before his conversion, but when Christ was Lord of his life, he
began to make it a place of springs, for he brought good news and comfort to
both sinners and saints all over his world.
Every Christian is obligated to be a pilgrim with the long
range goal arriving at heaven, but with a host of short range goals that make
the journey a constant taste of heaven on earth. The famous sculptor, Thorwoldsen, was asked, "Which is your
greatest statue?" And he replied,
"The next one." He expected
to do better and better, always making progress. More beyond was his motto.
He never stopped improving, and that is to be the goal of every
Christian. The practical issue we all
need to deal with is not, is the world getting better or worse, but am I? Am I making progress in the Christian
life? Am I setting goals and moving
toward them? Am I
on a pilgrimage for the
glory of God?
In striving to be a progressing Christian we have to wrestle
with the tension between the sacred and the secular. There is a secular progress going on all around us. It's goal is to do everything faster and
more efficiently. This, however, is not
enough to make it progress pleasing to God.
You can go further and faster to reach goals that are not in God's will. Alexander Solzhenitsyan said at Harvard in
1978,
"All the glorified
technological achievements of progress, including the conquest of outer space,
do not redeem the 20th centuries moral poverty." 20th century technology has been used to enslave and kill people
more swiftly. The tyrants have used
modern technology to do their evil.
This is the problem with so-called progress. It is often just the
opposite.
In the fascinating book, Peace Child, the Sawi people gaped in
awe as one of their own brought back, from the outside world, a metal
hatchet. Stone axes is all they ever had,
and they could not believe their eyes when he felled a tree with four blows.
For three minutes the people danced and shouted in amazement. It would take forty blows with their stone
axes to do the same thing. The men sat
around passing the wondrous instrument from one to another, caressing its
hardness and sharpness. Here was
glorious progress! Or was it? On one level it clearly was, but when you
hear of the cost of this advance, it is doubtful. The man who had it sold one of his children into slavery to
purchase the new ax. Thus the tension
between technology and morality. It is
not enough that a goal be good and consistent with the will of God. The means of getting there must also be
consistent with the will of God.
This is where the Christian gets caught in the tension between
the secular and the sacred. The secular
world around us makes great progress in technology, but does not care if it
makes you a better person or not. You
can use it to be a more effective sinner if you so choose. This is the tension we see in verse 10,
"I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the
tents of the wicked." The
implication is, it may seem more progressive to be in the tent of the wicked,
and really be with the times, but if it takes you off the road leading to the
presence of God, it is regressive. You
are like the Prodigal, going off to the far country to enjoy the worldly life,
but you are not making progress. You
are going downhill away from God.
Better is the lowly job of opening the door of the house of God than
worldly success that robs you of the goal of being close to God.
The point is, if wealth, position, technology, or any secular
advantage takes you away from Christian growth, it is not progress. It is just change, and change that does not
lead you closer to God is change for the worse. All improvements in the secular life need to be evaluated in the
light of how they affect our passion to praise God and serve Him. If they lessen that passion they are enemies
of the soul. If they enhance it they
are friends of the soul. This is the
criteria by which we measure the value of secular progress.
Too often in history Christians have opposed change and
progress just because they were convinced the present state of things was the
best. This has often been shown to be
folly. When Benjamin Franklin invented
the lightening rod there were some Christians who were outraged. They said he was trying to prevent the
judgment of God. The Rev. Thomas Prince
of Boston published a lengthy sermon in 1755 charging that an earthquake in
Boston that year was the result of God's anger at Americans who had erected
lightening rods. In England no church
was protected by a lightening rod for nine years after
Franklin's discovery because they were seen as a means of trying to prevent
God's judgment.
It took a great tragedy to change the minds of the
clergy. In 1767 a lightening bolt
crashed into the church of San Nazaro in Brescia, Italy. The church was also used as a storehouse for
200,000 pounds of gun powder. It was
ignited and the explosion leveled a 6th of the town killing over 3,000
people. Lightening rods on the church
could have prevented the whole tragedy.
This made Christians more open to
the value of new technology.
History is filled with examples of Christians being on the wrong side of
progress, and changes that could benefit people's lives.
This should be a warning to us not to oppose change just
because it is change. The issue is not
change, for change is built into history by God Himself. The issue is, is the change a step in the
right direction. Does it move us closer
in our journey toward God, or does it take us off into the far country where we
abuse and misuse our freedom, and do nothing for the glory of God. Any change that aids us in our praise of and
service to God is progress.
Anna Mow in, Say Yes To Life, tells of being on a ship in the
Mediterranean Sea when a terrible storm stuck.
The ship had three engines, but it only needed one to move forward at
normal speed. In the storm, however,
all three were used and they still could not move forward at all. It took all their power just to stand still
in the storm. But she said, it was still
progress, for by standing still they were not smashed against the rocks of the
North African shore.
It may sometimes take all of your energy just to stand still
in a stormy period of your life. The
Psalmist in Psa. 84 is stalled somewhere, and cannot get to his destination in
Jerusalem to worship in the presence of God.
But he does not give up, for his face is pointed in that direction, and
his heart is set on pilgrimage. He has
a goal and he will not forsake it, for he knows God will not withhold any good
thing from those who walk is blameless.
If you never cease to aim for goals pleasing to God He will guarantee
progress, and this is one of life's greatest pleasures-the pleasure of
progress.
10. REVIVAL
Based on Psa. 85:6
Clovis Chappell, the great Southern preacher and author, said in
one of his messages, "What announcement could the average pastor make to
his people next Sunday that would create less enthusiasm, less approval, less
holy expectancy, then that he would soon to begin a revival?" Rather than this being a beginning of
anything creative, it would in most cases meet with a yawn. The word revival use to be an exciting word
to Christians, but in modern times it has lost its charm. Chappell points out that we are not opposed
to revival in other areas of life. The
revival of nature appeals to us, and we anticipate spring. New life is restored to the vegetation of
earth. The bare limbs of trees are
clothed in glorious green. The naked
earth puts on the garments of grass and colorful flowers. We rejoice and feel good about such a
revival.
We love a revival of the body. If it has been sick, we rejoice when it is restored to health,
and we walk in joy with our new strength.
It gives us a new zest for living to be rid of the body as a wearisome
burden, and have it restored as willing companion of the spirit. Such a revival is cherished. What if it could be announced that the
economy was heading for revival?
Everyone would eagerly listen to such an announcement and receive it
with enthusiastic gratitude. Chappell
says, "But when we begin to speak of a revival in religion our interest
wanes, our minds wander, we slip into a comatose state and wonder how soon the
tiresome ordeal will be over." Even if this is an exaggeration, the question is, why is it close
to the truth?
The answer seems to lie primarily in the fact that too many
so‑called revivals in the past have been man‑made
counterfeits. Many have gotten up a 3
ring circus and manipulated masses about by the use of emotional techniques,
and then left them to settle down into a state of coldness and depression,
making them worse off than before. This
negative experience has made Christians fear revival. Counterfeit healings have made people skeptical of believing in
the real thing. S. P. Long in his book
Prophetic Pearls wrote of conditions many years ago. "The religious vaudevilles which have been carried on in
some of the cities in this country during the past few years by the get‑rich‑quick
actors who do not fit in the pulpit, or on the stage, has so disgusted the cool‑headed,
thinking Christians, that we have been led almost to shun the word,
'revival.'"
Many of us can identify with this negative attitude to revival,
but let us recognize that no abuse of truth should be allowed to rob us of the
use of it.
We dare not throw out the
baby with the bath water. Let us not
cease to quote the Scripture because the devil himself quoted it to the Lord in
temptation. Everything good can be used
poorly, and even for evil, but it is folly to forsake all good because it can
be abused. Revival is not only a good
word used in Scripture, it is also a good and positive experience. When rightly understood, we will long for it
in the religious realm as we do in all other areas of life.
The prefix re means back, and it refers to going back to
some original or former state. To re‑pay
is to pay back, and to re‑strain is to hold back, to re‑ply is to
talk back, and on and on we could go.
So the way to get ahead is to go back to the best you ever were. This means we were at some point in the past
more dedicated, and now we have become cold and lost the fire we once had. Revival is not going back to the same old
thing, but to that which is better, and to the best we have ever been. The Renaissance was a return to the
classical spirit and a restoration of the noblest achievements of the ancient
world. The Reformation was a return to the Bible and a restoration of New
Testament Christianity. A revolution is an overthrow of the present system in
order to return to a former system thought to be more excellent. Revival is getting back to the best.
There are numerous synonyms of revival. You have renew, refresh,
renovate, resuscitate, reanimate, reinvigorate, and even to repair, for that is
to restore something to its original and better state. It does not matter that
a person or church is dead, for Christianity is about the resurrection of the
dead, and the good news is that revival can bring the dead back to life and
restore people and churches to what they were at their best.
Notice why the psalmist is praying for revival in verse 6.
What is it that he expects to gain by being revived? He asks, "Will you
not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?" The goal is a
right relationship to God that makes the people joyful. Emotion is involved in
revival, and especially the emotion of joy. If you can look back on happier
days in your Christian life, and days of greater rejoicing, then you need
revival. We need to be restored to the joy and zeal in service that we once
had.
Revival implies a loss of something we once had. You cannot be
restored to what you never had and never were. You cannot go back to where you
have never been. The Psalmist looks
back to the marvelous mercies of God in the past in the opening verses. His request for revival grows out of his
recollection of the past. Note the past
tenses in, "You showed favor to your land, you restored the fortunes of
Jacob, you forgave the iniquity of your people, and you covered all their
sins." Then he goes on in verse 4
to say, "Lord, do it again, restore us again." Who wants to live in the winter of coldness
and gloom when the spring we once experienced is possible again, and with all
of its warmth, beauty, and joy? Some
unknown poet wrote,
A hint of softness in the
air,
The answering note to
nature's prayer;
Spring's wondrous miracle to
be‑
Let it be springtime, Lord,
to me!
Long have I dwelt in
winter's night,
When moon and stars withheld
their light,
With raging winds and
roaring sea‑
Let it be springtime, Lord,
to me!
Who of us can look at revival, as seen in this light, and
refused to long for it? The only ones
who may not have a longing for revival would be those who are right now in the
happiest state they have ever been in their relationship to Christ, or possibly
those who have so little experience that they cannot look back to former
joys. Most of us, however, have lived
long enough to know that the joy that is in Christ can be greater than what we
now have. Let us, therefore, pray,
"Revive us again, that we may rejoice in Thee."
There must be reviving to be rejoicing. Had the Prodigal Son never looked back to
the good old days of love and comfort in his father's house, he would not have
risen, returned, and been restored to fellowship and have a great party with
rejoicing. The story of the Prodigal is
the story of revival, and the story of revival always has a happy ending, for
it is a restoration to a rightful relationship with God. To often we are just enduring our salvation
and not enjoying it. It is a distress
rather than a delight, and a burden rather than a blessing. That is why we do not share it with the
world. But when believers are revived
there is an outreach that touches the world.
The Psalmist after looking back to the good old days begins to
anticipate even better days ahead.
There is a shift in the tenses from past to future.
Note in verse 8 that he says, "I will listen to what
God the Lord will say; He promises peace to His people..." And in verse 12 he says, "The Lord will
indeed give what is good, and our land will yield its harvest." When revival comes we can look ahead to
God's being a blessing to our world through us. The history of revival reveals that when Christians are right
with God, and are rejoicing in Him, He uses them in marvelous ways to accomplish
His purpose. They develop a greater
compassion for the lost. When
Christians are not happy themselves they tend to be indifferent to the needs of
the world, but when they are revived and happy they have compassion, and they
go into action to meet the needs of the world.
Dr. F. B. Meyer said, "There has never been a great
religious revival without social and political reforms." Stephen Olford in his book Heart Cry For
Revival says, "The abolition of slavery followed a revival. The end of child labor resulted from a
revival. Movements like the YMCA, the
Salvation Army, and most of our charitable and educational institutions stem
from revivals. Most of the good that
God has given to the earth has come out of revival, and that is why we should
always be praying‑
Let it come, O Lord we pray
thee,
Let the showers of blessing
fall,
We are weeping and
expecting,
Oh, revive the hearts of
all.
11. A NEW SONG Based on Psalm 96
It is easy for us to do what
the psalmist urges us to do, "Sing to the Lord a new song." The number of new songs to sing today is
enormous. Back in 1891 Dr. Julian in
his famous Dictionary of Hymnology examined four hundred thousand hymns, and he
did not cover them all. There are, no
doubt, over a million hymns in the world today.
But the path to this abundance of new songs was not easy. It might be hard to believe, but the singing
of hymns in church, now so popular, was once opposed. In the middle of the 18th century, a church in Aberdeen, Scotland hired a soldier they heard singing
hymns with some troops to come and teach them how to do it. He was a great success, and so the church
got him discharged from the army to be their song master. Students from the university flocked to the
church to join in this novel practice of singing a new song.
As might be expected, it was too good to be true that such
enthusiasm would go unopposed. Many
felt that the church should stick to the psalms, and put an end to these new
songs. They hired Gideon Duncan and two
of his friends to sing very loud and out of tune. They succeeded in disrupting the service, but Duncan was hauled
before the magistrate and fined 50 pounds, and imprisoned until it was paid. Many of us can be thankful not everyone who
sings poorly in church is arrested.
Just imagine, only two centuries ago hymns in public worship were such a
novelty they were the center of violent dispute.
Benjamin Keach, the Baptist pastor, was the first man to
introduce a hymnbook into a English congregation. It was a book of 300 hymns.
22 angry Baptists walked out of his church never to return. They felt that the Psalms were the only
songs Christians should sing. The
opposition held back the practice for years, but their delaying tactics could
not stop the strong inner desire of men to sing unto the Lord a new song.
This longing for novelty in song is not a part of man's fallen
nature, but is a part of his awareness that God is infinite, and therefore,
only infinite creativity is worthy of Him, and adequate to glorify His
name. It is also essential to keep joy
alive in the worshipper. Variety is the
spice of life, and a new song is like a tonic that lifts and enables us to feel
afresh the love that is always there, but which needs rekindled.
Music is basic to worship, for music is a mover of emotions, and especially the emotion of joy. Out of joy comes praise, and this is a key element in worship. In Psalm 33:1‑3 we read, "Sing joyfully to the Lord, you righteous, it is fitting for the upright to