Psalm 63, which we prayed together this past Sunday, begins with the title, “A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah.” In his distress, driven into hiding in the wilderness, David expresses such strong love for and commitment to his Lord that Derek Kidner, author of a wonderful commentary on the Psalms, is prompted to declare, “There may be other psalms that equal this outpouring of devotion; few if any that surpass it.” In verses 1-3 David tells us where his strength comes from:
“O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
beholding your power and glory.
Because your steadfast love is better than life,
my lips will praise you.”
David desires to be with his God, he longs for him as for a dear friend; he values the love of his Father more than life! Do we know the love of our Father? Do we long for our Lord and King as for our dearest friend and best companion?
David links his longing for God and his knowledge of his love with looking upon him in the sanctuary, beholding his power and glory. Justin reminded us in his sermon on John 1:43-51 that we are fully seen and fully known—and still infinitely loved!—by our King. In this psalm, David leads us in looking upon God, an audacious move for a sinful king leading a sinful people. But as we see embodied in Jesus’ interaction with Nathaniel, God has looked on us first, has seen and loved us in the midst of our sin and human frailty. In the reading from 1 Corinthians, Paul tells us “he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1 Cor 6:17), which is a profound mystery! It must at the very least, though, give us courage to follow David in looking upon our Lord in the sanctuary, in beholding his power and glory.
And who is this King of Glory? Paul gives us a beautiful picture in his letter to the Philippians. Speaking of Christ Jesus, Paul says (Phil 2:6-11):
“[...W]ho, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Behold our God seated on his throne; Come let us adore him!
Rebekah
A Meditation on Mark 1:4-11
In hindsight, Jesus’ willingness to associate with sinners in John’s baptism (Mk. 1:9-11) should not shock us. The cross, after all, reveals how far he was willing to go in this association. He did not simply join the group and let himself be categorized with them; he actually took their sins upon his shoulders, bearing the weight of shame and guilt, and gave himself as the offering for sin. Paul goes so far as to say, “For our sake [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (II Corinthians 5:21).
We desperately need this message of grace. We need it for ourselves, because only when we realize that Christ stands fully beside us, even in our sin, will we have hope that we have been received by God. Because of Christ’s willingness to identify with us and shoulder the blame for our worst deeds, we stand secure. We also need this message of grace to train us to look at others rightly. Like Jesus, we are called to stand close to sinners (even those we dislike!), not pointing our fingers in accusation, but instead identifying with them, not ashamed to be associated with them. In doing this, we hope to draw them to the only one strong enough to bear their guilt and shame—Christ.
But Christ also will judge the sins of the world. This profound grace—Christ associating with sinners—is not a license to continue in sin or to justify sin. He calls us away from our sin and gives us the Holy Spirit to transform us into his own character. This transformation may be slower than we hope (and we need forgiveness every day in the process!), but we are still called to holiness and equipped in the Spirit to keep walking towards the Sun of Righteousness.
Some churches spend all their time talking about the call to holiness and rebuking sin where they see it, so much so that it is difficult to hear that God is patient and gracious, that Christ stands beside us in the river with compassion, and that we are truly forgiven. Others, erring in the opposite direction, so distort the message of grace that things that are actually sin are called good. We could call these two tendencies the errors of fundamentalism and the errors of liberalism (a theological, not political, use of the term!). In Martin Luther’s metaphor, we can fall off one side of the horse or the other.
The church should say “yes” to grace while still saying “yes” to holiness, because this is what Christ does. This “double yes” helps us view others rightly (Do we view our enemies as recipients of grace? Do we view our friends as called to holiness?), but it must first begin in our own lives and families. This means we must seek holiness with every fiber of our being. Yet it also means that we need not fear our failures, because Christ is more gracious than we have ever dreamed. Our hope is in Christ’s holiness, not our own (thus we rejoice that he gives us his own standing before the Father without us earning it), but we are stilled called to imitate him! In our struggle to obey God, Jesus meets us, neither excusing our sin nor rejecting our plea for mercy. Instead, he says to us in that moment, “I stand beside you in these waters, and I offer you my perfect life for your own.”
Steven+
The Feast of the Epiphany
Today (Wednesday, January 6th) is the Feast of the Epiphany. This feast celebrates God’s revelation of himself in the person of Jesus Christ to a world blinded by sin. In particular, we celebrate not only that God has revealed himself to the Jews through Jesus, but also revealed himself to the Gentiles. This is why the ordinary reading for Epiphany is the story of the Magi, who were the first Gentiles to worship Christ.
It is startling that from the very beginning, Jesus Christ received the worship of Gentiles. The disciples had a hard time with this, and it took time for the apostles to understand what it meant that salvation was not just for the Jews, even if it was from the Jews (Jn. 4:22). Acts 10 and 11 reveal Peter’s struggle to accept this, and Acts 15 is a record of the church’s wrestling with how to incorporate Gentiles. Paul calls this a “mystery” (Eph. 3:6), which demonstrates to us how amazing it was to the Jews that Gentiles, who were not recipients of the promises given to Abraham, were included in salvation.
We now take for granted that we have been included, so much so that we are rarely amazed by the fact that God has revealed himself to us. But Epiphany is our once-per-year reminder that what we take for granted is actually startling—God has revealed himself to us! We, who were blind, lost, and dead in our sins (Eph. 2:1), have been shown the “light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (II Cor. 4:6). This should bring us to our knees in wonder. God has revealed himself to us! We did not deserve it and could do nothing to accomplish it on our own, yet God has freely revealed himself to us.
Spend time this evening or tomorrow pondering what it means that God has revealed himself to you in Jesus Christ, and thank him for the ways your life has been transformed because of this revelation.
Steven+