Psalm 18:1-24
Posted on June 11th, 2008
An awesome, humbling portrait of one man’s experience of God’s salvation. There’s a picture of the sufficiency and security of God for salvation at the beginning, then David expresses his immense need for help. He was at the point of death, with nothing in view to save him from his certain destruction. He then describes God’s passion for desiring to help David, to save him from his troubles. The anger and emotion attributed to God as He leaves heaven to descend to earth and care for the one He loves is inspiring for anyone who has been in the depths and wonders if there is any who loves me, any who cares whether I exist: God cares.
Verses 16-19 describe the actual salvation that David experienced. It is entirely God’s doing. David’s enemy had no hope of stopping God’s plan to save David. And there was nothing that David did of his own that saved him. God plucked him from his misery. God saved. Sounds like Paul’s salvation by grace through faith. As the hymn writer says, “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling.”
The last set of verses, 20-24, are a struggle for me, though. There David says that God dealth with him according to David’s righteousness, and that he had upheld God’s statutes – there was no fault on him. Where does this righteousness come from? Is it a righteousness credited to David somewhere along the way, as Genesis 15 says that righteousness was credited to Abraham? Is it akin to the righteousness we have by means of the blood of Jesus?
Since finishing Jerry Bridges’ The Pursuit of Holiness, I have been struggling with this – and the Bible passages I’m reading seem to keep bringing it up. What is my role? David could say he was blameless before God. I cannot do the same. Yet, I believe that Christ’s work is sufficient for my sin, that there is nothing that I can do other than bring what Isaiah called “filthy rags.” I feel a calling to live a holier life, and I struggle with the areas I know fall short that I cannot seem to change.
Pray for me. And I’ll be praying for you.
Tags: grace, holiness, Psalms, righteousness, salvation, sin
Filed under Life, Old Testament, Ponderings | 1 Comment »
Moses
Posted on April 30th, 2008
I was reading today’s e-mail devotional from Back to the Bible, from the devotional by Theodore Epp called Strength for the Journey. I haven’t really been enjoying this devotional, but I also haven’t taken the time to unsubscribe yet. I much prefer the Powered by 4 that I mention here. But today’s entry may change that.
It is titled “Train a Child; Affect the World” and the Scripture passage is Exodus 2:1-15. It’s about Moses being reared by his own mother in Pharaoh’s household. The line that gets me is this:
It was doubtlessly under his mother’s care that Moses trusted God for his salvation.
Pardon me? People in the Old Testament knew about trusting God for salvation? This is the guy who spent the first 40 years of his life as an Egyptian prince and the next forty years as a fugitive desert sheepherder for his father-in-law. It wasn’t until God encountered Moses in a burning bush – God being the actor here – that Moses’ life really took a dramatic turn. And he didn’t exactly leap at the opportunity to follow and serve God – he demanded a surrogate speaker from the God who can burn a bush without consuming it! That doesn’t exactly sound like “trusting for salvation” to me.
And I think the last forty years of Moses’ life had a lot more to do with the burning bush, ten plagues, divided sea, hand-carved commandment stones, rock-struck streams, and face-to-face conversations with a God who left his face glowing so much he needed a veil than anything from the first eighty years of his life. I think his mother’s rearing probably had a lot to do with his murdering an Egyptian guard at 40…..but personal trust in God as his Savior? That’s way too AD twentieth-century evangelistic crusade for me to believe it had anything to do with Moses’ spiritual life.
Besides, God, especially in the Old Testament, seems much more concerned with people groups (families, tribes, and nations) than with particular individuals apart from those groups.
Just my own thoughts and reactions.
Tags: God, Old Testament, salvation, theology
Filed under Church & Theology, Life, Old Testament | No Comments »
Bethel
Posted on April 29th, 2008
Today’s Scripture is from Genesis 28, when God introduces himself to Jacob for the first time and promises to fulfill the covenant He made with Abraham and Isaac through Jacob. The devotional thought that came with the text suggested that this is Jacob’s first encounter with God. I don’t know that I buy that – probably the first encounter with God of this kind, but probably not his first encounter, having grown up as the grandson of Abraham and son of Isaac. Perhaps the first personal encounter? Maybe that’s what the editor meant.
In any event, the thought went on to ask the question about the reader’s own first encounter with God. What was it like? Jacob set up conditions (“If God does this, then I will do this”), but also set up the altar that he called Bethel (“House or Dwelling Place of God”).
I don’t know if I remember my first encounter with God. In fact, I’m sure that I do not. I remember when a tropical storm (or minimal hurricane, not sure which) went over the house we were living in on the Gulf Coast, and Mom gathered us in her bedroom and prayed to God to protect us. I was young then, maybe four or five. We were fine, as was our house. Is that an encounter with God? I remember flickers of what I call my salvation experience…being in my parents’ bedroom, talking with our church’s pastor, being baptized. Is that my first encounter? I can look back and clearly see places and times where God guided me, protected me, steered me, put me in the precisely right place at the precisely right time. Are any of these my first encounter? I remember as a senior in high school, ten years after that time in my parents’ bedroom, pacing up and down the street in front of our house, trying to figure out what to do with my life (so that I could finish my college application – singular – by writing down a major), and having the assurance that I would be in full time ministry. Without a doubt. Though I had no clue what that looked like (pastor? missionary? professor?). Just that ministry was it. Because I was 18, it’s probably the most vivid encounter with God that I can remember. But I wouldn’t call it my first encounter.
I guess my first encounter came before memories started sticking in my brain. Probably my mother singing to me or praying over me (or for me, in another room). I do know that my life is different from the lives of others in the world who have not encountered God in a significant way. While I often take detours down the paths of consumerism and commercialism and materialism, I’m always drawn back. Jacob was a conniving liar who stole from his twin brother and spent the remainder of his life cowering from him, but God still chose him and always drew him back into His plan.
Sometimes I wish I had a dramatic instant-change testimony like I sometimes hear at meetings or conferences or read about in books. But then I count myself lucky that my encounter with God is lifelong, ever present. I have, at times, flirted with doubts about God’s existence or providence, but never for long. He is always with me. Just like God promised to always be with Abraham, with Isaac, with Jacob, with their descendants. He is always with me.
That’s my Bethel.
Tags: God, Life, salvation
Filed under Life, Ponderings, Reflections | No Comments »