Partakers Christian Podcasts

Psalm 91

1 He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
2 I will say of Yahweh, "He is my refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust."
3 For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler, and from the deadly pestilence.
4 He will cover you with his feathers. Under his wings you will take refuge. His faithfulness is your shield and rampart.

5 You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day;
6 nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness, nor of the destruction that wastes at noonday.
7 A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; but it will not come near you.
8 You will only look with your eyes, and see the recompense of the wicked.

9 Because you have made Yahweh your refuge, and the Most High your dwelling place,
10 no evil shall happen to you, neither shall any plague come near your dwelling.
11 For he will put his angels in charge of you, to guard you in all your ways.
12 They will bear you up in their hands, so that you won't dash your foot against a stone.
 
13 You will tread on the lion and cobra. You will trample the young lion and the serpent underfoot.
14 "Because he has set his love on me, therefore I will deliver him. I will set him on high, because he has known my name.
15 He will call on me, and I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble. I will deliver him, and honor him.
16 I will satisfy him with long life, and show him my salvation."

 

Right mouse click or tap here to save/download this Psalm as a MP3 file

Chapter 9: In A Time Of Great Changes - Part 1

It so happens that we live in a time of great cultural change all round the world, which doesn’t make Christian life any easier for us! I think we should think a bit about what those changes are and some of the implications for the Christian. This is going to take 2 studies to do; there are 2 main changes occurring which, to a greater or lesser extent, are affecting people all over the world. One of them is philosophical; the other is technological.

This study looks at the philosophical changes and some of their implications. The next study will look at the technological changes and try to say some useful things about the effects of the double whammy of the 2 of them together.

First then the philosophical changes. They have their roots in the Europe of the 17th century, some 300+ years ago. They were in part at least an inevitable result of the Reformation of 150 years earlier than that when the complete control of Christian thinking exercised by the Catholic church was partly broken into many pieces in the Protestant churches.

These changes are still a well-hidden but very strong influence on Europe and America, and through them on all the rest of the world. What happened, in very broad outline, was something like this: in those far off days the people of Europe started to query the idea that had pervaded the thinking world up to that time that God had the primary role in everything that happened and humans had little or no part to play in such things. They thought everything that happened was a matter of what God decided should happen. Then they started to think that we, men and women, could determine what happens by applying our brains to our observations of what goes on in the world we live in. If a great wave comes out of the sea and destroys seashore towns, killing many people, this is not because God decreed that this should happen in any immediate sort of way but because a great segment of the earth’s crust underneath the sea shifted, causing an earthquake, which, in turn, caused a tsunami. We know things like that because many people over many years have observed the things that happen in the world around us, thought about what they have seen, and drawn certain conclusions, most of them, but not all of them, correct as far as we can see. Of course, this raised the problem of evil – how could such things happen in a world of a good God.

The next step was to think that if we can understand so much of what goes on round about us then surely we can understand new things and start to organize the world better. All sorts of things happened as a result of that line of thinking. On the technological front much good was achieved. For instance, in the world of travel and transport across land first there were canals, then railways, then road vehicles, finally airplanes. In every other area of life there have been similar advances and we all enjoy the results of the inventions of these last few centuries.

Then in the 19th and 20th centuries some thought that we ought to be able to organize ourselves better, just as we can organize the machinery better (particularly if the people so thinking were in charge!). Nazi and Communist thinking were the right wing and left wing results of that line of thinking. Surely they thought, after a little initial trouble we, or some of us anyway, ought to be able to settle down to a better way of living. But they had forgotten that there is such a thing as sin, which affects all that we, individually and collectively, set out to do. Those experiments failed dismally at the cost of millions of lives. That basic reason why they failed, ‘sin’, was not understood then and is still not understood and taken into account by those who control nations. Now we have religious zealots thinking they can reorganize things into a much better shape by following their versions of a religion. They will fail for exactly the same reason.

Nowadays the thinkers of the West reckon that all those highly structured ways of thinking have failed so the only other thing that can be tried is to let everyone just be themselves, without rules and regulations. They think we are now good enough at things so we ought to be able to organize ourselves individually even if we make a mess of it collectively. So we have what is known as post-modernism, a curious title, which only says that this has come after modernism, the era of so much practical progress. In this, they thought, the individual, man or woman, ought to be, and is, quite capable of making their own decisions without any need of God or gods. The result of this line of thinking in the West is seen most clearly in the way man/woman relationships are now run. A lot of people do not now get married, preferring a loose ‘relationship’ instead. The obvious idea behind this development is the desire of each individual to keep complete control of his or her own life with no need to consult a husband or a wife or one’s children before taking the next, personally desirable, step. As yet the parts of the world where family life has long been stronger and there is a much less individualistic way of thinking have survived this particular change better than the West, but because of the current dominance of Western thinking over all the world they are moving in the same direction. This move from a collective way of thinking to a highly individualistic one in which only the personal “I” matters to the individual is the first great change we are now living through. Since it is about how people think the world should be organized I have labeled this a “philosophic” change.

So what?

Without doubt we are living, and have to live out our faith, in a time of enormous cultural change occurring with a rapidity seldom if ever matched in all recorded history. How should we react?

We must resist the tendency to an extreme individuality. Let me explain. This cultural change in our societies is addressed in scripture. The biblical record is neither completely for a corporatist culture (corporate means we all live in a tightly structured community) in which we lose our own identity in that of the group, nor is it completely for the sort of extreme individualism that is creeping through so many societies today. Right back as early as Genesis 2 we read that a man is to leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they become one flesh. They are to form what we call a nuclear family, not a vast extended family with grandmother ruling over daughter-in-law. This is an individualistic teaching. Many cultures break this rule.

On the other hand the 5th commandment says, ““Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you”. That is a corporatist and anti-individualistic teaching. There is a subtle balance required there.

The New Testament is similarly balanced. On the one hand we read that Jesus “saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John working in a boat. Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.” Zebedee was very probably not best pleased if his 2 sons took this decision without consulting him as they appear to have done. But as Jesus hung on the Cross when he “saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.” This is again a careful balance between when the demands of the Kingdom of God are more important than family concerns and when family must come first. Throughout the New Testament letters it is very clear that the new Christians were strongly encouraged to think about each other, support each other, pray for each other and care for each other. We are clearly to be individuals in community.

We are not to be covenant breakers. The idea of God as a covenant-keeping God goes right back to the early chapters of Genesis. God made a covenant with Noah that he would never again cause a great flood “to destroy all life”. He also made a covenant with Abraham, renewed it with is descendants, and later through Moses with the people of Israel. Each of these covenants was an unbreakable promise – unbroken by God although sometimes disastrously broken by the humans involved. Hosea says, “An eagle is over the house of the Lord because the people have broken my covenant and rebelled against my law.” The eagle was a carrion eating bird looking for dead meat! That refers to the Old Testament situation but it applies to us. If we seek to follow a covenant-keeping God we too have to be covenant keepers. That particularly applies in the matter of marriage.

Whatever our culture says about our rights as individuals to do more or less what we want, provided we do not hurt other people, we need to hold to the Biblical principle of the importance of every person, that we should only speak the truth to them and that we are to care very specially for the household of faith.

That is what the New Testament means when it talks about love.

Click or Tap here to listen to or save this as an audio mp3 file~

 

The normal (Christian) journey of faith

Chapter 8: The work of the Spirit

One thing that may be puzzling you is talk about who or what is the Holy Spirit. In fact he is a person so that should be ‘who’. There has been a huge increase in interest in how He works, What He does, and indeed What He is and means in the last 100 years. Not everything that has been said and written about Him is true to the Bible so we ought to look hard at what it says and thus sort out what is right and what is wrong.

First we need to look at what Jesus said, particularly in His great teaching address to the disciples on the night before He was crucified, about Him and His work. He began by telling them that He, the Holy Spirit, would be with them – and us, for ever. In John 14:16,17 He says, “the Father will give you another advocate to Help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth.”
Jesus was the first advocate, a legal term for someone speaking on one’s behalf in a court of law. The Greek word here is tricky so it has been translated in many different ways; the main ones in English being: Comforter, Counselor, Helper or Friend. If you put them all together you will get something of the force of what Jesus was saying. He goes on to say in John 15:26, “When the Advocate comes, Whom I will send to you from the Father —the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—He will testify about me”. And in John 16:7–14, “I will send him to you. When He comes, He will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgement: about sin, because people do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and about judgement, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.

I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; He will speak only what He Hears, and He will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that He will receive what He will make known to you.” The first part of that is quite difficult to understand but the second part is clear – the work of the Holy Spirit in the first part is to tell the world, everybody, the truth about spiritual matters and the second part is to inform us very particularly about Jesus. Above all the Spirit is a teacher.

Secondly, Paul talks about the Spirit as the motivating and driving force behind all that the Christian does. So He says in Romans 8:2–6, “through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us - that is you and me - who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on What the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace” and he goes on to say in verse 9, “You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ”. In 1 Corinthians 2:10 he says “The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.” The summary of all he means by these things is found in Galatians 5: 25 where He instructs us “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit”.

To summarize all that: as I said at the beginning the Spirit is the motivating and driving force behind all that the Christian does of a spiritual nature. He is also the informing source of all spiritual knowledge. It explains why it is a common experience that someone will hear many a sermon and talk about the faith and it makes no sort of sense until one day they become a Christian and it all suddenly makes perfect sense. That is the work of the Spirit flooding into the thinking, and the life, of the new convert.

The third work of the Spirit is to divide out amongst the believers in any fellowship, however small that fellowship may be, the different gifts that they need to carry out the work of “making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you”. Paul says in Romans 12:6–8, “We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.” These are wonderful gifts both for the community of believers and for the wider community in which they live.

The fourth work of the Holy Spirit is in evangelism. John’s record of the life of Jesus says that in his first meeting with all the disciples after his resurrection Jesus said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven”. That is both a tremendous privilege and a tremendous responsibility. This charge was given originally to the small group of disciples but it is valid for us too, as all John’s statements were designed for his own local church fellowship and thus for the wider church. It is our responsibility to asses the relationship of those outside faith to their sins and to the only one who can forgive sins and thus to call them into the Kingdom, or not.

The fifth work of the Spirit is in leading the Lord’s people in worship. Paul lists gifts that make this possible in 1 Corinthians 12:7–11 as follows: “Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and He distributes them to each one, just as He determines”.
Those were the gifts of Paul’s day but we can add more for our day. For instance some now have the gift of leading worship with a guitar or a keyboard or other musical instrument. That is not a matter of simply being able to play the tune. Sometimes technically highly competent musicians lack the gift of leading a congregation well while someone, technically less proficient, can lead the worship in a wonderfully God honouring way. That is a Spirit given gift.
Paul tells us to, “eagerly desire the greater gifts.” But goes on to say, “I will show you the most excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal,” as a warning about being too concerned with such things. And that warning is very necessary these days.
There has been a great upsurge in interest in the more startling gifts of the Spirit in recent years. This is particularly true of speaking in tongues and the interpretation of them. Churches vary enormously in their attitudes to speaking in tongues. Some do not expect them to be used at all; others sometimes go so far as demanding them of every convert as the sign of true conversion even although Paul has made it plain that they are a gift for some – not for all.
I come from the former background so I am very wary of them – excuse my bias. This I would say: be careful. If you are in an environment where there is great excitement about tongues ask yourself ‘am I excited because I am in a big crowd of people who are all very excited, or am I excited because I am in the near presence of the Lord himself’. There is a difference!

So What?

As a Christian, the Holy Spirit is the Lord’s gift to you at the time of your conversion. Expect to have him teach you about Jesus, to be a strong active presence in your life, to grant you a gift, or some gifts, for the building up of the fellowship you are in and to grant you some gifts for the enrichment of your own spiritual life. As you develop these things in your life you will find that you can be truly said to be walking in step with the very Spirit of God himself. Enjoy!

Click or Tap here to listen to or save this as an audio mp3 file~

You can now purchase our books!

Please do click here to visit our Amazon site!

Psalm 78

A maskil of Asaph.
¹ O my people, hear my teaching;
listen to the words of my mouth.
² I will open my mouth in parables,
I will utter hidden things, things from of old-
³ what we have heard and known, what our fathers have told us.
⁴ We will not hide them from their children;
we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD,
his power, and the wonders he has done.
⁵ He decreed statutes for Jacob and established the law in Israel,
which he commanded our forefathers to teach their children,
⁶ so the next generation would know them,
even the children yet to be born,
and they in turn would tell their children.
⁷ Then they would put their trust in God
and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands.
⁸ They would not be like their forefathers- a stubborn and rebellious generation,
whose hearts were not loyal to God, whose spirits were not faithful to him.
⁹ The men of Ephraim, though armed with bows,
turned back on the day of battle;
¹⁰ they did not keep God's covenant and refused to live by his law.

¹¹ They forgot what he had done, the wonders he had shown them.
¹² He did miracles in the sight of their fathers in the land of Egypt, in the region of Zoan.
¹³ He divided the sea and led them through; he made the water stand firm like a wall.
¹⁴ He guided them with the cloud by day and with light from the fire all night.
¹⁵ He split the rocks in the desert and gave them water as abundant as the seas;
¹⁶ he brought streams out of a rocky crag and made water flow down like rivers.
¹⁷ But they continued to sin against him, rebelling in the desert against the Most High.
¹⁸ They willfully put God to the test by demanding the food they craved.
¹⁹ They spoke against God, saying, "Can God spread a table in the desert?
²⁰ When he struck the rock, water gushed out, and streams flowed abundantly. But can he also give us food? Can he supply meat for his people?"
²¹ When the LORD heard them, he was very angry; his fire broke out against Jacob, and his wrath rose against Israel,
²² for they did not believe in God or trust in his deliverance.
²³ Yet he gave a command to the skies above and opened the doors of the heavens;
²⁴ he rained down manna for the people to eat, he gave them the grain of heaven.
²⁵ Men ate the bread of angels; he sent them all the food they could eat.
²⁶ He let loose the east wind from the heavens and led forth the south wind by his power.
²⁷ He rained meat down on them like dust, flying birds like sand on the seashore.
²⁸ He made them come down inside their camp, all around their tents.
²⁹ They ate till they had more than enough, for he had given them what they craved.
³⁰ But before they turned from the food they craved, even while it was still in their mouths,
³¹ God's anger rose against them;
he put to death the sturdiest among them, cutting down the young men of Israel.
³² In spite of all this, they kept on sinning; in spite of his wonders, they did not believe.
³³ So he ended their days in futility and their years in terror.
³⁴ Whenever God slew them, they would seek him; they eagerly turned to him again.
³⁵ They remembered that God was their Rock, that God Most High was their Redeemer.
³⁶ But then they would flatter him with their mouths, lying to him with their tongues;
³⁷ their hearts were not loyal to him, they were not faithful to his covenant.
³⁸ Yet he was merciful; he forgave their iniquities and did not destroy them.
Time after time he restrained his anger and did not stir up his full wrath.
³⁹ He remembered that they were but flesh, a passing breeze that does not return.
⁴⁰ How often they rebelled against him in the desert and grieved him in the wasteland!
⁴¹ Again and again they put God to the test; they vexed the Holy One of Israel.
⁴² They did not remember his power- the day he redeemed them from the oppressor,
⁴³ the day he displayed his miraculous signs in Egypt, his wonders in the region of Zoan.
⁴⁴ He turned their rivers to blood; they could not drink from their streams.
⁴⁵ He sent swarms of flies that devoured them, and frogs that devastated them.
⁴⁶ He gave their crops to the grasshopper, their produce to the locust.
⁴⁷ He destroyed their vines with hail and their sycamore-figs with sleet.
⁴⁸ He gave over their cattle to the hail, their livestock to bolts of lightning.
⁴⁹ He unleashed against them his hot anger, his wrath, indignation and hostility- a band of destroying angels.
⁵⁰ He prepared a path for his anger; he did not spare them from death but gave them over to the plague.
⁵¹ He struck down all the firstborn of Egypt, the firstfruits of manhood in the tents of Ham.
⁵² But he brought his people out like a flock; he led them like sheep through the desert.
⁵³ He guided them safely, so they were unafraid; but the sea engulfed their enemies.
⁵⁴ Thus he brought them to the border of his holy land, to the hill country his right hand had taken.
⁵⁵ He drove out nations before them and allotted their lands to them as an inheritance; he settled the tribes of Israel in their homes.
⁵⁶ But they put God to the test and rebelled against the Most High; they did not keep his statutes.
⁵⁷ Like their fathers they were disloyal and faithless, as unreliable as a faulty bow.
⁵⁸ They angered him with their high places; they aroused his jealousy with their idols.
⁵⁹ When God heard them, he was very angry; he rejected Israel completely.
⁶⁰ He abandoned the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent he had set up among men.
⁶¹ He sent the ark of his might into captivity, his splendor into the hands of the enemy.
⁶² He gave his people over to the sword; he was very angry with his inheritance.
⁶³ Fire consumed their young men, and their maidens had no wedding songs;
⁶⁴ their priests were put to the sword, and their widows could not weep.
⁶⁵ Then the Lord awoke as from sleep, as a man wakes from the stupor of wine.
⁶⁶ He beat back his enemies; he put them to everlasting shame.
⁶⁷ Then he rejected the tents of Joseph, he did not choose the tribe of Ephraim;
⁶⁸ but he chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion, which he loved.
⁶⁹ He built his sanctuary like the heights, like the earth that he established forever.
⁷⁰ He chose David his servant and took him from the sheep pens;
⁷¹ from tending the sheep he brought him to be the shepherd of his people Jacob, of Israel his inheritance.
⁷² And David shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skillful hands he led them.

Click or Tap here to listen to or save this as an audio mp3 file

 

The normal (Christian) journey of faith

Chapter 7: Organizing Your Devotions

This is a tricky one! It is very much a product of my own experience – failing to organize my own devotions for many years because no one told me how to do it. So it is a very personal argument I am going to present. Please, forgive me for that.

When we start along the Christian path there are plenty of people telling us how we should organize our devotions. The trouble is, or was for me, that they all seem to be written by those wonderful people who are full of energy all day long and have a great ability to organize that energy to good purpose. So they tell us we should bound out of bed at some unearthly hour in the morning; read our Bibles, and pray for an hour or preferably two; then proceed to breakfast and a full day’s work. Waaah! I just don’t operate like that. Perhaps you don’t either. Until I have had my breakfast my mind is out of gear. For you that early necessity may be the first cup of coffee – even worse! We are not all super-man or super-woman, are we?

So, if we are just ordinary, how should we organize our devotional lives?

I believe the answer is that we should think about it very carefully and construct a schedule that suits us in the sense that it is one that we can adhere to without too great difficulty even if it is not at all what the people who write books and articles on the subject say we should do.

Let me give you an example: I had been a Christian for very many years before I realized that by far the best thing I could do was to set aside one evening a week to spend reading my Bible, reading a good commentary on the same passage, thinking about it (the posh word is meditating), praying about all sorts of things and generally getting close to the Lord. The rest of the week my encounters with the Lord were, I must admit, rather thin and short affairs, fitted into the gaps in my very busy life. Sorry, Lord, but that is what worked for me. I was happy with it; I hope You were.

Do you see what I am driving at? Most of us, most of the time, are rather busy people. It may be a workload, not helped by emails and mobile phones. It may be that you are a mother with two pre-school age kids, in which case there are few or no gaps in your days at all until they are both horizontal and your spouse is home and has eaten. Even then you have to dodge the television and bury the phone if you are to get any peace and quiet. But space can be made if you stop and think about how it can be created. However busy we may think we are, however busy we actually are, there are gaps in our week. Your television set will be able to tell you how much spare time you really have!

The sort of personality we are deeply affects how we operate in this area. A few years ago we joined in a small group of 8 people, 4 couples, for prayer and mutual support. We managed to get into some deeper sharing than is usual in our culture. To our surprise we discovered that of the 8 of us, all of whom could have been counted as senior Christians, long on the road of faith, only 2 could claim anything like a well organized spiritual life with daily prayer, Bible reading and meditation. Both these 2, who did not include me, were people who quite clearly by the nature of their work were accustomed to a neat, well controlled and organized daily work experience and both had personalities that fitted well into that sort of situation. The other 6 of us were much more haphazard in our spiritual lives. 8 people constitutes a very small sample from which no statistically sound conclusions can be drawn, but it made me, and I think the other 5 non-achievers, wonder.

A good, God honouring daily prayer life does not come easily. Ever since that experience of the 2 and the 6 I have wondered when people talk about praying for this and that, whether they really do – if they are honest.

So much for the organization side of things. Now – what should we organize? Here are some ideas, not all of which you could reasonably use in one session. First: Bible reading. I am surprised at how many apparently senior Christians use comparatively ‘thin’ Bible study notes. They are a good way to start into the Bible (along with the Study Bible I mentioned earlier) but must surely rate as the ‘milk’ Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 3 and the ‘basic teaching’ the writer to the Hebrews talks about in Hebrews 6. Commentaries on the Bible will usually provide deeper things to think about and meditate on. We, my wife and I, find the NIV Application Commentary series very good in the way they not only explain the text but lead one’s thoughts forward to deeper understanding and meditation – all of which advice is dependant, of course, on whether you are in a position to get hold of them. Then, of course, there is all the material Dave puts into these Partaker notes, which are usually also deep and thought provoking (this particular series is not designed to do quite that) and will be available to you since you are reading this!

For prayer, again subject to availability, there are many sets of Prayer Notes provided by many of the mission societies and some churches and it is good to use them. My wife uses a book of fairly old hymns to lead her on in the way of Worship prayer and to avoid the temptation to make a time of prayer just a list of the things one would like to happen. Being a well organized person she has a bundle of Prayer Letters from various full-time workers on the Mission field and she reads and uses the top one of these each day before putting it to the back of the bundle.

So what?

It should be obvious by now that there are many things one can do by way of prayer. I haven’t mentioned things like the way some people say they pray as they drive the car to work (not for me!). There is great value in having one particular spot, a chair or a room, which is the place we pray. If closing your eyes to pray tempts you to go to sleep leave them open! You will have understood by now that what I am trying to do is to make you, and everybody else reading or listening to these notes, think about how you should go about your relationship with the Lord. There are many different ways of going about it and not everyone will use every way or the same way. We don’t all have the same amount of time or energy or the same sort of personality. There is no exact precise set of rules about how we should go about it in our Christian faith, unlike some other religions that make a great play about having everyone do the exact same things in the exact same way at the exact same times. Perhaps our way is harder – but true faith in the Lord Jesus Christ was never promised to be easy! And it shows up much more clearly what our faith means to us.

Click or Tap here to listen to or save this as an audio mp3 file~

You can now purchase our books!

Please do click here to visit our Amazon site

Psalm 132

 

A song for pilgrims ascending to Jerusalem.

¹ Lord, remember David

and all that he suffered.

² He made a solemn promise to the Lord.

He vowed to the Mighty One of Israel,

³ "I will not go home;

I will not let myself rest.

⁴ I will not let my eyes sleep

nor close my eyelids in slumber

⁵ until I find a place to build a house for the Lord,

a sanctuary for the Mighty One of Israel."

⁶ We heard that the Ark was in Ephrathah;

then we found it in the distant countryside of Jaar.

⁷ Let us go to the sanctuary of the Lord;

let us worship at the footstool of his throne.

⁸ Arise, O Lord, and enter your resting place,

along with the Ark, the symbol of your power.

⁹ May your priests be clothed in godliness;

may your loyal servants sing for joy.

¹⁰ For the sake of your servant David,

do not reject the king you have anointed.

¹¹ The Lord swore an oath to David

with a promise he will never take back:

"I will place one of your descendants

on your throne.

¹² If your descendants obey the terms of my covenant

and the laws that I teach them,

then your royal line

will continue forever and ever."

¹³ For the Lord has chosen Jerusalem;

he has desired it for his home.

¹⁴ "This is my resting place forever," he said.

"I will live here, for this is the home I desired.

¹⁵ I will bless this city and make it prosperous;

I will satisfy its poor with food.

¹⁶ I will clothe its priests with godliness;

its faithful servants will sing for joy.

¹⁷ Here I will increase the power of David;

my anointed one will be a light for my people.

¹⁸ I will clothe his enemies with shame,

but he will be a glorious king."

 

Click or Tap here to listen to or save this as an audio mp3 file

Click or tap here to visit our page to download all Psalms as mp3s

Chapter 6: The Lord's Table

If baptism was difficult to talk about because of the many different ways different churches actually implement the Lord’s commands the Lord’s Table is worse! Again I will try to be even handed but my prejudices are sure to show! It is here, round the table, more than anywhere else, the Lord’s people are supposed to be together in unity. Paul got very upset when Peter started to divide the church at Antioch so that they did not all meet together at the same table. He was equally upset at Corinth when divisions became apparent as the church folk met to eat as part of the ceremony of the Lord’s Table. These days we cannot even all call it the same thing. Paul calls it the ‘table of the Lord’ and the ‘Lord’s supper’ in 1 Corinthians, so the Lord’s Table seems to be a reasonably neutral term, particularly as we may well not be eating at it at suppertime.

It is also called Holy Communion (meaning the fellowship meal), the Eucharist (meaning the grace gift), the Mass (meaning uncertain) or the Divine Liturgy (meaning God’s worship), the Breaking of Bread service, and various other names. But the name doesn’t matter. What does matter is the wide variation in content and in mode of celebration which lead to it being the most divisive of actions in the Christian church when it was meant by our Lord to be the great rallying point around which all his church would meet.

Instead of it being a great meeting point many churches restrict participation at the Table to their own members and members of a few other favoured churches. Paul would be very upset by that if he were around now!

Some have added to the simple ceremony that it was at the beginning, some have not, and that difference has led to all this division. The two extremes are represented by the places where these everyday items are thought to take on a special nature, rather baffling to those not fully versed in the mysteries they are thought to contain, and those where it is a simple eating of small amounts of bread and wine as our Lord said according to Paul.

Of the former I am not really very entitled to speak knowing little about the details. It seems to me that the whole business of claiming that the sacrifice of Jesus, once and for all on the Cross, is in some sense repeated at the celebration of the Mass or Eucharist is misguided. Is this done because it enables the churches that practice this mode to call their full-time ministers ‘priests’ and thus to give them a status they would not otherwise have and which is different and higher than that of the ordinary member of the church?

Maybe – but if so this is not in line with the whole tendency of the New Testament. The idea that this ceremony is a repetition of the Sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross comes from the interpretation of the words used by Jesus when instituting this rite “this is my body … this is my blood”. To enable the special bread and wine to be the body and the blood these churches teach that the reality of these things changes but the appearance does not, so that the body and the blood are really present and the bread and the wine are not. OK – but I am a simple soul who finds it difficult to get his mind round such curiosities! Sorry.

At the other end of the spectrum of possibilities is the simple service in which ordinary, not special, bread and wine or fruit juice are used. With this I am much more familiar. But this too is not without its difficulties. Some, too many, of those leading the service will say that it ‘is only a memorial’ when it is far more than that, and very often it is tagged on to the end of a service as almost an after thought which not everyone will stay to attend. According to Luke, but not Matthew and Mark, Jesus instructed his disciples to “do this in remembrance of me” and Paul picks up the comment and repeats it.

So it is a memorial but surely that is not all the story. There has to be more to it than that. My own personal thought (not to be found in any commentary I have ever seen) is this: when we read something particularly inspiring, are deeply immersed in prayer, see a particularly glorious sunset, draw specially close to someone we deeply love, etc. we experience a lifting of the spirit, a surge of excitement through our whole being, that is hard to describe but wonderful to experience. That is what should happen when we are at the Lord’s Table.

It is the special surge of the Holy Spirit through our whole beings. It wont happen automatically – perhaps Jesus selected how we are to remember him like this so that it does not come to us easily – we have to work for it, fight for it, with all the spiritual intensity we can muster. I have a sneaking suspicion that it may happen more easily in the much more ornate and detailed experience of those involved in the Mass or Eucharist or similar service than it does in the far simpler services I am used to.

Whichever way we take the bread and the wine we must always remember one thing: this, more than anything else does or could do, is to remind us that the focus of all our thinking and doing is to be the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. We cannot comply with what Jesus said, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day” unless the giver of the flesh and the blood dies. We cannot live in the power of what he says, “For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me” unless he who was dead is alive again with vital, living, vibrant effect in our lives. Nothing else will focus our thinking so powerfully on our Lord Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection as this does.

So what?

Be sure that you participate regularly in this, the central, commanded, worship act of the Christian church. Don’t bother about who is leading the service. If no one is designated to do it – do it yourself. If you have no special elements use ordinary bread: leavened or unleavened, and the common drink off the table: be that tea or fruit juice or whatever. If you are female and your culture says the leader should be male and there is no man present it doesn’t matter – go ahead. If you don’t feel like it because things have gone wrong in your life don’t fail to participate, this is the very time that you need the strength of the Holy Spirit and he is specially around when we take part in this so simple ceremony.

The only requirement is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11 “So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgement on themselves”. But don’t make that so strong a barrier that you do not participate. Ultimately none of us is worthy. Taking part regularly in this act is the Lord’s command. Obey.

Click or Tap here to listen to or save this as an audio mp3 file~

Wednesday Wisdom

Proverbs 13

1 A wise son hears his father’s instruction: but a scorner hears not rebuke.
2 A man shall eat good by the fruit of his mouth: but the soul of the transgressors shall eat violence.
3 He that keeps his mouth keeps his life: but he that opens wide his lips shall have destruction.
4 The soul of the sluggard desires, and has nothing: but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat.
5 A righteous man hates lying: but a wicked man is loathsome, and comes to shame.

6 Righteousness keeps him that is upright in the way: but wickedness overthrows the sinner.
7 There is that makes himself rich, yet has nothing: there is that makes himself poor, yet has great riches.
8 The ransom of a man’s life are his riches: but the poor hears not rebuke.
9 The light of the righteous rejoices: but the lamp of the wicked shall be put out.
10 Only by pride comes contention: but with the well advised is wisdom.

11 Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished: but he that gathers by labour shall increase.
12 Hope deferred makes the heart sick: but when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.
13 Whoso despises the word shall be destroyed: but he that fears the commandment shall be rewarded.
14 The law of the wise is a fountain of life, to depart from the snares of death.
15 Good understanding gives favour: but the way of transgressors is hard.

16 Every prudent man deals with knowledge: but a fool lays open his folly.
17 A wicked messenger falls into mischief: but a faithful ambassador is health.
18 Poverty and shame shall be to him that refuses instruction: but he that regards reproof shall be honoured.
19 The desire accomplished is sweet to the soul: but it is abomination to fools to depart from evil.
20 He that walks with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.

21 Evil pursues sinners: but to the righteous good shall be repaid.
22 A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children: and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just.
23 Much food is in the tillage of the poor: but there is that is destroyed for want of judgment.
24 He that spares his rod hates his son: but he that loves him chastens him betimes.
25 The righteous eats to the satisfying of his soul: but the belly of the wicked shall want.

That’s it for today! Come back every day to Partakers Podcasts to hear something to encourage and uplift you as a Christian disciple, regardless of where you are in the world. You can also purchase our books via Amazon at Pulptheology.com

Click or Tap here to listen to or save this as an audio mp3 file

Chapter 5: Baptism

The mark of entry to the Christian faith is baptism so it will be something you will want to consider early in your life as a Christian. Sadly and most unfortunately it is a very difficult subject to write about because there are so many different ideas as to what baptism is, who should be baptized, who should do the baptizing and what it means when it is done. Some say that there is no salvation without baptism; some, at the other extreme, say it is only our declaration of loyalty to the Lord and mark of entry to the church. Some baptize babies as soon after birth as possible to make sure they are in the visible, earthly, gathering of those identified with Christ; others say that baptism is the sign of faith and therefore should only be administered to those of adult believing faith. Some demand that those who baptize be in a unbroken chain by the laying on of hands from the first apostles; others are happy that anybody be the baptizer. There is a wide difference of opinion about where the gift of the Holy Spirit fits into the scenario: is it only given at baptism, is it the only truly significant part of the whole thing, or what?
I cannot write about it without tending to give you my views on the subject – good or bad. They may, or may not, be appropriate for your situation according to where you live and the culture of your local church or fellowship. I will try to be evenhanded, honest.
The best place to start is the Bible and, in this case, the Acts of the Apostles with its stories of what happened in the very early days of the church. There we shall see what the apostles thought it was all about and how it should be used and they are more likely to be right than anyone else! Obviously the first place to start is the event that followed Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost. Peter told those who responded positively to what he said, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” In response:
“Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day”.

We hear next of baptism in the work of Philip in Samaria, where the new believers were baptized but did not receive the Holy Spirit until Peter and John visited the area, prayed for them and laid their hands on them.  By now we may well be thinking that apostles are necessary, and only they can ensure that the gift of the Holy Spirit accompanies the baptism and that this is the only way one can receive the Spirit. But in the very next incident recorded Philip baptized the Ethiopian eunuch himself and there is no mention of the Holy Spirit at all, yet the Ethiopian “goes on his way rejoicing” and strong tradition has it that he started the Ethiopian church, so he was not deficient in any way in his appreciation of the Triune God.
Paul comes next. He was baptized by Ananias, but only after he had received the Holy Spirit. Exactly the same order, first the gift of the Holy Spirit and then baptism is evident after Peter spoke to Cornelius and his friends; the matter of interest this time being that they are not Jews.
And so the story goes on. There is no set pattern that is the same every single time. The meaning for us is quite clear: there is no single set pattern that has to be adhered to every single time. We are at liberty to fit in to the culture in which we find ourselves, acting in a way that is appropriate for our situation, keeping the essential ingredients of what should be.
On a purely practical point: where does the water go? Some sprinkle it on the head only, some expect the candidate to be standing in water but not to go completely under the surface while their head is wetted, others insist on putting the whole body under the water. There are good arguments all ways. But in the light of the variety of practice evident in the stories in the book of Acts this must surely be a matter of no great importance.
Perhaps the point at which that advice is hardest to keep is in the matter of whether a baby should be baptized – christened as it is often called – or whether baptism should be reserved for the older believer who understands for him or herself what is involved. Part of the answer must lie in the difference between the more traditional societies where there is a strong corporate nature to life, expressed in the strength of the family bond and the tendency for son to follow father in the same trade, and the modern Western cultures which are much more individualistic in their thinking and where son or daughter are much more likely to take up a totally different trade or occupation than the parent. In the former the baptism of a new member of the family makes reasonable sense because of the assumption that as parent so child. In the latter it makes no sense that I can see!
It seems to me that the Biblical pattern associates baptism with the beginning of the Christian life and the gift of the Holy Spirit very closely. It doesn’t matter which comes first provided all three are present. It doesn’t matter who does the baptizing; there is no special efficacy in the action of the person involved.
Baptism has two aspects to it: one for the person being baptized and the other on the part of the Lord God himself. For the person involved it is a declaration of commitment, an identification with the Lord’s people and a statement of loyalty to them but above all to the Lord himself.
For the Lord it is a declaration that the person is now in covenant relationship with him, that he or she has been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, and is now one of His people: as Peter put it “As you come to him, the living Stone —rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him— you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”
What a magnificent idea! A living stone, part of a Spiritual house, a priest in that house and able to offer acceptable sacrifices to the living God. Wow!

So what?

It is to me a source of mystery that so many people are so reluctant to go forward for baptism after their conversion. To be sure many churches make a hash of it, either associating it too closely with church membership involving the capacity to vote in church meetings and therefore denying it to young people until they are ‘voting age’; or at the other extreme baptizing babes who can have no idea whatsoever of the glories they are supposed to be entering into.
Don’t be one of the reluctant! If at all possible, unless hindered by physical disability or prevented by a strongly antagonistic society, be baptized. The other really tricky question is whether if you have been baptized as a baby or a child without personal faith you should be baptized again on coming to true and full faith. That, I think, has to be left entirely up to you or the person under consideration.
Be happy and confident in yourself that you have done as the Lord said should be done when he told the apostles “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you”.
Be baptized, be taught, obey.

Click or Tap here to listen to or save this as an audio mp3 file~

Psalm 84

 

^1-2 What a beautiful home, God-of-the-Angel-Armies!
I've always longed to live in a place like this,
Always dreamed of a room in your house,
where I could sing for joy to God-alive!
^3-4 Birds find nooks and crannies in your house,
sparrows and swallows make nests there.
They lay their eggs and raise their young,
singing their songs in the place where we worship.
God-of-the-Angel-Armies! King! God!
How blessed they are to live and sing there!

^5-7 And how blessed all those in whom you live,
whose lives become roads you travel;
They wind through lonesome valleys, come upon brooks,

discover cool springs and pools brimming with rain!
God-traveled, these roads curve up the mountain,

and at the last turn-Zion! God in full view!

^8-9 God-of-the-Angel-Armies, listen:

O God of Jacob, open your ears-I'm praying!

Look at our shields, glistening in the sun,

our faces, shining with your gracious anointing.

^10-12 One day spent in your house,

this beautiful place of worship,
beats thousands spent on Greek island beaches.
I'd rather scrub floors in the house of my God

than be honored as a guest in the palace of sin.
All sunshine and sovereign is God, generous in gifts and glory.
He doesn't scrimp with his traveling companions.
It's smooth sailing all the way with God-of-the-Angel-Armies.

 

Click or Tap here to listen to or save this as an audio mp3 file

Click or tap here to visit our page to download all Psalms as mp3s