Partakers Christian Podcasts

Psalm On Demand - Psalm 108

Psalm 108

108:1 My heart is steadfast, God.

I will sing and I will make music with my soul.

108:2 Wake up, harp and lyre! I will wake up the dawn.

108:3 I will give thanks to you, Yahweh, among the nations.

I will sing praises to you among the peoples.

108:4 For your loving kindness is great above the heavens.

Your faithfulness reaches to the skies.

108:5 Be exalted, God, above the heavens!

Let your glory be over all the earth.

108:6 That your beloved may be delivered, save with your right hand, and answer us.

108:7 God has spoken from his sanctuary:

"In triumph, I will divide Shechem, and measure out the valley of Succoth.

108:8 Gilead is mine. Manasseh is mine.

Ephraim also is my helmet. Judah is my scepter.

108:9 Moab is my wash pot. I will toss my sandal on Edom. I will shout over Philistia."

108:10 Who will bring me into the fortified city? Who has led me to Edom?

108:11 Haven't you rejected us, God?

You don't go forth, God, with our armies.

108:12 Give us help against the enemy, for the help of man is vain.

108:13 Through God, we will do valiantly.

For it is he who will tread down our enemies.

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Psalm On Demand - Psalm 97

Psalm 97

(as read by Mary)

97:1 Yahweh reigns! Let the earth rejoice! Let the multitude of islands be glad!
97:2 Clouds and darkness are around him. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.
97:3 A fire goes before him, and burns up his adversaries on every side.
97:4 His lightning lights up the world. The earth sees, and trembles.
97:5 The mountains melt like wax at the presence of Yahweh, at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth.
97:6 The heavens declare his righteousness. All the peoples have seen his glory.

97:7 Let all them be shamed who serve engraved images, who boast in their idols. Worship him, all you gods!
97:8 Zion heard and was glad. The daughters of Judah rejoiced, because of your judgments, Yahweh.
97:9 For you, Yahweh, are most high above all the earth. You are exalted far above all gods.
97:10 You who love Yahweh, hate evil. He preserves the souls of his saints. He delivers them out of the hand of the wicked.
97:11 Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart.
97:12 Be glad in Yahweh, you righteous people! Give thanks to his holy Name.

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Psalm On Demand - Psalm 117

Psalm 117

Praise God, everybody!

Applaud God, all people!

His love has taken over our lives;

God's faithful ways are eternal.

Alleluiah!

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Wednesday Wisdom 22 - Proverbs 22

Wednesday Wisdom

Proverbs 22

1 A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour rather than silver and gold.
2 The rich and poor meet together: the Lord is the maker of them all.
3 A prudent man foresees the evil, and hides himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished.
4 By humility and the fear of the Lord are riches, and honour, and life.
5 Thorns and snares are in the way of those difficult to deal with: he that does keep his soul shall be far from them.

6 Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
7 The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.
8 He that sows iniquity shall reap vanity: and the rod of his anger shall fail.
9 He that has a bountiful eye shall be blessed; for he gives of his bread to the poor.
10 Cast out the scorner, and contention shall go out; yes, strife and reproach shall cease.

11 He that loves pureness of heart, for the grace of his lips the king shall be his friend.
12 The eyes of the Lord preserve knowledge, and he overthrows the words of the transgressor.
13 The slothful man says, “There is a lion without, I shall be slain in the streets.”
14 The mouth of strange women is a deep pit: he that is abhorred of the Lord shall fall into it.
15 Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.

16 He that oppresses the poor to increase his riches, and he that gives to the rich, shall surely come to want.
17 Bow down your ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply your heart to my knowledge.
18 For it is a pleasant thing if You keep them within you; they shall therefore be fitted in your lips.
19 That your trust may be in the Lord, I have made known to you this day, even to you.

20 Have not I written to you excellent things in counsels and knowledge,
21 That I might make you know the certainty of the words of truth; that You might answer the words of truth to them that send to you?
22 Rob not the poor, because he is poor: neither oppress the afflicted in the gate:
23 For the Lord will plead their cause, and spoil the soul of those that spoiled them.

24 Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man You shall not go:
25 unless You learn his ways, and get a snare to your soul.
26 Be not You one of them that strike hands, or of them that are sureties for debts.
27 If You have nothing to pay, why should he take away your bed from under you?
28 Remove not the ancient landmark, which your fathers have set.
29 Do you see a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men.

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Psalm On Demand - Psalm 120

Psalm 120

120:1 In my distress, I cried to Yahweh. He answered me.

120:2 Deliver my soul, Yahweh, from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue.

120:3 What will be given to you, and what will be done more to you, you deceitful tongue?

120:4 Sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals of juniper.

120:5 Woe is me, that I live in Meshech, that I dwell among the tents of Kedar!

120:6 My soul has had her dwelling too long with him who hates peace.

120:7 I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war.

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Bible Reading - Psalm 149

Psalm 149

(As read by Anne)

149:1 Praise Yahweh! Sing to Yahweh a new song,

his praise in the assembly of the saints.

149:2 Let Israel rejoice in him who made them.

Let the children of Zion be joyful in their King.

149:3 Let them praise his name in the dance!

Let them sing praises to him with tambourine and harp!

149:4 For Yahweh takes pleasure in his people.

He crowns the humble with salvation.

149:5 Let the saints rejoice in honor.

Let them sing for joy on their beds.

149:6 May the high praises of God be in their mouths,

and a two-edged sword in their hand;

149:7 To execute vengeance on the nations,

and punishments on the peoples;

149:8 To bind their kings with chains,

and their nobles with fetters of iron;

149:9 to execute on them the written judgment.

All his saints have this honor. Praise Yah!

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Bible Reading - Psalm 128

Psalm 128

A song of ascents for pilgrims ascending to Jerusalem.

128:1 Blessed is everyone who fears Yahweh, who walks in his ways.

128:2 For you will eat the labor of your hands. You will be happy, and it will be well with you.

128:3 Your wife will be as a fruitful vine, in the innermost parts of your house; your children like olive plants, around your table.

128:4 Behold, thus is the man blessed who fears Yahweh.

128:5 May Yahweh bless you out of Zion, and may you see the good of Jerusalem all the days of your life.

128:6 Yes, may you see your children’s children. Peace be upon Israel.

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The Big Story - Part 12

 

Big Story - Act 5 Scene 3:

The Church at the End of the Ages

with Roger Kirby

 

There is a marvellous unity to the Bible story even though it was written by many different people over many hundreds of years.

It began, after the Creation, with a garden; it ends with a garden city in Revelation 22: 1 – 4 : “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. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.”

There are two great differences between them: the garden has only 2 people in it; the city is full of people, all those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life. Only God walks in the garden; the Lamb walks with him in the city and the people walk by the light of the lamp, which is the Lamb. Wow! And triple Wow!

Unfortunately I find it difficult to write this chapter because there is so much disagreement about how we should understand what the Bible says about the End of the Ages. That Jesus Christ will revisit the scenes of his triumph, his death on the Cross, is beyond doubt. What will happen to us is much less clear.

The popular picture seems to be of us sitting on the clouds, playing harps, but that is an old idea from a few hundred years ago and is not the Biblical picture at all.

About 200 years ago the idea was spread about that when 1 Thessalonians 4: 17 says “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever,” means that the Lord will come halfway to earth to collect his people and take them back to heaven with him in what is called the Rapture.

But that is not really the picture here. The scene reflects what happened if Caesar visited a city in one of his outlying provinces. The people of the city would come out to greet the Emperor and then escorted him on into their city. Caesar kept going in the same direction; it was the people who reversed their direction. Yet in the popular teaching of the Rapture it is the Lord who reverses while the people keep going in the same direction! I cannot begin to unravel which is correct. Fortunately Jesus himself said: “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” And we should heed that warning.

The book of Revelation is a an uncertain guide here for there are so many ways to understand its amazing images, but it is useful to illustrate what the more straightforward parts of Scripture say.

Nowhere is more straightforward than the book of Romans and there we read in 8: 18 – 23 : “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.”

This says that our final destination is not heaven, floating in the sky, but here, on earth, part of the New Heaven and New Earth.

And that is what the book of Revelation also says in 21: 1 – 3: “Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.”

When John was writing he said that there would be 144,000 people there – a big enough number that all followers of Jesus might expect to be included but not so big that all might presume to be included. (I have ignored the distinction between those described as of Israel and the great multitude. In this age we, the people of God are all Israel. ) That number is 12x12x10x10x10. If he was writing today he would have needed to add 2 more 12’s and 2 more 10’s to get a number slightly bigger than 2 billion so that we might all hope to be present but not presume on it. See you there!

This is what one writer has called ‘life after life after death’. ‘life after death’ is our immediate presence with the Lord which is what Paul meant when he wrote Philippians 1: 21, 23b: “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.

Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far”. Unfortunately this is what there is so much argument about.

Our ultimate goal is beyond dispute as Revelation 22: 1 – 5 says: “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. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.”

 

So what?

This is the promise for all of us that believe in Jesus and seek to follow him. It is hard to get your mind round how the New Heaven and New Earth could possibly be. Sitting on clouds is far easier to think about, but this is what Scripture and therefore the Lord tells us.

It will be obvious to you that I have left out many things that could be included in the Big Story of the Bible. I think the really interesting one is that last Scene where I thought about the church NOW. We should not, and cannot, replicate any of the previous scenes ourselves. We can only live now. How we behave, how we act, how we serve is inevitably bounded by the world we live in and who we are. The important thing is to worship and serve the Lord within those bounds. For many of you, many of us, that means working with Dave in the WOW church, on the Internet. The Lord is Worthy-Of-Worship indeed. Our way may well be in this very new, very different, very important development. Go to it!

The Lord bless you.

 

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Bible Reading - Psalm 15

Psalm 15

15:1 Yahweh, who shall dwell in your sanctuary?

Who shall live on your holy hill?

15:2 He who walks blamelessly does what is right,

and speaks truth in his heart;

15:3 He who doesn’t slander with his tongue,

nor does evil to his friend,

nor casts slurs against his fellow man;

15:4 In whose eyes a vile man is despised,

but who honors those who fear Yahweh;

he who keeps an oath even when it hurts, and doesn’t change;

15:5 he who doesn’t lend out his money for usury,

nor take a bribe against the innocent.

He who does these things shall never be shaken.

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The Big Story - Part 11

 

Big Story - Act 5 Scene 3:

The Church Today

with Roger Kirby

Yes, I know! The church today is not really part of the Biblical story in any direct way, but there is another chapter to come on the Church at the End of the Ages and it would leave rather a long gap to say nothing about the in-between times. All of church history could be here but that would be far too much so I will only say anything about one previous event: the Age of Reason, the Enlightenment, of some 300 years ago that has affected so much of our present Western culture. More of that later.

We live in an amazing and very exciting period of church history. There are more Christians of every sort alive today than ever before; in fact, more alive now than all that have ever lived and died; one third of all the people on the earth. This is mainly because of the recent huge growth of the church in Africa, South America and, to a lesser but increasing extent, in Asia. At the same time the old core areas of the Faith in Europe and North America have declined somewhat, so the centre of gravity of the World-Wide Church has moved south and east. At last the glorious vision of Isaiah 43: 6, 7 “I will say to the north, ‘Give them up! ’ and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back. ’ Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth — everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” is being fulfilled as the followers of Jesus now make “disciples of all nations”.

One other remarkable factor is worthy of note. For the first time since the days of the Roman Empire there is one language understood through nearly all the known world. Then it was Greek; now it is English. It is not the language spoken by the most people as their mother tongue but, thanks to the Internet, it is the most widely understood language. And hey! – you guys and girls out there and listening to this are at the very forefront of this great development. Congratulations!

Of course, being a partly human institution not everything in the World is perfect. Obviously, resurgent, militant Islam is a concern. How is an essentially peaceful faith (in spite of some bad mistakes such as the Crusades) to react to an aggressively warlike one? That dilemma has never been satisfactorily resolved in these nearly 2000 years of the church.

How deep in spirituality and knowledge are all those billions of Christians? In one country I was in I was reliably told that there were so called ‘Christian villages’ where not one single person in the village knew who Jesus was! Where were all the people from the better developed Christian world who should have been out there teaching them?

Then there are all the deep problems in Europe and North America that stem from the Enlightenment. 300 years ago in Europe, men, fed up with the interminable religious wars of the previous century, turned to human reason as the best judge of what is right or wrong. From that move has come the modern Western idea that each person is autonomous, that is - able to make up his or her own mind about how to live, whether to believe or not, and what to believe. The result has been apathy to faith in Europe and consumer oriented churches in North America. Both have led to a sad decline in true faith and personal commitment.

So what?

That is a hard question to answer when these words may be read or heard in so many different places by people in so many different cultures and circumstances. Let me repeat what I said before to try and hammer it home (!): we, Dave Roberts and all his band of helpers, are trying to use the new opportunities that world wide interconnections and the use of the English language open up so effectively in the service of the Good News of Jesus Christ. Make sure this is made as effective as possible. Tell other people how to connect to Dave’s sites. Share what we say and write with other people. Translate as much of it as you can into your local language, if that is not English, and then spread it as wide as possible. By all means and in every possible way join in this great enterprise of the World-Wide Church and our little corner of it. May the Lord bless you as you do so.

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