Wilderness Wanderings

1 Save me, O God, by your name; vindicate me by your might. 2 Hear my prayer, O God; listen to the words of my mouth.

3 Arrogant foes are attacking me; ruthless people are trying to kill me— people without regard for God.

4 Surely God is my help; the Lord is the one who sustains me.

5 Let evil recoil on those who slander me; in your faithfulness destroy them.

6 I will sacrifice a freewill offering to you; I will praise your name, Lord, for it is good. 7 You have delivered me from all my troubles, and my eyes have looked in triumph on my foes. (Psalm 54)

We tend to read things in a linear fashion, from beginning to end. We assume, therefore, that the point of whatever it is that we've read comes at the end. But in the scriptures, that's not necessarily the case.

Material that is written for the ear instead of the eye, that is, material that was transmitted orally in a largely illiterate culture, often has a different logic to it. Instead of linear, it is cyclical, such that the main point falls in the middle instead of at the end.

You can picture it like the ripples of the water when a pebble is thrown in. The pebble falls in the middle, and the implications radiate outward in all directions in the form of waves. This is the reality of acoustics as well: sound waves also radiate outward from the centre. Such is the logic of an oral culture and its rhetoric.

You'll find this logic of composition all over in the scriptures: in the prophets, the psalms, the gospels, even in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians that Pastor Michael and I recently did some preaching through. You may have heard a different selection of verses to mark out a section and a different emphasis come out of our preaching on this letter than you've heard before, because we were looking for the point in the middle of a section, instead of at its end (see, for instance, how the cross shows up at the beginning, end, and middle of 1 Corinthians 1:17-2:2).

So it is here in Psalm 54. Looking at this psalm acoustically you can see the parallel rings that radiate out from the centre.

Verses 1-2 and 6-7, the verses that mark the beginning and ending of the psalm, both speak to God's salvation and the activity of worship. Verses 1-2 ask that God save, deliver, and hear prayer. Verses 6-7 report that God has done just that, even as the psalmist continues in prayers and offerings of praise and thanks.

Verses 3 and 5 speak of the foe. Verse 3 names these people as ruthless and faithless people bent on killing. Verse 5 sets the faithfulness of God against the faithlessness of the enemy, and asks God to deal with them accordingly, that the faithful God might let their ruthless, faithless ways recoil upon them.

Verse 4 is the centre. It is the pivot around which the whole psalm moves. It is the affirmation of faith that changes the first half of the psalm into the second half.

The psalmist says this in that central verse: "surely God is my help; the Lord is the one who sustains me." This is the reality that causes the psalmist to ask that faithless people be dealt with by the faithfulness of God. It is the reality that transforms the prayer for salvation in verses 1-2 into deliverance and praise by verses 6-7.

Because God is our help and sustainer, we can trust that he will hear when we pray, that he will save us when we ask, and that he will remain faithful even when we are surrounded by faithlessness.

A Sunday Sermon edition of Wilderness Wanderings! The text is Daniel 3 from the New International Version of the Bible. Dive In discussion questions are below for further reflection!

To see this sermon in the context of the worship service it comes from, find it here on YouTube. Or, head to our website to connect with the worshiping community of Immanuel CRC: immanuelministries.ca

1. What is this story about?
2. How does this story mirror the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11?
3. Where do you face such coercive dangers today?
4. How is o' Neb's religion different from that of the Christian faith? Do you know this deep in your heart? How do you sometimes practice your faith according to O' Neb's kind of religion?
5. Are you afraid you might fail a test such as the one our three friends faced? What reassurance was given in this message? How can we live in preparation for such trials?
6. How does Jesus fulfill the human desires explored in Genesis 11 and Daniel 3?

"God looks down from heaven on the entire human race. He looks to see if anyone is truly wise; if anyone seeks God. But no, all have turned away" (Psalm 53:2,3).

This psalm is almost a total repeat of Psalm 14. There are a few minor differences, but the two psalms sing the same song. Why repeat what has already been sung? Nobody really knows; but maybe it's because the message is so difficult to receive.

What's the message? A poet once wrote, "We have met the enemy and he is us." That's this psalm in a nutshell.

Follow the flow of the psalm: there is the fool, the enemy everybody hates. The fool is, of course, the one who has turned his back on God (1). Then there is God, who looks down from heaven to see if there is anyone who is not a fool (2).

Guess what? God can't find anyone. "All have turned away; all have become corrupt. No one does good; not a single one" (3). I think that's call a burn. We get caught by our own trap. We thought we could escape, that we were different, not fools. But alas, fools we all are!

It's a hard truth to receive. "We have met the enemy and she is us." The apostle Paul uses this verse in his indictment of the entire human race. He puts it this way, 'There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one" (Romans 3:9-12).

From here, neither the Psalm nor Paul gets any easier to handle. They both articulate a deep truth. Because we all have turned away from God, we all turn against each other. Without the restraints of God's grace and love, peace turns to violence and love to hatred.

None of us are exempt. We are all fools. In some Christian communities, this appears to be the only part of our story which gets sung. The earth, and the whole human community with it, is going to hell in a handbasket. God is angry. End of story. Sure, there is that story about Jesus, but the way it gets told, redemption is rare.

In our community, we tell the story differently. This psalm only tells part of the story. We are people immersed in Christmas and Easter. Jesus came because of the truths lamented in Psalm 53. The point of this lament is not that we are all as evil as could be. Its message is that we all need help. We all need redemption. Because of that need, Jesus' entrance into our story is good news. He came to save us from our foolishness.

There's another picture in the Bible of God looking down and searching the earth and all its human inhabitants. Its 2 Chronicles 16:9: "the eyes of the Lord search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him." The worst kinds of fools are those who don't know they're fools. They can't be helped. But God delights in those who know they are fools. He strengthens them. The only fools God doesn't help are those who won't ask for help.

Jesus said, "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy" (that's the fool); "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full" (John 10:10). All we must do is ask. To pray is to ask for help. The only fools Jesus doesn't save are those who won't pray. There are fools, and there are fools. Which kind are you?

The righteous will see and fear; they will laugh at you, saying, "Here now is the man who did not make God his stronghold but trusted in his great wealth and grew strong by destroying others!" But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; I trust in God's unfailing love for ever and ever. (Psalm 52:7-8)

Where is your trust rooted? In God? Or in your ability to provide for yourself?

The obvious answer is that our trust is rooted in God, of course. But I'm not sure it's always quite so simple. It takes a lot of introspection and questioning of our motives and heart before God and his word as found in passages like this to begin to suss out where we really put the weight of our lives.

The conversation on power and privilege that has sparked to life recently has a lot to say about these culturally invisible places that we perhaps unknowingly put our trust.

Wealth, for instance, is a huge source of power and privilege for many who might be reading this. When we speak about wealth as a privilege, it means that wealth is a special right or advantage that belongs only to certain people. The poor would not have the privilege of wealth. Wealth is not a right: it is a privilege which some have and others do not.

The fact that some person has wealth means that many tasks and activities of life become much easier for that person simply because they have access to the funds to enact their desires. They are therefore, privileged. And when they use that privilege of wealth to enact their desires, they are exercising power—which is very simply the ability to exert force or influence.

Hopefully this is enough of a set of definitions to make it clear that all of us are using our privilege and power in whatever form we might have it all the time, but in case not, here's another example.

I was privileged to grow up in an English-speaking context, making me a native speaker of the dominate global language and enabling me therefore to enact my will and desires in the world much more easily than someone for whom English is a second language. I use this power every day. The fact that I am male, white, married, educated, young and healthy, economically well off—all of these are aspects of the privilege I hold and the power I am therefore able to exert.

Once you begin to see the privilege you have and the ways that you use that privilege as power to accomplish the things you seek to do in a day, the next question becomes—how much do you rely on that power and privilege? To what extent do you entrust yourselves to your own power and privilege—your own ability to accomplish what you want to in the world?

A good illustration might be the massive Roger's outage this past weekend. All of a sudden, many of us were unable to use the privileged power of communication or of our wealth to influence the world around us to accomplish what we wanted because the phones had lost connectivity, the internet was out, and the Interact payment system was down. The privilege of our digital world was removed from us for a day, and we felt, well, powerless! How much have we entrusted ourselves to the power of our smartphones and digital infrastructure? How much to our wealth? Our other bits of power and privilege?

The call of the Christian faith and psalms is to place our trust firstly and firmly in the Lord. Not in our great wealth. Not in our ability to exert power. So each day we have work to do to discern exactly where it is that our trust resides really. In our own power and privilege? Or in the Lord? It's a good spiritual question for times of daily prayer before God.

The promise and reminder, of course, is that the Lord is trustworthy, indeed, he is ultimately the only worthy place to place our trust.

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love...For I know my transgressions and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight (Psalm 51:1,3,4)

In Christ's church, this is a well known and well-loved Psalm. It is often used in worship liturgies during the season of Lent, with its propensity for introspection. It raises eyebrows when it is used during Advent, a season of hope rather than self-examination. However, if we accept the Biblical diagnosis that our problem is our rebellion against God (Genesis 3), then this Psalm points the way towards Advent hope.

The angels declare unequivocally that Jesus came to save us from our sin (Matthew 1:21). Both John (Matthew 3:1) and Jesus (Matthew 4:17) declare that repentance is required to enter the kingdom of heaven. Salvation and repentance are woven throughout this song.

Joel, an Old Testament prophet, put it this way, "Yet even now, says the Lord, repent and return to me with all your heart" (2:13). We return because God both invites and calls us back. Picture God walking in the garden after Adam and Eve had eaten of that notorious fruit and calling out, "Where are you?" or picture the father, in Luke 15, looking for his son.

When they ate from the tree, our first parents turned away from God, just like that son in the parable. When God calls, He invites us to turn back toward Him. Repentance is part of the journey back to God.

In Psalm 51 David confesses his sin of adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband. He also prays to God, "Restore to me the joy of your salvation." David, in his sin, had lost the joy of living with God, of knowing intimacy with him.

This song mentions that God "desires truth in the inner parts." This truth only comes through the ministry of the Spirit who reveals why we are running after things apart from God. What are our motivations? What things allure us away from God? What things are giving us false satisfaction? Why do we respond the way we do to stress? Why can we not get along with that one person?

This truth most often comes in the quiet. Let us take the time to be still. And know that the Lord is God. Let the Spirit soften our hearts so that we can receive the truth about ourselves. When we offer ourselves to God in repentance, he forgives and renews our joy.

Repentance gives birth to hope. Why? Because in repentance, we stop looking at ourselves for help and begin looking God's way. God points us to Jesus and says there is the hope for your troubles; there is your salvation. Redemption is all laid out for us in Christ. We do not have to earn it, we do not have to find it, we just need to receive it.

Redemption does not come because we have repented properly or confessed all our sins. Salvation is a gift that comes freely from the mercy of God. David prays for it and receives it. Its freedom and grace are fully on display in Jesus Christ.

The road back to God is the real journey of both Lent and Advent. It is the journey of the Christian life. This is a good road, often difficult, but filled with grace, love, and hope. The journey is always worth it because the Spirit guides us, Jesus walks with us, and the Father calls us and receives us home.

When you did these things and I kept silent, you thought I was exactly like you. But I now arraign you and set my accusations before you. (Psalm 50:21)

Psalm 50 is the first of the psalms of Asaph, which tend to circle much more around the covenant and its requirements. So it is here in psalm 50, which begins by setting up a scene of judgement.

God arrives as judge and calls the heavens and the earth as witnesses. The heavens and the earth were, after all, the witnesses God called when the covenant was first made in the wilderness. This is perhaps also a reason that we find the sky blackened and an earthquake shaking the rocks at Jesus' crucifixion in the Gospel of Matthew: the heavens and the earth are testifying to a new covenant being made.

With the heavens and earth serving as witnesses, God then calls his people. He does not take fault in their sacrifices or offerings, but he does remind them he doesn't actually need, eat, or drink the things they offer. God provides for them, not they for him. Everything already belongs to God, what could humankind possibly give him that isn't already his? No, it is not out of our plenty that we give a bit to God: it is out of God's plenty that we have received whatever it is that we have—and that has only been given to us to hold and distribute as a trust and for a time.

So we give our thanks offerings and fulfill our promises (like our baptismal and profession of faith promises) to God because it is right and proper that we do so, to remind us that nothing was ours to begin with, and to help us practice the posture of an open hand and a responsive life before the God to whom all things belong.

Worship is not just about dealing appropriately with the resources of God's Creation though, it is also about salvation. We practice the habits of worship not only because we depend on God for our provision, but also for our salvation—for our help "in the day of trouble." Nothing in Creation or Salvation is something we accomplished ourselves: it is all a work of God. We depend on him for everything.

Having set the record straight on what worship is for, God moves to the character and conduct of his people—naming disobedience, theft, adultery, slander, and false testimony. He says "when you did these things and I kept silent, you thought that I was exactly like you. But I now arraign you and set my accusations before you."

I have long found this one of the most arresting statements in all of the psalms. It addresses the main issue that the whole psalm deals with, namely that we have a tendency to imagine God in our image. So our issue is not just turning other objects and pursuits into gods of our own making—idolatry—but also making God himself into a god of our own making. So even when we're faithfully doing the right motions of worship and avoiding idolatry, we can still be off base when we shrink God down to our size, pin his wings to the cork board like a biology project, and loose all sense of his cosmic, mysterious, holy otherness.

That goes for our ethical relationship before God when we think things like "God won't mind a white lie" or "he'll see and understand why I'm doing this and that I'm basically a good person." But it also goes for our understanding of God: we easily get the sense that we are the ones that hold God up or let God down rather than understanding the extent to which we depend on his every grace and provision for the very breath that we breathe and the very life that we live.

This whole psalm is a call to remember the holiness and otherness of God—to remember that he is the judge—and that we are never able to fully know his mind or his ways. This is an invitation to stand in a humble awe and fear of the Lord and to live and worship accordingly. It is he that we depend on for our very creation and for our continuing provision and salvation—which in Jesus, unlike in the psalms, we have received in full. And so it is Jesus that our lives are to be conformed to, not he to us.

People who have wealth but lack understanding are like the beasts that perish (Psalm 49:20).

Ray Romano, star of Everyone Loves Raymond, addressed the studio audience after the last episode of the show was filmed. He spoke about his years as a struggling stand up comedian and then read from a note his brother had stuck in his luggage the day he moved from New York to Hollywood. "My older brother Richard wrote, 'What does it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, and loses his soul?'" said a tearful Romano. "Now I'm going to work on my soul."

Psalm 49 is an interesting twist in the book of prayers. It is not a typical prayer since it doesn't address God. Yet it was used by the Jews in their worship. Notice that some of our songs similarly don't address God but each other.

This psalm is a proverb or a reflection on a proverb (4). Our text is the proverb, "People who have wealth but lack understanding are like the beasts that perish." A proverb invites us to reflect on life and to live wisely. You might want to pause here and read Psalm 49.

This proverb notices that wealth and power tend to coalesce in the same people or group of people. The wealthy tend to grab power to maintain their wealth, often using this power to keep their wealth from others. Those who have neither, often live in fear of those who have both.

The psalm also notes that the righteous are at a significant disadvantage. They do not live to increase their wealth and power, rather, they follow Jesus' directive to store up treasures in heaven. This way of living makes no sense if one believes that this current existence is all we get.

When the wealthy, power hungry schemers die, they are dead. That is the end of their story. Nobody will do anything for them. But, says the psalmist, those who are righteous have another chapter.

Righteous here refers not to those who simply do what is right but to those who trust in God. While the evil will remain dead, the righteous will be redeemed from death. God will redeem their lives from the grave and give them a new home with himself.

Here we have an Old Testament allusion to Jesus. Old Testament writers did not know much about how God would redeem the world, but on occasion there are some hints. Now we know that this redeeming would come through Jesus' death and resurrection.

So, the wisdom offered in this proverb reflection is, "Don't be easily impressed by people and their wealth. All of us will lose what we gather here on this earth. But the righteous will be redeemed from death."

Maybe Jesus had this psalm in mind when he said, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin don't destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there you heart will be also" (Matthew 6:19-21).

It is not wealth that is the problem, but the lack of wisdom. Do you know where you are storing your treasure? Will you find wisdom before you die? Will you work on your soul before it is too late?

An extended Sunday Sermon edition of Wilderness Wanderings! The text is Daniel 2 from the New International Version of the Bible. Dive In discussion questions are below for further reflection!

To see this sermon in the context of the worship service it comes from, find it here on YouTube. Or, head to our website to connect with the worshiping community of Immanuel CRC: immanuelministries.ca

DIVE IN QUESTIONS

1. In what sense does our present moment feel apocalyptic to you?
2. What does the word 'apocalypse' mean? And what are the things it brings to light?
3. What was the situation faced by the Jews of Daniel's day and those to whom this book was written? What was the problem faced by King Nebuchadnezzar and the wise men of Babylon at the beginning of the chapter?
4. What does God reveal through Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar? What stands out to you as significant about it?
5. What are some of the temptations we face as we try to respond to our own secular age? Do you resonate with one or the other? Why?
6. How might an apocalyptic imagination fired by our Christian hope of Jesus' kingdom come and our conviction that God loves the Babylons and Nebuchadnezzars of the world enable you to faithfully witness to and invest in the world around you today?

God is in her citadels; he has shown himself to be her fortress. Walk about Zion, go around her, count her towers, consider well her ramparts...That you may tell of them to the next generation (Psalm 48:3, 12, 13).

In the Bible, cities can be centres of pride and corruption. Babylon symbolizes this kind of civilization (Revelation 17:18). However, a city can also be a centre of strength where the Lord God is worshipped. Jerusalem, also named Mount Zion, is the symbol of this form of society (Revelation 21). She is often called, the city of God.

Throughout the Biblical story, Jerusalem, as the capital city of Israel, never fulfilled this destiny to be the city of God. Therefore, the Gentiles destroyed her in 586 BC and again in AD 70. Prophets such as Ezekiel and Isaiah looked for a new city with a new, restored temple.

In the New Testament, the story turns from Israel to the church. Even before the physical temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, the church is identified as the new temple of God. Paul tells the Ephesians that they have been made members "of the household of God" and they are a building, under construction, growing "into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit" (Eph. 2:19-22).

So, we do not come to "God's house" on Sundays for worship. We are God's house; we gather as God's temple. Honestly, church buildings do not mean much to God. He certainly does not live in them.

When John has his final vision in the Book of Revelation, he sees the New Jerusalem, God's city, which is also the bride of Christ. This city is His church (Rev. 21:9-11).

Psalm 48 celebrates the greatness of Jerusalem on Mount Zion. Zion is great because God is great and he dwells in His city and in His temple, among His people.

The immediate context of the psalm is probably that of worshippers going up to Jerusalem for one of the major festivals. We notice that as the worshippers head towards Jerusalem they contemplate this city. They ponder what it means that God is within her.

The glory attributed to Jerusalem was never fulfilled in the Old Testament. The church, too, has fallen far short of the glory of God. We look much more like the Israel of the Old Testament than we generally care to admit. Yet, we eagerly await and look forward to the day when we will be glorious (Romans 8:18-23).

Thus, this Psalm invites us to contemplate the church of Jesus. When we think of the church, what do we think about? Do we think about all the unholy people who claim to be Christians? Do we see the faults of our fellow worshippers? Many of us do exactly that. I'm sure it is one of the reasons why we have so many different denominations.

We do need to be honest enough to admit the church's unholy state. We should never try to minimize the hurt the church has caused.

But we are also invited to see something more. God is among his people sanctifying his church. Do we see the Spirit at work preparing the bride of Christ? Can we see people being made holy and pure and spotless? Imagine your fellow worshippers being presented as holy to the Father in heaven. Your fellow worshippers will someday be part of that holy city. God will see it done. He is faithful. What a vision to prepare us for worshipping together!

God has ascended amid shouts of joy, the Lord amid the sounding of trumpets. Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises. For God is the King of all the earth; sing to him a psalm of praise. God reigns over the nations; God is seated on his holy throne. The nobles of the nations assemble as the people of the God of Abraham, for the kings of the earth belong to God; he is greatly exalted. (Psalm 47:5-9)

There is a bit of a call and response rhythm to these first few psalms of Book II of the psalter. Do you notice it? Psalm 44 cries out in suffering and psalm 45 responds with a hope-filled vision of the messianic wedding feast. Psalm 46 speaks to the moment the earth gives way under our feet, reminding us of the promise that God will be glorified in all the earth. Psalm 47 responds with exactly that: the glorified God ascending to his throne of glory.

This is a psalm that has been sung in the Jewish faith at the turn to the new year. In Christianity, it has often been recited on Ascension Day. In the book of Revelation, this psalm surely informs the Apostle John's imagination as he sees the kings of the earth entering the royal city of Jesus, the King, bringing their tribute.

Perhaps this psalm also informs Paul's vision of Jesus Christ being the one in whom all things hold together, indeed the one through whom all things (including thrones, powers, rulers, and authorities) are reconciled to God.

This is the movement of the psalm. "The nobles of the nations assemble as the people of the God of Abraham." Did you catch that little word "as?" The nations have somehow become the people of God! They belong to him! The promises that God has made to Abraham is fulfilled. It is not just that Abraham will be the father of many nations, but also that "all peoples on earth will be blessed through" Abraham. All peoples now come under the rule, but also the blessing of God of Abraham.

There is again something within this psalm that smacks of our future hope in Christ. That the world we see at present is not the world we place our hope in. The heavenly country we long for has a much different texture to it. No more power games or warring nations. No more economic woes. No more young men or women who die before their time or suffer from addiction or disease.

No: God is the God of the living, says Jesus. And when God ascends to take his throne: all of his promises will be fulfilled. All will be made well and right in resurrection, reunion, and reconciliation through the one who holds all these things that we've entrusted to him against that day, together.

Come Lord Jesus, come.