Watchword(Job 38.19-41; Matthew 28.1-10)
My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Isaiah 56.7
Jesus entered the temple and drove out those who were selling and buying in the temple. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. Mark 11.15
Psalm 13
To the lead player, a David psalm.
How long, O LORD, will You forget me always?
How long hide Your face from me?
How long shall I cast about for counsel,
Sorrow in my heart all day?
How long will my enemy loom over me?
Regard, answer me, LORD, my God.
Light up my eyes, lest I sleep death,
Lest my enemy say, “I’ve prevailed over him,”
Lest my foes exult when I stumble.
But I in Your kindness do trust,
My heart exults in Your rescue.
Let me sing to the LORD,
For He requited me.
Psalm 13 - the shortest personal lament song in the Psalter. This song, because of its brevity, can go a long way to teaching us on faith and prayer. Can you imagine a Weds evening prayer like this?
“The psalm’s composition is guided by the radical knowledge of faith that cannot separate God from any experience of life and perseveres in construing all, including life’s worst, in terms of a relation to God. It is shaped by such a persuasion of graciousness that it refuses to see the present apart from God and cannot imagine the future apart from God’s salvation. Luther called the stance of this prayer the “state in which Hope despairs, and yet Despair hopes at the same time; and all that lives is ‘the groaning that cannot be uttered’ wherewith the Holy Spirit makes intercession for us, brooding over the waters shrouded in darkness…This no one understands who has not tasted it.” (Mays, 80)
“As the elect of God, we are not one but two. We are simultaneously the anxious, fearful, dying, historical person who cannot find God where we want God to be, and the elect with a second history, a salvation history, a life hid with Christ in God. ‘How long, LORD?’ we lament into empty space. We also say, ‘You have dealt bountifully with me.’” (Mays, 80)
Bible Reading: Romans 8: 31-39
The question is whether God is for us. Will those who believe in Jesus be a part of God’s redemption? In our great weakness, we don’t even recognize the question. In our weakness, we doubt the answer to the question. But Paul says, in the previous paragraph, that the Spirit will help us by reassuring us our God’s place in the plan that centered in giving Jesus a people.
And in this paragraph he says that the cross assures us that God’s anger has been turned away from us and there is no more condemnation. If the Father gave up the Son, will He not give us everything else?
Do we ever need this reassurance in us!
Post a Comment