Tag Archives: Words

Singing with the King (92) – The Big Question

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O Lord, who may abide in Your tent? Who may dwell on Your holy hill? (Psalm 15:1)

That is a good question. The Apostle Paul’s take on this question could be:

If I live, it will be for Christ, and if I die, I will gain even more.  I don’t know what to choose. I could keep on living and doing something useful. It is a hard choice to make. I want to die and be with Christ, because that would be much better. (Phil 1:21-23)

But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:7-12)

So for King David, for the Apostle Paul—and for the follower of Christ—our greatest goal is to be with the Lord.

Now there are times when David asks questions, but no answer is forthcoming, because like us, he is waiting on the LORD for an answer. But this time, in this short little Psalm, we have the answer to the question. Now understand, the Psalmist doesn’t give the names of those who may abide, who may dwell (only the LORD knows who are His.) But he does give a description. Does it describe you?

He who walks with integrity, and works righteousness, and speaks truth in his heart.

In just this one sentence it talks about your walk, your works, and your words. Your walk is the sort way of saying how you  live your life. It’s your worldview. Works are obviously what your do. And words are what you say. It’s your character, your actions and your speech that exhibit integrity, righteous living, and a truthful heart.

For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor; no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless. (Psalm 84:11)

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. (Matthew 5:6)

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. (Ephesians 4:15)

But wait. You don’t have to wait for Heaven to dwell with God. As a follower of Christ, you have His Spirit dwelling within you here and now:

People who are ruled by their desires think only of themselves. Everyone who is ruled by the Holy Spirit thinks about spiritual things. If our minds are ruled by our desires, we will die. But if our minds are ruled by the Spirit, we will have life and peace. Our desires fight against God, because they do not and cannot obey God’s laws. If we follow our desires, we cannot please God. You are no longer ruled by your desires, but by God’s Spirit, who lives in you. People who don’t have the Spirit of Christ in them don’t belong to him. But Christ lives in you. So you are alive because God has accepted you, even though your bodies must die because of your sins. Yet God raised Jesus to life! God’s Spirit now lives in you, and he will raise you to life by his Spirit. (Romans 8:5-11)

I asked earlier if David’s description describes you. It should. People should see the life-transforming effects that the Spirit of God has upon you. You walk, your works, and your words will show that you are abiding and dwelling with the LORD.

 

Singing with the King (57) – Have You Lost Your Voice?

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Their hands have no feeling, their legs don’t move, and they can’t make a sound. Everyone who made the idols and all who trust them are just as helpless as those useless gods. (Psalm 115:7-8)

False3Idols. Useless gods. Do you serve any useless gods? When God with His own finger wrote out the 10 Commandments for Moses, the first of them was:  Do not worship any god except me. Do not make idols that look like anything in the sky or on earth or in the ocean under the earth.  Don’t bow down and worship idols. I am the Lord your God, and I demand all your love. (Exodus 20:3-5)

Now the thing about idols is that they are no longer relegated to the wood, stone, precious metal composition. They can be intangible; such as philosophies, ideologies, pursuits, careers, seemingly harmless (yet all-consuming) goals. Even religion can be an idol. I think the Pharisees of Jesus time would be the consummate example for that. Another idol is evolution. Another pervasive one is SELF. And what about the government? Well, whatever the flavor-of-the-month your idol is, you are going to become like it. For the past couple of weeks we’ve focused on verse 8. But this time I want to focus on a specific characteristic the idol has passed down: no voice. Now you may not be completely mute, but whatever you say, won’t matter.

I had old man in a beda mentor named Rick when I was at the Conservatory. He was a retired Baptist missionary, and was now on the payroll of a large hospital in the Central Valley as their chaplain. Whenever there was a difficult situation, Rick was called in to minister to the family, and help the patient to step into eternity to meet Jesus. There was this one old man who had just hours to live, and the hospital asked Rick to visit him. He had no family, he was alone, and Rick chose to sit and wait with him.

After a rather pain-filled conversation with this patient, Rick discovered that the man was Jewish. So Rick asked if he could read the Old Testament to him. The man nodded, so Rick read Isaiah 53:

Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?  For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; and when we see Him, There is no beauty that we should desire Him.  He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.  Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.  But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.   (Isaiah 53:1-5)

Rick heard something, looked up and saw the man weeping. The words of the prophet had obviously touched this man, so Rick leaned forward and said, “You know, Isaiah was talking about Jesus.” But the man, shaking his head, said with his last few breaths, “I don’t understand, I don’t understand.” Rick tried to explain using other verses from the Old Testament, but the man still weeping said one last time, “I don’t understand.” And he passed into eternity without knowing his Messiah.

He needed to cry our like Peter. “Lord save me!” (Matthew 14:30) But he did not. He had no understanding, and he had no words. Now I don’t know what his particular idol was, but it left him without the right words to say.

Consider this warning from Christ:  “Work hard to enter the narrow door to God’s Kingdom, for many will try to enter but will fail. When the master of the house has locked the door, it will be too late. You will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Lord, open the door for us!’ But he will reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’ Then you will say, ‘But we ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’  And he will reply, ‘I tell you, I don’t know you or where you come from. Get away from me, all you who do evil.’ (Luke 13:24-37)

May the Lord give you the right words to say, before it is too late.