BUCKET LISTS

In our times, a “bucket list” is defined as something that we want to do before a certain deadline—perhaps before we die. That's why we read about 90-year-olds tandem sky-diving or going up in a hot air balloon. Or maybe their list includes mending tattered relationships, so they can pass away with a clear conscience. In Old Testament times, the spiritual buckets required folks to render enough offerings or acts of penance in hopes they'd be forgiven their sins and get right with God. By the time of Martin Luther (early 1500s) the church had lots of money-making rules to take care of bruised consciences. And Luther had a problem with that. He felt weighed down by his sin (even as a monk—a real-life “church guy”) and didn't know if he was good enough for God.

Then one day he read Romans 1:17

Die Gerechten werden aus dem Glauben leben. “The righteous shall live by faith.”

Nothing about having to earn it. It came by faith. A gift. And from then on, he risked his life to teach what Scripture teaches, birthing the Protestant movement. And this wasn't just a New Testament concept, for in writing that, the apostle Paul had reached back into an obscure Old Testament prophet, Habakkuk (2:14), to proclaim the forward-looking truth of the mission of Jesus Christ, that “salvation” is a gift, not something earned.

Habakkuk's name means “embrace” or “ardent embrace”--which has been taken to imply “wrestler” or big-time hugger. He had “wrestled” himself with his nation's plight. The wicked, strong, proud Chaldeans were getting the upper hand and ready to overthrow the southern kingdom of Judah. God answers that yes, they will prevail, but not forever. Judgment will eventually come. Our role is to trust and obey. Yes, amid the failures of Old Testament laws, and the threats of vile enemies--the extravagant hope of a Savior.

For a lot of people, the “minor prophets” like Habakkuk are hard to understand and boring. There's so much warfare and questioning and plain old doubt. But Habakkuk, fifth to the last of the Old Testament prophets, looks toward the dawn of hope that erupts in full glory with the birth of a Savior. As he wrote, things looked very dim. Crops were failing: figs, grapes, olive. Ditto livestock. But he looked up: “The Sovereign Lord is my strength! He makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights!” (v. 3:19).

It's also the vibrant, hopeful New Testament message: Jesus died for my sins. I am forgiven. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!

Making 'Psense' of Psalms--Psalm 130: Forgiven

Part of an ongoing series on selected psalms.
Studying Psalm 130 surprised me. For years I thought it was simply about watching and waiting for God to act when I was in trouble--“more than watchmen wait for the morning.” I pictured guards on an ancient city wall, scanning the murky darkness for any signs of an enemy, wanting their long, wearying watch to end. But I don’t see Psalm 130 that way anymore. Instead, Psalm 130 is a wonderful Old Testament anticipation of New Testament redemption. It looks beyond the system of animal sacrifices to the finished work of “redemption” accomplished by Christ on the cross.  Luther called this a “Pauline Psalm” (along with Psalms 32, 51, and 142) because of its emphasis, like the apostle Paul’s teaching, on God’s grace in forgiveness apart from human works. The ex-monk’s preaching of “salvation by grace” led to the Protestant movement, which spurned the legalisms and unbiblical rituals that had crept into the historic church.

Psalm 130 is the sixth of seven penitential psalms (the others are 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143) in which the writer speaks of his sinful nature and need of forgiveness. It’s also the eleventh of fifteen psalms of “ascents,” sung by faithful pilgrims ascending the rugged Judean hills to festivals in Jerusalem. It’s also the only one that literally starts at a spiritual low point: “Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD. O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy” (vv. 1-2).  Eugene Peterson paraphrased this intense emotion in today’s language like this: “Help, God—the bottom has fallen out of my life!” (The Message). The writer is desperate. It’s not enemies lurking just beyond the walls of his life. The enemy is within: his sin. The eight verses of Psalm 130, in dealing with the sin problem, look beyond the Old Testament sacrificial system to God’s “unfailing love” in sending His sinless Son to die for our sins.

 

RECORDS OF SINS

Two four-drawer files flank my desk, full of files of articles, research, speeches, sample copies and research material.  Despite the labeled folders, I’m not sure what’s there any more. Time to clean! In his book I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Joshua Harris told of a vision—“in that place between wakefulness and dreams”—in which he was in a room with endless index-card files. The cards, bearing his own handwriting, described what he’d read, lies he’d told, friends he’d betrayed, and so on. Pulling out a card about “lustful thoughts,” he shuddered at the details, sick that such moments were recorded. He tried to pull the negative cards out to destroy them, but they wouldn’t budge. Feeling defeated and distraught, he noticed one file labeled, “People I Shared the Gospel With.” He opened it to a handful of cards.
That’s when the tears came—deep sobbing that threw him to his knees. He wanted this room locked up where nobody could see it. Then He saw Jesus, who walked up to the wall of files, and signed His name in blood-red ink over the untold millions of accusing cards. Jesus signed all in an instant, put His hand on the sinner’s shoulder, and said, “It is finished.” The person in the parable left with Jesus, to write new “life cards.”

This could be one way to picture Psalm 130:3-4:

If you, O LORD, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared.
Never could we stand before God with our mammoth pile of sins. As Paul wrote in Romans 3:10-12, citing Psalms 14 and 53:
 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.
But with Him there is forgiveness (Psalm 130:4): “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

WAITING WITH HOPE

So what is the psalmist waiting for? What is the long, dark night he hopes will end soon, so much so that he repeats, “more than the watchmen wait for the morning, more than the watchmen wait for the morning”?  It’s not forgiveness. That is granted upon confession. He isn’t waiting for his problems to go away. The problem is his sin problem. When his sins are forgiven, he realizes sin broke his fellowship with God. He is waiting for feelings to follow the fact of reconciliation. He is waiting in faith for intimacy with God to be rebuilt. And it can be, through a life changed through the help of the Holy Spirit and the guidance of Scripture.

He also realizes he’s not the only one with a sin problem who needs God’s forgiveness. He wants his fellow Israelites to know about this, too. After centuries of practicing animal sacrifices to “get right” with God, he yearns for them to go beyond the ritual to the reality of a relationship with the living God. The scripture says:

            “With the LORD is unfailing love” (v. 7b).  He doesn’t sit in Heaven with walls of “bad stuff” files. He loved us so much that He sent His Son to die for our sins in our place. It’s sacrificial
            “With him is full redemption” (v. 7c). He doesn’t merely shorten the list of burdensome offenses. It’s completely forgiven.
            “He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins (v. 8). God desires us to go forward with lives that reflect His holiness and purpose. Paul captured this truth well:

I post scripture in my work area, including
this one that was so appropriate to Psalm 130.

“But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.  For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:22-23).

 So here it is, tucked into a song that pilgrims chanted en route to the temple, the heart of animal sacrifice. Their offerings of lambs, goats or birds couldn’t give them full assurance of being right with God. There was always the nagging question: did I offer enough to cover all the wrongs I did?

Whether they realized it or not, Psalm 130 provides the answer: “with him [God] there is full redemption” (v. 7). Sometimes we have to hit the depths, bottom out, crash from our sins, before we can look up, into the face of our Redeemer.

 

Next: Psalm 133

           

Making 'Psense' of Psalms--Psalm 46: Fortress

Left:  "A Mighty Fortress."  On right, "Be Still my Soul,"
also inspired by Psalm 46.

Part of a continuing series on selected psalms.

Growing up in a liturgical church, I looked forward to the times when the majestic cadences of Martin Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress” would pour from the church organ, especially on “Reformation Sunday,” the end of October. Later, as a young adult who played occasionally for services, I learned to pull out all the powerful horn stops to accord the grandeur this song conveyed.  No wimpy “strings” or “flutes” would do for “A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing.” Yet for all the years I sang and played that hymn, I never connected the dots for its historical settings in Israel and Germany, its origins in Psalm 46, or for the personal message it offers me. I know more now, yet I have much more to discover of the depths of this magnificent psalm.

MARTIN LUTHER’S HYMN

The connection to Martin Luther happened about 500 years ago when he led the Protestant reformation, fighting the mother church over unscriptural doctrines and practices. The turning point came in October 1517, when he nailed his “95 Theses” or list of church wrongdoings to the church door in Wittenburg, Germany. Especially he was grieved by the church’s fall from the doctrine of salvation by faith.

As a religious troublemaker, Luther soon had a bounty on his head, and for a time had to go into hiding. He knew that no human fortress could fully protect him, but God could. He turned his energies to translating the Bible into common German, writing commentaries, and composing numerous hymns. He felt the church needed culturally relevant songs that taught scriptural truth. “A Mighty Fortress” was one of them. The four theories over what inspired the hymn all connect with various crises in Luther’s stance against error in the traditional church. Accomplished on flute and lute, Luther composed both lyrics and melody sometime between 1527 and 1529. Translations soon spread, including 30 into English, with Frederick Hedges' 1853 effort the most popular today.

HEZEKIAH’S “HYMN”?

The real historical background of Psalm 46 goes to the time of King Hezekiah, who came to the throne about 240 years after the death of David, and 200 years after the nation split into north and south monarchies. Hezekiah belonged to the “south” part (Judah) and was watching the northern kingdom disintegrate and fall to Assyria. Because Hezekiah was a poet as well as king, it’s quite possible he wrote this psalm to celebrate how God miraculously spared his nation from falling to Assyria. The history is told in 2 Kings 18-19, 1 Chronicles 32, and Isaiah 36-37. Basically, the Assyrians were ready to overtake Jerusalem, which unlike other great ancient cities wasn’t situated near a major river.  The Jordan is miles downhill. But Hezekiah had the foresight to cover over a spring outside the city walls, and reroute it into the city about a third of a mile through a conduit chipped out of solid rock. This gave the city critical water supplies while under siege.

The Assyrians came, taunted, threatened, and humiliated. At one point Hezekiah took the enemy’s letter to the temple, literally spreading it out before the unseen God as he pleaded for wisdom.  God answered, basically, “Trust me.” Before the enemy could attack, a death angel visited, killing the entire enemy camp.

THE HYMN: THE CRITICAL “THEREFORE”

Psalm 46 breaks into three distinct sections, with the first affirming one’s faith and setting up a worse case scenario. “God is our refuge and strength,” it begins, “an ever present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear.”  Then come descriptions of cataclysmic destruction.  The earth heaves, the mountains collapse, the seas churn. Everything seems to be falling apart. Such geographic things didn’t happen to Jerusalem in Hezekiah’s time, but the specter of death and deportation hung darkly over the city as the enemy waited. Today we know that the worst is still to come at the end of times, when the earth will convulse with prophesied destruction. Even worse things will happen than the catastrophe of “9-11”—for which Luther’s hymn was chosen to comfort a stunned, grieving nation attending or watching the national prayer service on Sept. 24, 2011. No matter what, God is our refuge and strength. He will be there for us.  And thus the section ends: Selah—a musical pause to stop, think about it.

At times, when I’ve given in to fretting and worry over negative circumstances that seem rolling out of control, I am dragged back to that truth:  God is…therefore, do not fear!  He is my inner strength.  As Charles Spurgeon once remarked, correcting a common misquote, “God helps those who cannot help themselves.”             

THE HYMN: THE CRUCIAL “WITHIN”

The “selah” gives us time to think about worst-case scenarios, then the second section flows into the psalm like a peaceful river. Verses 4 and 5 seem to allude to Hezekiah’s tunnel project to bring water into the city. There’s unmistakable spiritual analogy here, one that would culminate in Jesus’ declaration that He is the water of life (John 7:37-39). He refreshes us and sustains us spiritually like nothing else.  God was “within” Jerusalem (v. 5) just as much as He can dwell within us by faith. I cannot help but think of another river of the future: “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, down the middle of the great street of the city” (Revelation 22:1-2). Just what this really means is beyond my limited understanding. But it tells me that God will bring to completion this whole idea of a life-giving source coming from Him alone.

The comment in verse 6, “God will help her at break of day,” was literally true for Hezekiah when widespread death came to the enemy by daybreak.  I’m reminded of Psalm 30:5: “Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” Often, in our darkness, we just need time to recognize God’s hand in circumstances. Sometimes, it’s literally after a good night’s sleep.  Sometimes, it’s in the slow dawn of spiritual understanding as we crawl out of our dark times of pain and disappointment.  Thus, another “selah”—stop and think about these truths.

THE HYMN: THE CONCLUDING “COME”

These caves, pocking a basalt rock face hundreds of feet high,
 remind me of the concluding verse: "The God
of Jacob is our fortress."

“Come and see the works of the LORD,” the psalmist invites us. He pictures wars ending and the implements of war being destroyed. Yet for thousands of years we’ve had warfare and disruption throughout the earth. But that’s not God’s ultimate plan.  No wonder we’re given this counsel: “Be still, and know that I am God.”  The literal meaning of “be still” is “Take your hands off!  Relax.” Because we tend to be hands-on people who like to manage our lives, that’s hard. God is big enough and mighty enough to do what’s right. But it’s a hard lesson. We’re given a reminder of that as the psalm concludes. The writer exalts “the LORD Almighty,” also translated “the LORD of Hosts,” indicating the most holy and most powerful God of all. Then he adds: “the God of Jacob is our fortress.”  Jacob was a cheat who tried to play “god” and arrange his own circumstances. He learned to “let God be God” the hard way.  But God never gave up on him.

So it is for us. When life seems impossible, when we’re in tight places, God knows all about it.  Sometimes He allows these overwhelming circumstances to grow our faith.  But He never gives up on us, inviting us to trust Him even when there seem to be no answers. Even if death comes—and for a believer, that’s just a transition—He is still there.  John Wesley, another great reformer two centuries after Luther, was losing his voice as he lay dying. But he cried out, as his last words, a declaration from Psalm 46:11: “The best of all is, God is with us.”

Next: Psalm 51.