Wilderness Wanderings

Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures through all generations. The Lord is trustworthy in all he promises and faithful in all he does. The Lord upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down (Psalm 145:13-14).

Well here we are, the traditional first day of school in Ontario. I don't remember the first time I walked up the steps of that big yellow school bus. I do have memory of other first days of school, with all the hopes, dreams and fears that came with it. I'm afraid that I never paused to consider how my parents were doing on those days. There was a year when all eight of their children marched out the door one September morning, and scattered through kindergarten to grade 12.

Being a parent myself, I reflect on those childhood memories differently now. Parents have different hopes, dreams and fears.

For many of us, this September will be unlike any we have had before. And I suspect that nobody wants another. I also suspect that the fears may overshadow the hopes and dreams.

To give us some steadiness on this day, I want to return with you to the magnificence of Psalm 145. Early in the Psalm it says, "One generation commends your works to another; they tell of your mighty acts."

I have always understood this to mean that the older generation tells the younger. But for some reason, I got thinking about a little VBS exercise. That part where the children are encouraged to look for 'God sightings' when they go home and report back the next day. It's always interesting and often encouraging to hear what things the children have seen. Is it possible that children have better eye sight adults? Why don't adults make that part of their day?

Can I encourage you to do this little exercise today? Who knows what God wants you to see today?

However, there is a danger here. The book of Hebrews tells us that our faith is not based on sight. Faith is hoping for things we have not yet seen (11:1). It is possible that we walk through this day and do not see the hand of God. Does that mean he's taking a nap? Of course not.

This is why we need to tell the stories of God from one generation to the next. Many Biblical scholars believe that the final arrangement of book of Psalms is from the time of the Babylonian exile. This was a time when Israel could not see God's hand at work. But in faith they sang these psalms of praise.

This is a song of defiance. In Babylon, God's people declared to each other that Babylonian power would end, but God's kingdom would be forever. The ways of people and human kingdoms are so unpredictable. Can we depend on governments to care for our interests? Can we depend on teachers to respect and care for us? Can we depend on family to be there for us? Thankfully, we can often say yes to these questions. But we can also recall times when the answer was emphatically no.

Psalm 145 tells us several times that with God there is no question. God is faithful to his promises and he does what is right. He is a loving, gracious, compassionate king. "The Lord is trustworthy in all he promises and faithful in all he does. The Lord upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down."

As we enter a fall season in which little is certain, let us remember that God is faithful. But also this: that the statement "God helps those who help themselves," is blatant heresy. The unbridled testimony of scripture is that God helps those who are in need. He does not wait until we have gotten up; he reaches down when we are still lying in the mud and helps us up.

This is an essential reality of his grace. He comes to us in Christ before we come to him. So, if today lands you in the mud, look for the hand of God to help you up. The Lord upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down. Praise the Lord!

Sunday, September 6, 2020

Today, our Wilderness Wanderings comes from special guest, Nina Schuurman-Drenth, who is a candidate for a Masters of Divinity and for ordination in the CRC.

When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (Matthew 6:5-8)

It is striking to make note of the fact that in one of the only direct teachings Jesus does about prayer, his primary instruction is to keep it simple: don't be flower-y, don't flaunt your religiosity, don't babble on.

In this passage, Jesus is referring to the practices of Gentile nations - the pagan nations surrounding Israel - who believed their practice of repeated prayer provided some kind of magic power to protect or heal them. In contrast to that practice and belief, here Jesus is teaching his followers that God his Father does not require repeated words, redundancy or flaunting in order for prayers to him to be heard. He is teaching that God wishes for prayer to be not merely transactional but also intimate and conversational. The Heidelberg Catechism puts it this way: "we must pray from the heart." Simple, true, honest, heartfelt: that is the "best" way to pray.

This "best" kind of prayer - this simple, honest, true kind - might surprisingly, paradoxically also be the hardest kind! One of the hardest things we could try to do, in any endeavour but especially in prayer, is to be wholly honest. Anne Lammott puts it this way: "My belief is that when you're telling the truth, you're close to God. If you say to God, 'I am exhausted and depressed beyond words, and I don't like You at all right now, and I recoil from most people who believe in You,' that might be the most honest thing you've ever said." And indeed, this is the prayer God most wants to hear. Why? Because, as David Benner writes, "the self that God persistently loves is not my prettied-up pretend self but my actual self - the real me," but we tend to continually confuse our real self with some ideal self that we wish we were. In other words, it could be that the most poisonous thing that's ever happened to our prayer lives was our sense of duty to appear pious or holy or "acceptable for church," whatever that might mean to you. And in our effort to put on this facade, what some have called "the false self," we've put away the Self that Jesus died for, the Self he has gone to all lengths just to be with.

So my invitation for you is this: say to God now, in your own heart, in your quiet place, exactly what is the most honest thing for you to say, no caveats, no babbling and no beating around the bush. He is strong enough for it, and can handle whatever it is you have to say. Let's take a moment or two of quiet to do that right now.

Notes 1. Anne Lammott, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers (New York, NY: Riverhead Books, 2012). 2. David Benner, The Gift of Being Yourself (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2015), 57.

I lift you high in praise, my God, O my King! and I'll bless your name into eternity. I'll bless you every day, and keep it up from now to eternity (Psalm 145:1,2).

Many of us think that repetition and memorization are for the birds. That is, we don't want to put the work into memorization and we get bored easily. Yet, many Christians have observed that the development of our spiritual selves is significantly aided by both repetition and memorization.

Consider Psalm 145. Its an acrostic. This means that in its original language, the poem had twenty-two lines; one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The first line began with the first letter of that alphabet. Each successive line with the next letter. This was done to aid in the work of memorizing the song.

I wonder how long it took the composer to put this all together. It was put together to be learned, even memorized. Things we memorize shape our thinking and character. As such, this psalm invites us to seriously contemplate a life given to praising God.

As has already been noted in these devotions, such a life does not come naturally. There are barriers, the biggest one being ourselves. I suspect that sloth is one of the more significant stumbling blocks. We don't talk much about spiritual sloth these days, which is too bad. Through out the centuries, Christian have always been warned against it.

Sloth is an older word for lazy. We want our spiritual growth to happen like making coffee with a Keurig machine: stick in cup and press button. But the thing is, spiritual growth is more like making coffee from scratch; I mean from scratch: plant the seeds, tend the plants, harvest the beans, roast them, grind them, etc. Spiritual maturity takes time and effort. The move from selfishness to unbridled praise of God does not happen instantaneously or without sustained effort.

As an aid against sloth, let me suggest this: for one month read or sing or pray this Psalm in the morning and again in the evening, each day. Who knows, by the end you might have it memorized. After a month, you may find this beneficial enough to choose a different psalm.

Praising God is also costly. Its more than silent prayers. It impacts how we work and how we entertain ourselves. It influences our spending habits and how we relate with friends and strangers.

Take time to test your life based on Psalm 145. One question we might consider is this: do we really think that God is worthy of our praise? As Pastor Anthony noted, the praise of God is rooted in His character. As you read through the Psalm, note what it says about God.

Pay attention to the fact that God's concern encompasses the entire cosmos. So often we think that God is only concerned with "His people." Or we think that God is only concerned with "saving souls". Here we are reminded that God is concerned for everything that He has made. I wonder if our Christian witness is hampered because we don't care enough for "everything" God has made. Is our selfish way of living standing in the way of our witness?

The psalm might also suggest a different approach to witnessing. Many of our evangelistic methods begin with calling people to be introspective. We want them to acknowledge their sinfulness. But what if we began with God? What if we invited people to consider our God? If God is concerned with His creation, should Christians not care as well? Invitations to join us in caring, can be a way of opening spiritual conversations.

I conclude with this piece of wisdom, "If Christians praised God more, the world would doubt Him less."

Today, our Wilderness Wanderings comes from special guest, Nina Schuurman-Drenth, who is a candidate for a Masters of Divinity and for ordination in the CRC.

So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (Matthew 6:31-34)

For some us, the threat of not knowing where our next meal is going to come from is a real lived experience, but for many of us, we have never fretted over the basic necessities; they have always been available to us, and in some cases, available in excess. But here in this passage, Jesus was speaking to an agrarian community - a society that functioned around the rhythms of farm life - and unquestionably many of his listeners at that time would have had experiences with food insecurity.

Because of the distance some of us have from the experience of food insecurity, it can be hard for us to really grasp the gravity of Jesus' call here to not worry about what we will eat and drink. When he is saying here that even if you wake up one morning with a completely empty fridge and a swarm of children and a spouse to feed, there is STILL no need to worry - and there is STILL a call to remember the truth that your Father knows what you need. In other words, this is a radical call to an anxiety-free life, and to wholehearted trust that God can meet your every need.

The passage particularly urges us to not worry about tomorrow, and it is so easy to fall into the trap of fixation on the next thing. Worry about next week and the provisions of the future. We want to secure ourselves the good life in the days to come: perhaps on the house we're looking to buy, or on grades for the semester ahead; maybe we are looking ahead to the time in which we will have another child, or the spouse we've been waiting for, or the job we've had our eyes on. But Jesus invites us to lay down our worries for tomorrow because they were never ours to carry anyhow. They always belonged to someone else: to the Father who knows our every need. Anxiety, then, comes from trying in vain to grasp a future that we cannot control.

What is the alternative call then, now that our hands have been emptied of that which we cannot control? To rather "seek first the Kingdom." Anxiety is a heavy burden, an encompassing distraction that can take your eyes away from the only thing worthy of your focus: The Kingdom of God. This Kingdom - the beautiful wide new world Jesus is building for his people to live in - is the only thing worthy of our attention. Anxiety sends us to the future, when the Kingdom is unfolding in the now. Dallas Willard writes that "the emphasis is on provision today for what we need for today. This is because God is always present today, no matter which day it is. His reign is the Eternal Now."

So let's take a moment now, in this present moment, to become aware of the God who is in the now. Maybe you want to take a deep breath, feel your feet on the floor in front of you, and maybe you just want to hold your hands out in front of you.

"God, my life is not my own. My future is not my own. You are the Father who knows my every need. Thank you that I can lay down all that I cannot control into Your hands, which are strong enough to carry me."

Notes 1. Willard, 261.

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul. I will praise the Lord all my life. The Lord reigns forever, your God, O [church], for all generations. Praise the Lord! (Psalm 146:1, 2, 10).

Welcome to September! Are you excited? I expect most of us feel more trepidation than excitement. What will this month bring? What will be the results of children and youth going back to school? Let alone, adults to university and college?

We have been spending some time in the end of the book of Psalms. Its tempting to go elsewhere to mark the beginning of September and everything this month entails. However, these psalms may just offer us the exact spiritual discipline we need to navigate the raging waters that are predicted to come our way this fall.

When we think of the spiritual disciplines, what often comes to mind are prayer, scripture reading, silence, retreats. But that's a rather narrow perspective. The Bible, it seems to me, includes a more robust list. One of which is the discipline of praising God. 'Praise the Lord,' is the resounding call of these psalms. Its a discipline we ought to take up. Most often we only lift our praises when we feel like it. But these psalms do not ask us if we feel like it. They tell us to "Praise the Lord!" Just do it!

Notice how the Psalmist begins, "Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul!" Is it possible that the psalmist doesn't really feel like doing either? Thus, he has to remind himself to get to it. Just to do it! And then he makes this commitment, "I will praise the Lord all my life." This is why I say that praising God is a spiritual discipline. We need to commit ourselves to doing it, whether we want to or not.

Once upon a time, I preached a sermon on Psalm 146 in which I encouraged my listeners to be more diligent in evangelism. At first glance that may seem odd, but I think I was on the right track. The word evangelism still scares many us. We see it as something separate from the rest of our faith; something we will get to once we are ready or mature enough, or the Spirit has made us bold enough. It conjures up the image of trying to convince strangers to become Christians.

The Bible persistently gives a different slant to evangelism. The word means 'to tell a great story or news.' If our favourite sports team wins the championship, we like to tell stories of how it happened. And who hasn't heard the story of the fish that just keeps getting bigger?

The Hebrew verb for praise, HALAL, means to make a show, to boast, to rave, to celebrate, perhaps even to be clamorously foolish--an image that may offer a fair description of the exultant experience of the first Christian Pentecost. Add the Hebrew word for God to Halal and we get Hallelujah!

These psalms tell us to declare the things that God has done. That is how Israel used them. There were sung as expressions of the joy of the exiles coming home from Babylon. God had set them free. He had brought them home. The story needed to be told.

Likewise, evangelism is telling good news, stories of hope. Therefore, Psalm 146 gives helpful advice for us. Evangelism begins with a commitment to praise God. When our goal is to declare the praise of God every day, someone is bound to hear it.

It is true that some Christians have special gifts in evangelism. The church does well to send these people out as missionaries and evangelists. But all of us have the ability to tell stories about what God has done; stories about salvation in Jesus Christ.

These are the stories we ought to tell this fall. As the world seems to be heading ever deeper into chaos, we need to remember that there is a larger story: God's story. The trials that may come this fall, will be nothing compared to the glory of God's kingdom when it is all in all.

So, whatever happens, remember, "Praise the Lord, O my soul!"

Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise;his greatness no one can fathom.One generation commends your works to another;they tell of your mighty acts.They speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty—and I will meditate on your wonderful works.They tell of the power of your awesome works—and I will proclaim your great deeds.They celebrate your abundant goodnessand joyfully sing of your righteousness.(Psalm 145:3-7)

This past Sunday we witnessed a baptism in our Sunday worship service (you can check it out here). As a new child was welcomed into the family of God, two parents joined their voices to the great chorus of God's people who praise His name and tell of His mighty acts, passing on the faith to this new generation.

Perhaps you joined in that chorus too this past Sunday as you joined in the songs and scriptures that profess and proclaim our shared faith in the Lord.

What is this profession we make? Well, from this passage and the balance of Psalm 145, we hear again that God is worthy of praise simply because of who He is.

God is also worthy of praise though, because of what He has done: acting in history to call a people to Himself, redeem them in Christ, and send them out to be a blessing to the nations. All those very same things he was doing again visibly in the waters of baptism this past Sunday.

Not only does God act now, but God continues to act through His Son & Spirit to actively work in our world and lives until His work is complete in Christ's second coming, when creation is renewed, all things are set right, and God is all in all. Amen.

And so we, as those who have witnessed God's actions and who trust in Him to complete them in Christ, we are the ones who continue to profess and praise. We do it in various ways. We profess and praise God corporately as a church body in worship whether we're scattered or gathered. And we do it personally too as individuals who have seen God intervene in our own lives. There are new mercies every morning to profess and praise God for.

And these acts of praise have been rolling down through the generations. We simply stand on the profession of faith of those who have gone before and faithfully passed it on to us.

In the Apostle's Creed, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Contemporary Testimony, and our own personal testimonies of faith—generations of God's faithful people continue to commend the works of the Lord to others.

And it's important that we continue to join our voices to the chorus of not only this praise, but also this profession. We all have stories to tell of how God has acted in our lives. How he has saved, provided, challenged, pruned, and redeemed our lives in little ways across the years. Is there someone who needs to hear these stories of God's mighty acts from you?

In witnessing Baptism and the profession of faith that comes with it from the parents this past weekend, we witnessed the chorus of a generation calling out to all the others, younger and older, professing once again the mighty acts of the Lord. Will you join your voice to the chorus of profession and praise?

A special, extended Sunday Sermon edition of Wilderness Wanderings with special guest, Nina Shuurman-Drenth! The text is Matthew 23:1-39 from the New International Version of the Bible.

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: www.immanuelministries.ca

Praise the Lord! He has revealed his word to Jacob, his laws and decrees to Israel. Praise the Lord (Psalm 147:1, 19, 20).

Yesterday, Pastor Anthony reflected on this psalm with the devotion called, Hollow Praise. He reflected on Christian traditions, especially musically traditions, that do not take life in this world seriously. Life is often difficult and our worship of God ought to reflect this. Much of today's Christian music ignores the reality of long-term suffering.

A friend of mine once worshipped with a black congregation in Detroit. The congregants were mostly women and children. The men were either in gangs or in prison. Most of the service was spent in prayer: loud lamentation with weeping. Mothers and grandmothers and wives and sisters demanding that God change things so that their young boys would have spiritually healthy male role models. That is the kind of worship Jesus was talking about when he said God's worshippers' worship in spirit and truth.

There are other things worthy of reflecting on in this Psalm. Today, just verse 19, He has revealed his word to Jacob, his laws and decrees to Israel. There is a back story to this. The Israelites spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness. Think about that for a bit. Forty years in the wilderness. We've spent five months in the wilderness called COVID and we have had enough. But what is that to 40 years? What kind of songs were composed on that journey? Psalm 90 appears to have been.

Think about that trip: how many people were there? Hundreds of thousands. And animals. What's difficult to find in the wilderness? Food! The desert doesn't offer much for food. I've walked that wilderness. There is no food. No crops were planted or harvested. How could all these Israelites survive for 40 years? God fed them. Each day he provided bread! And they lived!

Israel's experience in the wilderness was all about God's provision. Though Israel often forgot this season which fashioned them into a nation, the memory kept resurfacing. God reminded them. Their composers kept referring to it as they sang new songs. God builds His people by providing for them.

Psalm 147 is part of the long tradition embedding this truth in the souls of God's people, then and now. What truth you ask? Moses explains, "Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna…to teach you that people do not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord" (Deuteronomy 8:2,3).

And so physical provision became combined with the spiritual provision of God's Word. Isaiah 55:10,11 offers this: "As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it."

So, God's provision is two-fold: physical and spiritual. We learn about one from the other.

But notice this: while in the desert, the Israelites had to gather the food and prepare it before they could eat it. Once in the promised land, they became farmers. Even though they tilled their fields and cared for their flocks, they were to recognize that God provided for them.

Likewise, our spiritual food does not simple fall into our hearts. There is work to be done to receive it. The public gathering of God's people for worship has always been an essential means for receiving that food. Ah, but the buildings have been closed.

Have you gotten hungry? Have you been wrestling with God like those black women in Detroit, asking that he would nourish their community in new ways? Have you found new ways to feed on God's word?

How has God provided for you during the past months? Our text says, Praise the Lord! He has revealed his word to Jacob, his laws and decrees to Israel (Psalm 147:1, 19). We are not Jacob or Israel. But we are God's church. He offers us His Word. Have we gone out to gather and prepare it, so we can eat? Have you gotten lazy? What has this time revealed about what's in your heart?

Another question this text asks us: how often do we praise God for his spiritual provisions? Do we eagerly reach for it? God provides, so let's eat. And then praise him for the nourishment he has provided.

Praise the Lord. How good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and fitting to praise him! The Lord builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the exiles of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name. Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit. The Lord sustains the humble but casts the wicked to the ground. (Psalm 147:1-6)

I spoke with someone recently who said something that has stuck with me. "I've listened to the Christian radio station all summer," they said, "and it ticks me off. The music is all up beat and happy all the time, even when it's singing about hard things. It just rings hollow. It's not connected at all with reality."

Indeed, Christian music of our time has buddied up to God with four chords and a chorus to "Praise the Lord with joyful songs." It doesn't dwell in the valleys. No minor keys. No dark days. Just "praise music." As if everything was good all the time.

But it's not.

Sometimes black men get shot in the back in broad daylight in front of their kids. Sometimes hurricanes hit the coast. Sometimes pandemics change our world into a fearful place of isolation. Sometimes moms and dads split up in divorce. Sometimes abuse happens. Sometimes depression smothers a life with darkness.

But these experiences get flattened into the same upbeat songs of praise on the Christian charts to a God who then begins to appear pretty well flattened himself. No depth. No grasp of evil. No connection with reality.

Psalm 147 also commands us to praise the Lord. But it takes care not to flatten God into a two-dimensional caricature of happy-clappy superficiality.

It tells us who this God is. He is a God who sees the trauma of those who have been ripped from their homes in war and exile, and he gathers them. He takes the time to see and to attend to wounds of the brokenhearted, binding up those wounds to begin the process of healing.

These are long, generational pictures of God's work of salvation in the lives of his people against the backdrop of evil.

And not only does he heal and restore, he also moves with just vengeance against the wicked—setting things right—even as he sustains the humble.

God is not a flat, superficial deity with a painted smile on a cloud, removed from reality any care about this world or our lives: he is intimately involved in understanding our darkest moments and acting in power to set things right in real lives.

But it doesn't happen over night. Wounds don't heal instantaneously. The exiles of Israel didn't return for 70 years. Sometimes our times are hard. Worthy of lament, of anger, of grief as we face the real evils and troubles of this world.

In times like those, our praise may not rise in four chords and a major key. In fact, our praise may not rise at all. We may find ourselves in a different psalm: of lament or of petition. But the hallelujah of praise is not squelched at all by a minor key. Indeed, it sometimes takes the entire Psalter of real experience lived in valleys and shadows, longings and petitions, fear and anger, before we can come back to submit ourselves in free, willful obedience to these high end notes of praise.

We experience life in three dimensions. And we must. It's there that we discover the deep contours of a powerful God who moves and acts in justice, restoration, and healing over the long years and seasons of a life. Not only the seasons of easy praise, but the seasons of hurt, injustice, and exile too.

Praise in two dimensions is hollow. But the praise of Psalm 147 lives in three, a praise that acknowledges the evil of this world and the reality of the God who meets it. How good it is to sing this kind of praise to our God.