From ccrlist at tulip.org Sat May 14 19:35:12 2005 From: ccrlist at tulip.org (ccrlist@tulip.org) Date: Sat May 14 19:35:25 2005 Subject: [Ccrlist] CCR Weakly! for 15 May 2005 Message-ID: <6.1.0.6.2.20050514192846.029fd670@mail.loganrec.com> Good Evening, Two weeks ago, I took a week's vacation and last week, my mother went to the hospital from the rest home Saturday and I picked her up Sunday morning to go back to the rest home. Matt Timmons kindly stepped in and took care of the services. Since it has been a while, I felt I should get tomorrow's Selah out for you early. God bless, Max A Forsythe Psalm 27 04 One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, [there]: to behold the beauty of the Lord and to meditate in His temple. 05 For in the day of trouble; He will hide me in His shelter. In the secret place of His tabernacle, He will hide me. He will lift me high upon a rock. 06 [Therefore], my head shall be exalted above my enemies all around me, and I will offer in His tabernacle sacrifices with shouts of joy I will sing and make music to the Lord. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - In The Lord?s House For the Lord?s Day: the 15th of May 2005 Introduction: There is an old story, fictional of course: of a man without a country, sentenced to spend his life aboard naval craft and never allowed to view again his native land. All of his mail and news were censored since he had acknowledged to the court that he never wanted to hear of his country ever again. And so he had his wish and what a terrible sentence it was to live without any sense of belonging. For a few short years, I knew well the fictional fellow?s suffering, but not for loss of country, but rather for the loss of church. Three years at a denominational seminary convinced me that the church of my fathers was no longer worthy of the name. It took me a decade or more to find my new home within the Presbyterian Church in America. It was a long absence from any proper spiritual home. Some scholars, Calvin among them, speculate that this Psalm is written during one of several occasions in David?s life when he could not attend worship in the Tabernacle. And so, in the heartfelt confession of his desperate loneliness we sense the yearning for his favorite abode: the house of the Lord God. Many people yearn for a happy home, and memories of many people are full of the images, furniture and happy times spent in the place where they grew up. One popular proverb is that one you have grown up and taken a life of your own, you cannot go home again. Well, I disagree ? five years ago, my family took apart the old homestead and disposed of the furniture and fixtures were we grew to adulthood. And within the last month, the old house, which was suffering from dry rot was put to the torch to serve one last purpose in the training of two local fire departments. After it was all said and done, the foundations seemed so small in comparison to the house once standing there! And yet, just as C.S. Lewis envisions heaven ? the reality is bigger on the inside than you can ever imagine. And so, many, many memories etched in the extended family?s minds are just as real as the old building once was. Yes, we can go home again ? all we have to do is close our eyes and stroll through the various rooms. And just thus so is David?s heart focused on the spiritual beauties of attending the Lord God in the Tabernacle of Israel. Yes, of course, the pagan, the unbeliever had no notion of the reality that David knew ? but the personal relationship with the Lord God was more real than the temporary tent where God was to be met and worshipped on a regular basis. Christians of course, read these few verses and know better than David that heaven?s home will be bigger and wider and better than the small tent and eventual temple that would inhabit the sacred precincts of Mount Zion. Development: And so, in the same heartfelt attitude enjoyed here by David, let us too consider the grand and subtle nature of knowing the God of heaven when He deigns to speak to us through His word and by His Spirit. And yes, like David, there are places for all of us ? where the Divine Presence is better known ? because there we are more in the habit of knowing God than when we go about our daily life. ?One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord, all the days of my life, [there]: to behold the beauty of the Lord and to meditate in His temple.? There are three thoughts in these lines of verse four. Let us begin with the last and work our way back to the first. The Gospel of John reports that when Christ tabernacled among us, then was His glory beheld: ?Glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. And from his fullness we have all receive , grace upon grace.? John?s Gospel as we all know is not only intellectually challenging, but also personal and heartfelt even as were the Psalms of David. When I took Greek in Seminary, we spent most of our time translating the Gospel of John. And every verse was pregnant with meaning and purpose so that I learned to treasure the text ever more and more. But, of course ? you have to spend time in the word and meditate well upon it to realize the incredible beauty of the Gospel of Grace. The second line of verse four shows us the earnest desire that the ongoing relationship be continued for ever and ever. Limited as they were with the homeland of Palestine as their best hope, still the children of God could have hoped even as we would read into David?s poetry the final home intended by all of the promises and structures of the faith once given to the elect of the Old Covenant Church. And of course, we can realize the legitimacy of the hope when David shows us his fondest desire in the first line of verse four: ?One thing have I asked of the Lord.? What is that? Why the continued company of the Lord God of Israel of course! It is the continuing comfort of the presence of the Most High God that gives the life of David any meaning day to day and beyond the grave to come. Even in the worst of times, David remains secure: ?For in the day of trouble; He will hide me in His shelter. In the secret place of His tabernacle, He will hide me. He will lift me high upon a rock.? I have used the old King James ordering here, since the sacred poetry intends to leave every trouble behind as quickly as possible. Yes, of course ? there are many kinds and times of troubles that afflict us day by day. And yet, trouble can not always find us, because we are safe in the arms of Jesus, as the old hymn goes. Not only are we sheltered, but also the hidden place where we remain His cannot be found or fathomed by the worldly wicked of this old world. And their in the sanctity of God?s loving kindness, we have been lifted high above the common conflicts. ?He will lift me high upon a rock,? David writes ? knowing the many kindnesses of the Lord through trials and troubles. And that rock, which accompanied the people of Israel through the trackless desert is as timeless as the certain providence of the Lord to lead His people to their promised land: even heaven as we comprehend it. Application: To David perhaps ? it is the fond hope of visiting the precincts of the tabernacle once again and there to compose a Psalm and sing it in the presence of the people and to their Lord God of heaven and earth. ?[Therefore], my head shall be exalted above my enemies all around me, and I will offer in His tabernacle sacrifices with shouts of joy I will sing and make music to the Lord.? I have stretched the ordinary conjunction ?and? to a stated purpose in David?s mind. ?[Therefore]? he may observe: that in the safety of the ?rock? he and we and all the saints of God have been lifted up and are thereby safely established beyond the ordinary habitations of the worldly. Sweet will be the music of heaven, happy will be all the reunions of the elect and like David we may sing and make music to the Lord of all the earth. May we look forward week by week to the worship we gather to give and especially may we share the Puritan hope of the final world, one without end: even heaven above where the Divine presence known and praised by David will be better known for all eternity. Come quickly Lord Jesus, Come quickly. Amen. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - PREACHING RESOURCES Calvin, John: Commentary on Book of Psalms. Delitzsch, F: Commentary on the Old Testament ? Psalms. Spurgeon, C.H: Treasury of David. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Permission granted to redistribute unedited versions with this notice. http://www.tulip.org/selah/sel027b.htm To Subscribe or Unsubscribe go to: http://www.four.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/ccrlist/ From ccrlist at tulip.org Sun May 22 21:26:30 2005 From: ccrlist at tulip.org (ccrlist@tulip.org) Date: Sun May 22 21:26:50 2005 Subject: [Ccrlist] CCR Weekly for 22 May 05 Message-ID: <6.1.0.6.2.20050522212024.022fec80@mail.loganrec.com> Good Evening, Busy week here in Central Ohio, please be in prayer for several of CCR who are ailing and dealing with job insecurities. God bless, Max A Forsythe Psalm 27 07 Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud; be gracious to me and answer me! 08 [To my heart], You have said: ?Seek my face.? Your face, Lord, I will seek. 09 Hide not Your face from me. Turn not Your servant away in anger You have been my helper. Cast me not off; forsake me not, O God of my salvation! 10 [If] my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord will take me in. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Seek His Face For the Lord?s Day: the 22nd of May 2005 Introduction: Joseph A Alexander outlines our Psalm in three parts. In verses one to six, David declares his satisfaction and confidence. In verses seven to twelve there is the prayer for deliverance from a present danger. Finally, in the last two verses David is content to wait for the providential protection of our gracious God. The Psalm can truly be as simple as this, though some commentators favor a composite composition of individual lines of thought and prayer. And so today, we come to the second section of our Psalm. Our first verse for today, the seventh is much like a call to worship, an invocation that David?s Lord and God will hear his voice. ?Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud; be gracious to me and answer me!? Now, the word ?cry aloud? here does not mean ?to call loudly, to shout, as RSV interprets it. It means to call, plead insistently.? Remember, that in the older languages ? there is a consistent construction of implied politeness that has been lost in our contemporary age. By that I mean, any outside of the family were once addressed in the terms, ?Thee, Thy and Thou.? Some European languages still maintain that tradition long lost in our language. The supposed equality of democracy does have its limits. ?Hey You,? not only grates on the manners ? but also gives the hearer little consideration to listen to the impolite address that must invariably follow. Some years ago, I once stepped into a store to check out some shoes and was greeted me with ?Hi Guy.? I immediately turned to leave believing that this was no place for me. In addition, we must remember that in prayer we are not talking to the local glad handing politician who makes only empty promises while his hand is rifling your pocket. No indeed, David ? a sovereign king himself: bows his head, his heart and his person before the Triune Creator of all that is. Please, sir he simply asks: will you attend to my humble request. And if the Lord God of heaven and earth deigns to do so ? any answer will be considered gracious in its blessed acknowledgement of our needs. Development: Our second verse for morning, the eighth: is a verse of difficult composition. Listen to several attempts to make grammatical sense of the words in the Hebrew: NKJV: ?[When You said], ?Seek My face?, My heart said to You, ?Your face, Lord, I will seek.?? NEB: ??Come,? my heart says, ?Seek his face.?? NIV: ?My heart says of you, ?Seek his face!? Your face, Lord, I will seek..? My Translator?s Handbook concludes the options on this verse with a paraphrase from the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project: ?My heart tells me that you have commanded, ?Seek (plural) my face?; and so, O Lord, I seek your face.? Commentator Joseph Alexander notes: ?The general meaning of this verse is obvious enough, although its syntax is exceedingly obscure. The best solution is to take ?seek ye my face? as a citation of God?s own words.? A.A. Anderson explains that ?the translation of this verse can be only tentative.? He then offers this translation: ?To you, O my heart, has he said: ?Seek my face.?? The German evangelical Delitzsch offers this paraphrase: ?Since Thou has permitted and exhorted us, or in accordance with Thy persuasive invitation, that we should seek Thy face, I do seek Thy face.? It is in the light of all of this that I offer my own translation, you will notice ? that like many arrangements, I have included the first line of verse nine to complete the thoughts being expressed here: ?[To my heart], You have said: ?Seek my face.? Your face, Lord, I will seek. Hide not Your face from me.? While Calvin admits that the thought ?My heart hath said of thee? is ?an exposition to which the majority of interpreters incline.? He would prefer to consider the verse as a conversation and thus he outlines it. However, it appears to me that the ordering and wording chosen, better reflects the Calvinist doctrine that God works in and through the heart to bring us into conversation with the Almighty. I once saw a motto ascribed to Calvin, which read: ?To You or Lord, I give my heart promptly and sincerely.? That, I believe gets us to the heart of the matter before us today! David acknowledges the invitation of the Lord that predates his own turning to and loving of the Father God. The invitation is simple and timeless: ?Seek my face.? And in answer to the divine invitation, all of God?s elect respond ?Your face, Lord, I will seek.? And yet, knowing the absolute otherness of the Almighty Creator God, we as well as David must plead ?Hide not Your face from me.? Otherwise ? what hope would we ever have of finding Him? Now, we may turn our attention to the last four lines of verse nine, where David pleads in detail the possibility noted in the previous line of the same verse. ?Turn not Your servant away in anger You have been my helper. Cast me not off forsake me not, O God of my salvation!? Knowing that he was approaching an awesome and holy God, David pleads against the obvious treatment of his ordinary sinful condition. After all, as we all must know ? the God of glory is absolute in His goodness and must react with wrathful anger against every sin. But, as David is working towards the correct doctrine, he understands that God is also a God of mercy because He has been David?s helper in so many times past. And so David is hopeful ? yet he still perseveres in confessing the obvious point of being in sin as he begs that he be not cast off or forsaken. If you would beg the question of confession in these verses, please note that Calvin encourages us of ?a tacit confession of sin; because, although David acknowledges that God must justly cast him off, he [turns aside] his anger.? Spurgeon notes on the last lines of verse nine, that ?the first petition ?cast me not off? may refer to temporary desertions, and the second word to the final withdrawal of grace.? However, David?s assurance is not in question, because he quickly notes his complete faith that God is indeed the God of his salvation. Thus the final possibility is out of the question, if he be within God?s grace, so that leaves the first predicament of being temporarily out of touch with his Lord. Many of you now carry cell phones and we have all learned that there are places where they are absolutely useless. A few weeks ago Bob Ferrell was here at the church and I was driving up a hill in western Pennsylvania. We talked for a short moment until I descended into the valley on the other side of the mountain and thereby we lost contact. I realize that is a poor example, and most of the time when we loose touch with the God of our salvation, it is by choice or a lack of discipline to call home regularly in prayer. Application: The first line of our last verse, the tenth is perplexing to our hearts and minds. It is a thought beyond our comprehension. [If] my father and my mother forsake me.? Please note that I have softened the rhetoric with a qualifying word: ?[if].? Most translations take the thought literal in this regard. Now Calvin notes that if could have been possible during Saul?s hatred of David, that the family ? like many in European history had to choose between their property and their children in times of internecine conflict. In fact, in Scotland may noble Lords had to sent sons to both sides of any conflict just to guarantee the survival of the family inheritance no matter who won! However, Calvin also notes that ?as it appears from the sacred history, that Jesse, so far as his opportunity admitted, performed his duty to his son.? My Translator?s Handbook observes that ?it seems better, to take verse 10a as a possibility and not as a fact.? Like several translations the qualification may be made ?to express the possibility of being abandoned by parents by recasting this as an ?if? clause.? This, of course, is what I have chosen to do here. But to be fair to the simple language ? we must remember the New Testament observation that the acceptance of Christ may indeed separate sons and daughters from fathers and mothers. In such and every case, David acknowledges the Lord?s grace in this matter: ?The Lord will take me in.? And so we are left with the comforting knowledge that now matter who may reject us in the course of life, still the Lord will love His chosen people with an everlasting love, greater even than the strongest ordinary love known to humans: that between parents and children. Spurgeon speaks pastorally in this regard: ?These dear relations will be the last to desert me, but if the milk of human kindness should dry up there is a Father who never forgets. Some of the greatest of the saints have been cast out by their families, and persecuted for righteousness sake.? What more could we ask from our Father God ? that He love us with an everlasting love, stronger than anything we have known in this life. May we like David give Him honor, praise and glory for the great things God has done in loving us before we came to know Him. Amen. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - PREACHING RESOURCES Alexander, Joseph A. Commentary on Psalms. Anderson, A.A. The New Century Bible Commentary: Psalms. Calvin, John: Commentary on Book of Psalms. Delitzsch, F: Commentary on the Old Testament ? Psalms. Spurgeon, C.H: Treasury of David. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Permission granted to redistribute unedited versions with this notice. http://www.tulip.org/selah/sel027c.htm To Subscribe or Unsubscribe go to: http://www.four.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/ccrlist/