Friday slowdown

Let's find time to worship God, to think on and praise Him for His majesty!

 

"Out of the mouths of babes"

 

Babies are indeed marvels, aren't they?

Have we ever thought about how the Lord displays His power and yes, His majesty in wee babes?

We're looking at verse two today:

From the mouth of infants and nursing babes You have established strength Because of Your adversaries, To make the enemy and the revengeful cease. (v. 2)

This is such an interesting thing that David says to us. 

Let's dig in!

David knows that in spite of all the evidence surrounding us in God's creation, there will be some who don't "get it." In spite of all God's glory that is so easy to see, there will still be adversaries who oppose God. They are much more interested in being the rulers of their own lives, don't ya know? There is just no place in their lives for a sovereign God.

Hmmmmm, I know some of the ways that God deals with enemies such as these. What is David bringing to the discussion?

Well, let's try to understand what he is saying in verse two . . .  I saw a quote on the internet that was attributed to John Calvin. He said that the "process of conception and birth of an infant displays God's splendor so clearly that even a nursing infant brings down to the ground the fury of God's enemies." Now, I don't think that in the 1560's, John Calvin knew a whole lot about the complex biological processes that take place in a mother's body as her child is conceived, develops, and is born. Calvin was simply observing the wonder of a newborn baby!

In fact, I don't see how anyone could look at a baby and say that it happened by random chance? How can they deny the Creator?

We are expecting our third grandchild to be born in October. At present, with the health issues we are working through, this is a special joy for us. The process of birth is just as special - in fact, it's amazing! Sometime around nine months after conception, the baby's brain sends a hormone through the placenta and into the mom's pituitary gland. It's a complicated chemical with an uncomplicated message: "I'm ready!" All of the baby's complex systems like the lungs, heart, nervous system and more are ready to make it on their own, outside of the womb. The bones of the baby's skull have not yet fused, so that it can be just pliable enough to pass through the birth canal, and as birth begins, the baby's adrenal glands add a shot of stress hormones, to help the baby cope with his or her delivery.

Breathing? No, not yet - if the wee babe breathed too soon, it would suffocate; if it waited too long, it would suffer brain damage. And so, there is a complex process where the baby won't breathe until it clears the birth canal. And just before the mother and child separate, the newborn gets a last boost of nutrients through the umbilical cord, nutrients that the placenta stored for that moment. 

The wonder of new life and the cry of the newborn are a testament to God's strength and power!

Another way that children show the majesty and power of God, and bewilder His enemies is by praising Him. Scholars tell us that the Greek translation of the Old Testament often translated the Hebrew word "strength" as "praise." Remember on Palm Sunday, as Jesus rode the donkey into Jerusalem? Then He healed the lame and the blind in the temple. The Bible tells us that little children saw these events and shouted praise:

But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that He had done, and the children who were shouting in the temple, "Hosanna to the Son of David," they became indignant (Matthew 21:15)

Indignant. Such a perfect word for the chief priests and the scribes. (Grin) They did not like what the children were saying, because just as the crowds had affirmed earlier, their cries of praise pointed toward Jesus' identity as the Messiah. In fact, Jesus responded to them and chided them in this way:

 “Do you hear what these children are saying?” they asked him. “Yes,” replied Jesus, “have you never read, “ ‘From the lips of children and infants you, Lord, have called forth your praise’?” (Matthew 21:16)

Can't you just see the high priests then? They must have been apoplectic! In his book, "Psalms," James Boice explains that when Jesus identified the praise of the children with Psalm 8, He validated their words and showed them to be proper. Not only that, but He interpreted their praise as directed not to a mere man, but to the "Son of David," the Messiah. They were praising God, because Psalm 8 says that God has ordained praise for Himself from children's lips. Look at this translation:

From the mouths of children and infants You have ordained praise on account of Your adversaries, to silence the enemy and avenger. (v. 2, Berean Study Bible)

And how about this one:

You have taught children and infants to tell of your strength, silencing your enemies and all who oppose you. (v. 2, New Living Translation)

Oh my. I'm sure they "got" the implication, aren't you?  To silence "enemies and all who oppose you." A not-so-subtle phrase for them to chew on.

So, the Lord displays His power and majesty, says our friend David, in seemingly weak infants and children. He overcomes His enemies by the marvel of their creation and their birth, and also silences them by the praise that they sing in their simple faith.  I guess we could summarize his point by saying that we should worship the Lord in just the same way. 

Lord, help us to praise You as we ought!

"Everything just evolved!" (Yeah, right!)

The sheer joy of it:

O Lord, our Lord,
How majestic is Your name in all the earth,
Who have displayed Your splendor above the heavens! (Psalm 8:1)

What can you say about verse one? I mean, it is like when you take a person to see the Grand Canyon, or perhaps Niagara Falls, or the California redwoods . . .  the best thing you can do to enhance their consideration of such wonders is to just get out of the way and be quiet! 

Words can't do this psalm justice!

We can (and should) worship the Lord because His name is majestic. He is majestic. What He has created is awe-inspiring.

The first word up there that is translated "Lord" is the Hebrew word, Yahweh. It was so very sacred and special to the Hebrew people that by the third century before Christ, it was considered unacceptable to utter His name. They would say "Adonai" or "Elohim" instead, since The Name was considered too holy for men and women to speak. It's actually made of four consonants....brush away your cobwebs, now, that means letters like b, c, d, t, etc. Kinda hard to say that, no? So they placed vowels in between; those are a, e, i, o, etc. Keep up now! (Grin)

Anyway, it's God's covenant name, and stems from the verb "to be" in Hebrew. The first time we have record of Yahweh being used is when God revealed it to Moses at the burning bush. 

And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And He said, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ (Exodus 3:14)

It's a beautiful name, pointing to God's eternal existence. He doesn't depend on anyone else because He is the only un-created being in the entire universe!

The second "Lord" in the verse above is the Hebrew word, "Adonai" and that means sovereign, lord, master, or ruler, depending on the context. It seems here to refer to the authority and the exalted position, the majesty of God. We could say that David is saying, "Oh eternal and covenant God, our personal ruler and sovereign!"  God is both eternal and separate from His creation, but amazingly, He has condescended to offer a covenant relationship to those who will accept His authority in their lives.

Majestic . . . the Lord displays His own majesty in the earth and the heavens. The word brings to mind snow capped peaks and yawning chasms, fields of green and growing things, those redwood trees, and thundering waterfalls, too. Perhaps Paul was thinking of this psalm when he wrote to the Romans:

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. (Romans 1:20, NASB)

And there's not just a lot of proof in our natural world; there's a lot of proof in our own bodies! There is enough evidence of a Creator to convince anyone willing to think about it that we are NOT the end result of a random process of evolution!

Our brains have ten billion (with a "B") nerve cells coordinating our functions, both voluntary and involuntary. Our eyes have over 100 million receptor cells in each retina - and that is only one layer of the five that enervate our retinas! This system of brain and eyes makes billions of calculations per second and transmits them from the optic nerve to the brain. 
Our temperature regulation? We are hardly like the reptiles, who need to regulate their body temps by sunning on rocks or staying in the shade -- our skin has more than two million little sweat glands, and that makes about three thousand of those per square inch!

Our hearts? Ah, that's the involuntary work I mentioned . . . our hearts beat an average of seventy times per minute. Some humans are in good shape and their heart beats fewer times each minute. My resting heart rate is fifty-three. (Polishes nails on shirt) Other folks may have a consistent rate of eighty or eighty-five. But do we need to tell our hearts to beat? Nope. God designed us so that our hearts are what is called involuntary muscles . . . He designed our bones, muscles, ligaments, and tendons to support us. We could go on and on, talking about our lungs, our senses, our immune system, and more. 

And yet, some people persist in saying that we evolved in a random process over many millennia. 

Yeah, right!

If we look beyond our puny selves, we see the complex balances at work in our world, with the water cycle, the photosynthesis cycle of carbon dioxide and oxygen, and more. We look beyond our own skies to see the vastness of outer space. 

But supposedly intelligent people see all of these and then attribute it all to "nature" or "random chance." Seriously?

Truly the Lord has displayed His majesty in all the earth and in the heavens!

Worship His majesty and His name!

Verses that inspire

 

This week's inspiration came from our psalm . . . . there's so much there to put us in awe and inspire us! But one verse jumped out at me, in spite of the psalm being sooooooo familiar!

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,

The moon and the stars, which You have ordained; (v. 3)

I don't know about you, but most of the time in the past, my attention went to the "You have ordained" part. But I love that the Spirit made me look at the first part this time . . . "the work of Your fingers."

Of course, God spoke things into existence. He knew what He wanted. He created what He wanted. But this verse says the heavens and the heavenly bodies are the work of His fingers! So amazing to think about!

Having had the opportunity recently to play with our granddaughters and watch them create things with what we grew up with as "play dough," I enjoyed watching their nimble fingers flatten, mound, and manipulate the different colors of "dough" into what they wanted. I hope that you won't feel it's blasphemy, but I kind of imagine God doing something similar. "The work of Your fingers...."

Wouldn't it have been fun to see Him make the sun? The planets Mars, Saturn, and more? All of the stars in the sky? I mean, honestly, where do we think we get our creative urges? We were created in His image! Just as we enjoy the play of colors and textures, so must God have enjoyed the process of "working with His fingers" to create our galaxy and others, to build the stars and planets that populate our skies!

Personally, I DON'T believe in the "Big Bang" theory. I believe in creation. And I believe in God. And I believe in (and love looking at) the work of His fingers!

It is I who made the earth
    and created mankind on it.
My own hands stretched out the heavens;
    I marshaled their starry hosts. (Isaiah 45:12)

That's a verse that inspires!

If you have been inspired by a verse or a passage recently, I hope you will comment and let us read it too!

Majesty - Psalm 8

 

This week, we will be looking at a lovely song, Psalm 8. This psalm explores a theme of God's majesty (and our puny insignificance!). But at the same time, we were created by God in His image - He graciously crowned us with a share of majesty, and He assigned us the role of ruling over His created world.

The scholars are not certain when David wrote this psalm. I kinda think that even a king (who used to be a shepherd boy) would still have enjoyed looking up at the nighttime sky. Gazing at the stars and "making pictures" with their pinpoints of light. Marveling at the vastness of the heavens and comparing that to our "littleness" here on planet earth. 

Let's enjoy David's words:

O Lord, our Lord,

How majestic is Your name in all the earth,

Who have displayed Your splendor above the heavens!

From the mouth of infants and nursing babes You have established strength

Because of Your adversaries,

To make the enemy and the revengeful cease.

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,

The moon and the stars, which You have ordained;

What is man that You take thought of him,

And the son of man that You care for him?

Yet You have made him a little lower than God,

And You crown him with glory and majesty!

You make him to rule over the works of Your hands;

You have put all things under his feet,

All sheep and oxen,

And also the beasts of the field,

The birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea,

Whatever passes through the paths of the seas.

O Lord, our Lord,

How majestic is Your name in all the earth!

I hope you will re-read and consider this psalm as we dig in, this week, and study!

Friday slowdown

 Are we physically tired? 

Dealing with stress or sickness? Trying to run on our own strength?

Are we spiritually tired? 

Is there unresolved sin keeping us from peace with Him?

Are we emotionally tired? 

Are we dealing with tears and feelings of distance from our Father?

We can turn to Him, in spite of mistakes, in spite of ourselves . . . . He loves us.

Emotionally tired

David reveals in verses six and seven that he is struggling emotionally, as well. 

I am weary with my sighing;

Every night I make my bed swim,

I dissolve my couch with my tears. My eye has wasted away with grief;

It has become old because of all my adversaries. (Psalm 6:6-7)

David's physical tiredness may have been sickness or stress; his spiritual tiredness was because of his sin and his feeling that God was distant from him; now we read that he can't sleep because he is overwhelmed with grief. He could not sleep because he couldn't stop crying -- he couldn't stop crying because he knew that he had sinned against God. God had been so good to him, and been so close to him . . . . now he had the perception that his sin had alienated him from his merciful God. He has the feeling that there's a gap between him and God (at least in his mind there is) and he wants it to be like the closeness of old.

I kinda think that from verse seven we can imagine that David's eyes are puffy and red. They are irritated because he is wiping the tears away so much. His eyes are "wasted" with grief he says. We've been told that the Christian life is a life of joy. Yes, it is. But it can also be a life of tears. Solomon was a wise, wise man, and he said "there is a time for tears."

Did you know that tears are actually physically beneficial to us? They are our body's "pop off valve" for stress, sadness, grief, and frustration. Tears protect our eyes with lubrication and remove irritants and excess hormones.  Tears are spiritually beneficial, too. We shed tears of joy when we are fellowshipping with our Father; we shed tears of sadness for lost people. We shed tears when we reach the space that David found himself in, where we are spiritually and emotionally broken and need the healing touch of God. 

This was a difficult time for David, but he definitely "learned his lesson," just as we have to do sometimes. 

As Christians, we will have times of emotional struggle, too. When we lose a friend or a loved one and miss them. When we feel the aches and pains of growing old, and we think back on our lives -- what has changed, and what we'd like to change. There will be times when we, just like David, fail spiritually and then emotionally struggle because we feel we have let God down.

No matter what it is we are struggling with, and no matter how tired we are emotionally, our emotions were given to us when God created us. That means that He can also deliver us from those emotions and the fatigue and tears that we experience. Just like David, the king of the Hebrews, we can turn to God and He will take our tears away.

There were people who were pleased with the fact that David was down in the dumps. There were people who were pleased when he sinned and messed up. The devil thought he had won the battle, and David's earthly foes were happy to point fingers and mock him.

But in verses 8-10, David has a whole new attitude!

Depart from me, all you who do iniquity,

For the Lord has heard the voice of my weeping.

The Lord has heard my supplication,

The Lord receives my prayer.

All my enemies will be ashamed and greatly dismayed;

They shall turn back, they will suddenly be ashamed. (Psalm 6:8-10)

David addresses his enemies with confidence. He understood that his enemies were not there to support him, and that they were probably happy dancing because he was in despair. But David looked to God and he felt Him pull him back to a right relationship. He says he is no longer troubled, but that his enemies will be ashamed and troubled.

Why? Because they would not turn to God in repentance, as David did. They were not interested in having a close relationship with God. They were living shameful lifestyles and lives of sin - and David knows that unless they turn to God, He will not be with them. In the last part of verse ten, though, David says he hopes they will turn to God -- "they shall turn back" means "turn to God." David doesn't want his enemies to perish, but to come to God.

We can see that no matter how tired we are, and no matter how hard the devil is pushing us, there is hope. No matter how physically tired, or spiritually tired, or emotionally tired we are, there is hope in Christ. We can do as David did: turn to Him, rely on His lovingkindness, and He will restore us. He will bring us through. He will bring us home.

I've heard several renditions of this story; one of the singers of the Kingsmen Quartet used to tell it, and other teachers have used it, too. 

An evangelist was making his way home on a train. He sat down beside a young man, and after a while he noticed tears in his eyes. The minister asked if there was anything he could do to help him. The young man said "Preacher, two years ago I got so mean at home that my mom and dad couldn't do anything with me. But one day I even went so far as to strike my father with my fist. He told me then, 'Son, I hate to do it. It's going to break your momma's heart. But we want you to just get away from here--just leave this house.'" The young man had wandered the country for some time and 3 weeks earlier he gave his heart and life to Jesus. He wrote a letter to his parents and told them he would be coming through on that old train. He wasn't sure that he would be welcomed home, so he told his parents to hang a little white rag on top of the apple tree in their yard as a signal that he was forgiven. If there was no rag in the tree he would remain on the train. As they approached his home the young man asked the preacher to look and see if there was a white rag in that old apple tree. The preacher looked and said, "Son, you can relax. That apple tree is in full bloom! I never saw so many white rags tied on anything in all of my life. And that's not all. Out under the apple tree I see that grey haired old Mom and Dad standing out there waving a big white bed sheet saying 'Come home son. Welcome home. We love you."

The "moral" of the story is obvious -- our heavenly Father is just like that man's parents. No matter how far we've gone; no matter what we've done; no matter how long we've been away . . . . . it we will humbly ask His forgiveness, He will welcome us back home.

Who is a God like you,
    who pardons sin and forgives the transgression
    of the remnant of his inheritance?
You do not stay angry forever
    but delight to show mercy. (Micah 7:18)

Amen!