Say you are renting a house. The owner helps you out by paying your security deposit and gives you clear instructions on how to keep his home. He gets personal, leaving you with a book that gives you the history of the house so you can understand who he is, his character, the stories of past residents, how he was not so much a landlord but a gracious, welcoming, safe father to them, and how it went for those who lived there.
Would you respect his rules on how to keep his home or would you see fit to make up your own ways of doing things in direct opposition to his ways? If you choose the latter, how does the owner respond so that his home can remain a haven for those who will respect and care for it?
Singing Psalm 140 your thinking gets personal
“Save me, O LORD…
Preserve me…” ~ Psalm 140:1
God not only owns where you live but he created you to live together with him. He gives you each breath, everything you have, and every relationship. He helps you turn from rebellion against him, to save you, preserve you, and promises to be with you always. He gives you his word and his Holy Spirit to help you understand it. God helps you discern and distinguish how it goes for those who love him back and embrace his presence and fatherly love and how it goes for those who hate and reject him.
“Save me, O LORD, from those of evil mind;
Preserve me from the men of violence.” ~ Psalm 140:1
He brings light out of darkness, peace out of war, pure minds out of evil minds, and safety out of violence. The transformation Jesus brings from his very essence is so rich and complete, we need supernatural sense to take it in. It’s much easier to stay as we are, blind to our sins, and look to find fault with the faultless one rather than to admit we need a complete overhaul renovation from the inside out.
How can we stop ourselves from getting waylaid, sidetracked, duped into taking the apparently easy, broad road and believe Jesus when he tells us that his yoke is easy and his burden is light?
What a frightening stance it is to take umbrage with God who always does what is right and to accuse him of wrongdoing. It gets personal when you have created a barrier to your only source of help and happiness. Only when you repent of malevolent thoughts of the only truly benevolent one will the accuser in you be silenced. Only then will you value the lives of others as God does. Only then will you be unable to stand by and watch lives violently destroyed as you look only to protect yourself.
There is nothing more fearful than God’s wrathful presence. But that is reserved for those who reject his grace. Grace and compassion are his natural ways. Wrath and anger are his strange ways displayed only toward those who refuse his peace.
The LORD, the God of their fathers, sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. But they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words and scoffing at his prophets, until the wrath of the LORD rose against his people, until there was no remedy.” ~ 2 Chronicles 36:15-16
It gets personal how you think about God and how you think about yourself. Who are you in relation to God?
“The LORD is good,
a stronghold in the day of trouble;
he knows those who take refuge in him.
But with an overflowing flood
he will make a complete end of the adversaries,
and will pursue his enemies into darkness.
What do you plot against the LORD?
He will make a complete end;
trouble will not rise up a second time.” ~ Nahum 1:7-9
You are a creature made in the triune God’s image, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to be in relationship with him, united with and one with him, desiring to reflect and return his glory back to him by being fully dependent on and devoted to him in love. Although we have disengaged ourselves from him creating an eternal debt and have fallen from our purpose, God cares for us so, is so mindful of us, and gave us his word that we matter so much to him as his creatures, that he took on our likeness as the exact image of God in Jesus his son. He is the God-man who loved us enough to sacrifice himself to secure a rescue for all those who long to be back into relationship with him, who want God’s will to be done and who gladly accept God’s payment of their eternal debt through his willing sacrifice. Mankind is actually of two types. Those chosen and rescued by Jesus who become living sacrifices that reflect God’s glory unto everlasting life and those who freely choose to refuse the rescue offered whom God lets go to do their own will, who strive to pay their own way out apart from God, and who are judged as guilty unto everlasting punishment.
If you find yourself thinking in a self-oriented way, how can you think about the Lord being with you each moment as you live and move about and then to fathom how delightful it is to be in his gracious presence?
How can you help others find strength in God and in his presence? How can we recognize and reverse our tendency to rely on our own feeble strength or that of others that is subject to breakage and fraying in the face of how changeable we are circumstantially, physically, emotionally, relationally? When you know God is with you to provide for you in every way, you no longer strain your relationship with others looking to them to make you happy. When those you’ve made your gods in the past have shown themselves unable or unwilling to fulfill your desires, you’ve asked God to save and preserve you from your own violent thoughts so that they don’t spill over into words and actions you will come to regret. He answers by changing your heart and transforming your thoughts from self toward himself. He floods your mind with how he satisfies you and meets every need including the need for your heart to become meek and tender.
Singing Psalm 140 your speech gets personal
Singing Psalm 140, David not only runs to God for cover from those bent on evil but gets personal, appealing to his fatherly care. With the same heart, we cry out for God to give attention to justice against proud violence that oppresses the poor and does away with the very young and helpless. We cry out to the only one who can deliver, protect, and save. We ask God to make us his ambassadors as though he were making his appeal through us to influence others against oppression stemming from a false sense of superiority or to avoid being inconvenienced.
The thread of your eternal inheritance began before you were conceived and extends into eternity through your date of birth and through your date of death. You were known and loved in Christ long before you were born. It gets personal as our church called for a day of prayer and fasting this week for all that surrounds the lives of growing babies before birth and against the shedding of innocent blood which God hates. We ask that he move all of us to know that in his light it is safe to come out of the darkness of whatever sins we’ve embraced and find forgiveness, hope, and life in Jesus.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” ~ 2 Corinthians 1:3-4
“For in their hearts they work out evil plans,
And stir up wars around them ceaselessly.” ~ Psalm 140:2
You hear sharp words that penetrate like snake poison from those who premeditate how to ensnare you doing whatever they can to make you stumble or even destroy you before you could even utter a word in defense. You bring obvious and cloaked threats to God who hears your petitions. They do not fall on deaf ears. You bring the silent petitions of those who cannot yet speak as a voice for the voiceless. Relationships that are meant to be supportive in love somehow become characterized by disputes, unconnection, estrangement, and war between your own flesh and spirit, neighbors, parents and children, coworkers, members of your own household, women and their babies growing within them, husbands and wives.
Anyone with a mind for self can devolve into speaking words that wound and destroy.
“They make their tongue as sharp as vipers’ fangs;
Their lips contain the poison of a snake.
From power of the wicked, keep me, LORD.
O keep me from the men of violence—
From those who work out ways to trip my feet.
The proud have placed a hidden trap for me;
With cords they made a net and spread it wide;
They set their snares for me along my path.” ~ Psalm 140:3-5
God’s preserving power will make it so that war will be no more. Even cold wars will cease by his healing touch that brings warmth and close connection. He stops you in your tracks and helps you end self-sabotage. Jesus is the appeal to the Father for those in Christ as his speech gets personal. He intercedes for and redeems sinners who know they are sinners, who are in full agreement with their accuser but whose status is blood-bought innocent nevertheless.
“But to the LORD, I say: You are my God;
Give heed to these my supplications, LORD.” ~ Psalm 140:6
Singing Psalm 140 your refuge gets personal
You place your hope in none else. God is personally your sole refuge.
The word of God gets personal. In it, you find God is your protection and the strength that you need to care beyond yourself.
“For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.” ~ 2 Corinthians 2:17
He is all you need, and he reveals all you need in his word in order to know and love him.
Anyone who clothes themselves with violence rather than with Christ will devolve into utter ruin. You agree that God does right to keep his house clean and safe for those who live in it protecting them from those who would destroy them.
“O LORD, my Lord, and my salvation’s might—
My head You covered when the battle raged.
Now, LORD, grant not the wicked their desires;
Help not their plans, lest they grow great in pride.
But let the heads of those surrounding me
Be covered with the troubles they have caused.
Coals fall on them! and cast them into fire;
Or into miry pits, no more to rise!
Let none who slanders be established here;
Let utter ruin hunt the violent!” - Psalm 140:7-11
Anyone who comes to Jesus for forgiveness will be forgiven. If ever I choose to hold a grudge, it gets personal as I’d be playing right into the devil’s hands.
“Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ, so that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs.” ~ 2 Corinthians 2:10-11
If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat,
and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink,
for you will heap burning coals on his head,
and the Lord will reward you.” ~ Proverbs 25:21-22
Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. ~ Romans 12:19-21
Some cultures have a method of carrying burning coals on their heads as a means of grace—an aid to keep warm, a refuge from the cold. The heart behind those words could be benevolent asking God to create a tender, burning conscience where only a hardened, seared conscience existed before—to burn out the sin and purify from evil. You ask that the Lord give opportunity to extend blessings: food, drink, a way to keep warm. If you win your enemy over, good. If not, you trust the Lord to deal righteously with the situation and put an end to violent plans. You find the Lord irresistible and adept at doing all things well. He is a friend and refuge like no other who serves and helps his people in every way and puts his heart into them that they would be there for one another. The fire is what his people pass through to be purified and refined, and what those who embrace violence and reject God will live in forever.
“Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
“Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.
“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” ~ Colossians 3:2-17
O Lord, would you help us invite and welcome that it gets personal as we prioritize the relational aspect of life acknowledging that you are not a fellow creature though you stoop down to befriend anyone who trusts you as the Creator of all, that you are? Thank you that you made us in your image and that you get personal with your people, working until you make us upright to form Christ in us as his bride. In spite of who we once were, you form us into living stones that make a suitable home in which you can dwell and will bring us home to live with you forever. Thank you that you hear our claims against the ways that we are oppressed as well as our confessing the ways we have oppressed others. Our pleas and admissions are heard not as mere transactions to be processed but relational as by a father who has compassion and covenant love for his children. Thank you, Father, for forgiving us in Christ and for silencing the accuser within and outside of us so that we can live in joyful community with one another, have hope to be like you, and also forgive. Singing Psalm 140 may we get personal by tuning in to you and turning to you as our only refuge, and make our lives all about loving you back.
Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said,
“I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.
Therefore go out from their midst,
and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing;
then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you,
and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.” ~ 2 Corinthians 6:14-18
Father, please bring your straying sheep into your fold in such a way that will maximize your glory. Guide our hearts and steps not to compete with you as we have competed for the world’s praise but to trust that you will exalt each one of your people for your own purposes in your own good time. We will delight in seeing that for one another as you have delivered us from hankering for our own exaltation. Make each of us yearn for you alone, completely satisfied and overjoyed with getting to be with you and to get to live with you forever!
“But this I know: the LORD will yet maintain
The lawful claims of those who are oppressed,
And bring about true justice for the poor.
The righteous will give thanks to You indeed;
Yes, even to your name they give their praise,
And in your presence shall the upright dwell.” ~ Psalm 140:12-13
September 13-20, 2024
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