Sing In The Fires

“They shall lift up their voice, they shall sing for the majesty of the LORD, they shall cry aloud from the sea. Wherefore glorify ye the LORD in the fires, [even] the name of the LORD God of Israel in the isles of the sea.” (Isa 24:14-15 AV)

The fires of which Isaiah speaks are the fires of God’s wrath and judgement upon a disobedient people.  It would be rather difficult to lift of the voice and sing for the majesty of the LORD as they are enduring the hardship of severe correction.  But it must be done!  There are other fires that the child of God faces.  There is the fire of temptation.  There is the fire of persecution.  There are the fires of trials of faith.  What about the fires of sin and the consequences of sin?  Life is full of fires.  There are bigger ones.  There are smaller ones.  Being able to sing of the majesty of the LORD when life is unbearable is important.  It is often one key of enduring the fires of life.

Sometimes, the most memorable examples of a soloist singing a hymn or song of praise to the LORD are not someone with an incredible voice.  Sometimes the most memorable singer is not classically trained.  Sometimes the most incredible example of an instrumental might have missed a few notes.  Almost all the time these dear saints have, or are going through, some hot fires.  In fact, recollecting all of those special numbers I have heard down through the years, the only ones I remember are those offered by saints who were enduring some severe circumstances of life.  There was a couple who sang beautifully who were going through some deep financial troubles.  They came from backgrounds that limited how they could serve the LORD, and some self-righteous saints made them feel underappreciated.  Yet, our pastor asked them to sing quite a bit.  The pain of rejection from those to whom they sang came through in their praise to the LORD.  Then there was the young lady who had a physical handicap.  She was extremely godly, but often overlooked.  Then one Sunday, she sang during the offering, and the whole church of thousands of people couldn’t help but weep at the beauty of her offering of praise.  There was a handicapped evangelist who was a cripple on both legs.  He would sit at the piano and sing in a deep baritone voice some of our well-known gospel songs.  It changed the lives of many.

I have to admit, offering a voice of majesty and praise is difficult when things are unbearable.  Our eyes get focused inward instead of upward.  It is hard to praise the LORD when the pain is so deep that it is all that is on our minds.  It is hard to remember to praise the LORD when tomorrow looks bleaker than today.  It is not that we don’t want to.  It is not that we resent the LORD for the trials we face.  Fire is a hard thing to ignore.  Anyone who has been around a campfire knows this.  Anyone who has suffered serious burns knows that the pain inflicted by the fire is lasting and impossible to avoid.  God would not command us to do something for His ego’s sake.  He doesn’t have one.  He commands us to offer songs of majesty and praise while in the midst of fires so that our eyes are off our situation and on the one who can get us through the fires.  By turning our eyes upward and outward instead of inward, we can refocus on someone greater than our fires.  Like the three in the fire with the son of God, they endured because their attention was on the Son of God and not the flames that surrounded them.

Surrounded By God

“The angel of the LORD encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them. O taste and see that the LORD [is] good: blessed [is] the man [that] trusteth in him.” (Ps 34:7-8 AV)

This is an amazing statement.  The angel of the LORD is one particular angel as opposed to one of many.  We know this because if it were one of many the word ‘a’ would have been used rather than ‘the’.  This means that all those who are saints of God by Christ Jesus have the same angel who encampeth he or she round about.  We have to be careful here.  God does not promise that we will be trouble-free.  Peter tells us that if Christlikeness is our goal, then persecution is sure to come.  There are consequences for sin.  Disease and death happen to all.  The angel of the LORD does not keep us from trials and temptations.  We are not promised a trouble-free life.  Rather, the promise is for deliverance.  This means the trouble must come.  There can be no deliverance from trouble that is not real.  What struck me is that God has provided His angel, also known as Angel, to encampeth round about the saint as he or she walks through life and will eventually deliver him or her from it all!  The Angel of the LORD is with us through thick and thin.

Jesus is the Angel of the LORD seen in the O.T.  He is present with Israel throughout their wilderness wanderings.  He arrives during times of deep testing.  God never left Israel alone, and He will not leave us either.  Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit to dwell in our hearts.  He has given the third part of the trinity to guide us, teach us, convict us, encourage us, and assist us in praying to the Father.  The promise above is an absolute one born from the lips of someone who lived it.  David spent thirteen years on the run from Saul.  He spent many evenings is the wilderness under the stars and in caves.  He endured close calls, his own tribe turning on him, and those who did follow abandoned him.  David also survived an attempt at insurrection by his own son.  God did not stop these things from coming.  He required that David endure through them.  But He did deliver him!  He survived.  He got through the hardest times of life because the Angel of God never left him!  Never.

We have the same assurance.  There is a common debate as to the reality of guardian angels.  What form they are I refuse to debate.  What I can say is that the Angel of the LORD encampeth me round about.  If we do have guardian angels, they are supplemental to the presence of Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit!  The comforting thing is that no matter where we are in life or what we may face, He has every angle covered.  That is what the phrase ‘encampeth me round about’ means.  It means there is no place where He is not.  Where we are, where we might be, and where we will eventually be includes the presence of the Angel of God!  We will be delivered.  The end is sure.  The goal is certain.  Praise be to the LORD!

Silence is Golden

“Thou hast proved mine heart; thou hast visited [me] in the night; thou hast tried me, [and] shalt find nothing; I am purposed [that] my mouth shall not transgress.” (Ps 17:3 AV)

This was a bit interesting to me this morning.  I couldn’t make the connection between David’s visitation with the LORD and the vow to keep from sinning with his lips.  So, off to the excellent doctors of the scriptures, and they were very helpful.  They reminded me that the vow of non-transgression with the lips was in response to God’s examination of the heart.  In essence, they believe David’s vow was righteousness in his speech is response to God’s examination.  That is all good and well, but this only draws another confused observation.  Why would David sin with his lips if God found nothing?  I can see a negative response to a guilty verdict.  We do this all the time.  We offer excuses or try to justify our actions.  Humility may not be our first response.  But David states that God found nothing.  God visited David in the night.  God proved his heart and found nothing.  As far as God was concerned, David was as right as any person could be.  So, what possible sin could follow a verdict of not guilty?  I see one of two possibilities.  Either he doesn’t wish to respond in pride by taking credit for his blameless condition, or he doesn’t want to presume upon his innocence and relax his standard by slipping with the tongue.  Both are legitimate and both can be a real possibility at the same time.

Much can be said for silence.  Twice this morning the LORD made a point of it.  Solomon had this to say. “Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: [and] he that shutteth his lips [is esteemed] a man of understanding.” (Pr 17:28 AV)  Too much harm can be caused by hasty lips.  Boy, do I know this!  I am from a part of the country that makes faux pas an art form.  The most recent came at the expense of most of the ladies in my church.  I’ve pastored in the south and as anyone who has ever lived or visited there will attest, southern cooking is legendary.  It is flavorful and downright homey.  It might be that they have access to fresh ingredients regardless of where they shop.  Or perhaps the recipes are all that much more delectable.  Anyway, I compared southern cooking to northern cooking, and now that I pastor in the north, I am eating a lot of crow.  Trying to be folksy backfired on me.  A lot could be said for silence.  Saying nothing is always better than saying something if the something said is not what needed to be said.  Silence, as they say, is golden.

David knew his heart.  He knew there was temptation is absolution.  The context of psalm 17 is a prayer regarding his adversaries.  I can see how self-righteousness could be a temptation.  When found not guilty, David might have been tempted to take a liberty with his speech.  If we were absolved and his enemies found guilty, perhaps a bit of freedom from verbal restraint might be in order.  David checked his heart and his lips.  He knew he was in a delicate place.  He knew he could not say anything.  It was wiser to remain speechless that to use his favorable verdict as a means to inflict harm.  Checking his lips was important here.  Walking away without a word is the wiser choice.  Like a plaintiff who found a favorable judgement from the court, just walk away and don’t speak a word to your adversary.  You’ve won.  Let it go.  Walk away and walk with God.

Many Wells

“Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.” (Isa 12:3 AV)

These words of encouragement from the LORD through the prophet do not stipulate when the joy is present.  Perhaps joy is already present and encourages us to continue to draw waters of refreshing from the wells of salvation.  Or, it could mean that when we need joy, drawing from the wells of salvation is our source.  Note also that there is more than one well of salvation.  The word is plural.  How can that be?  How can salvation have more than one well?  It is simple.  We are saved from many things.  We tend to think that salvation is only from our sins and a devil’s hell.  But the word of God uses the word to describe various other forms of deliverance.  The O.T. saint or king could be saved from a physical enemy.  The sick can be saved from illness.  Or the discouraged, anxious, or fearful can be delivered from their emotional turmoil.  It is this second point to which I wish to consider.

It is interesting that the various wells of salvation tend to be something that rarely occurs to us.  For instance, it is common for prayer to be offered for those in physical distress and disease for relief or complete healing from it.  Yet the Bible clearly teaches us that we will all pass from this world unto eternity.  There will come a time when there is no healing.  Or, as in the case of Paul, we could be afflicted by a thorn in the flesh, and it is part of God’s plan for us.  The wells of deliverance may not be what we think we need.  They may not be what we would hope for.  The wells of deliverance are wells intended to increase or bring upon us the joy of the LORD.  Therefore, they are plural.  Our struggle is to keep an open mind as God begins to fill our cup.  We can be like little children sometimes.  We want soda pop, but mom gives us ice water.  Little do we know that the sugar in soda only makes us thirstier and the ice water quenches the thirst. 

God does not have bitter wells.  They are cool deep wells meant for our joy.  The wells of salvation may make things a bit more difficult at first.  No doubt Paul had to adjust his life to work around the throne he would now possess.  Yet if we believe the wells of salvation are our source of joy, then joy is the result.  I love ice water.  The cleaner, the better.  There is no better tasting water than natural spring water from an old-fashioned hand pump.  I am not talking about that tap water bottled as spring water.  I am speaking of water from a well dung on a mountainside that feeds only one home.  Clean and fresh!  The perfect glass of refreshing.  Nothing added.  No fortification.  Direct from the hand of God without human influence.  That are God’s wells of salvation.  All God!  From Him!  All we need to do is receive what He has for us and learn to live in joy.

It Will Show

“A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance: but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken.” (Pr 15:13 AV)

The truth stated is obvious.  Solomon is simply stating that the condition of the heart works itself out in our outward person.  If we have a merry heart, our face will show it.  If, on the other hand, our heart is occupied with sorrow, that too will outwardly manifest itself.  The application is unclear.  We don’t know if Solomon is challenging his children to go about life with a merry heart.  Or if he is merely stating that whatever our disposition of heart, it will reveal itself to all whom we encounter.  It is naïve to think that we can live life with a continual merry heart.  There are great losses along the way.  There are adversaries that drain us of our cheerful disposition.  Some wear their emotions on their sleeves.  The observer doesn’t have to guess what it going on in the heart.  It is as obvious as the nose on one’s face.  Others seem to hide their feelings rather well.  Or worse yet, they bury them deep so they cause little harm.  Or do they?  The point is, we cannot hide what is going on inside.  It works itself out in our disposition.

I don’t know if you are ever tempted to do the following, but I do it all the time.  It started when I was a child.  Our little town had traveling circuses come through from time to time.  The largest ones hit the big city.  However, the smaller ones would stop by our neck of the woods.  They would often set up in county fairgrounds or the parking lot of a large church.  It might be the 4-H grounds, the Legionaries field, the Knights of Columbus Park grounds, or some other venue.  It wasn’t a large circus.  Just a few animals, some performers, and one large tent where the acts would perform.  We didn’t get the lions or the tigers.  We got the poodles.  We didn’t get the one-hundred-foot trapeze.  We got the twelve-foot gymnastic set.  Some acts were local people.  A juggler here.  A magician there.  The clowns were almost always local people whom we would be familiar with.  Hence, the habit I took up.  It was a curiosity for me to try to discover who it was under all that makeup and costume.  If the clown’s identity was undiscernible, that was a treat.  Even more so, I tried to discern if the clown was as happy as his painted face projected.  I tried to see his or her natural lips.  I looked into the eyes to see the person.  I wanted to see the person behind the mask.  It is a habit I carry well into my adult years.  I see the Joker in the old Batman shows or the more modern movies and see the pain behind the smile.

It is easy to think we can pretend to be someone we are not.  But Solomon would beg to differ.  We may think we are hiding our hearts well enough to fool most people.  Like the commercials that advertise antidepressants, there is a placard we hold up with a smile on our faces when inside, we preoccupied with the adversities of life.  Or, the opposite can be true.  Life could be grand.  The wind is in our favor and it seems as much is going right.  The blessings of life abound, and we arrive with a glow about us while others do not understand what the joy is all about.  Our optimism is both infectious, but could be a bit intrepid depending on our audience.  The point is very simple.  The condition of our hearts is seen by others.  How that is to be applied depends on the circumstances.  Empathy for the situation of others is important.  So too is the point Paul makes in the beginning of his letter to the Corinthians.  If we are of a sorrowful spirit, we will unnecessarily make others sorrowful and will never receive the encouragement we need.  The truth is obvious.  The observation plain.  As to how that dictates the demeanor is which we are to portend ourselves, the circumstances dictate the manifestation.

God is Overwhelming

“In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, [is] the LORD of hosts: the whole earth [is] full of his glory.” (Isa 6:1-3 AV)

Isaiah’s response to the vision of the glory of God was to fall on his face and see himself as he is.  A completely unclean thing.  God did not condemn Isaiah.  Isaiah condemned himself.  In comparison to the perfect holiness of Almighty God, man is less than nothing.  I can understand a bit of this.  We need this humility.  We need this self-loathing.  Job said as much when God finally spoke to him.  He saw himself as he truly was.  I imagine when we graduate to glory, we may do the same thing.  When seeing Jesus face to face and the glory of God filling the eternal heavens, it will finally hit us that we tremendously underestimated the glory of God.  When the brightness of His glory is vastly brighter than the heavens He created, it will finally hit us with all the truth that abounds that our God is greater than our minds can comprehend.  When the angels and the elders sing so loud that thunder seems but a whisper, it will overwhelm us that we are in the presence of a God infinitely greater than all of our eternal understanding can take in.  If only a sliver of this truth would affect us in our temporal lives, it would make all the difference.

There are powerful things in our world that intimidate the normal person.  A tornado, hurricane, or typhoon come to mind.  A tsunami is not an interesting weather occurrence.  An earthquake is frightening.  Walking among lions must be terrifying.  Swimming with sharks has to be a bit unnerving.  Jumping from a plane cannot be a comfortable feeling.  Being in a submarine while submerged thousands of feet cannot be an easy experience.  Not too far from where I lived was the world's highest concentration of poisonous cottonmouth snakes.  It was populated with an average of 700 snakes per acre.  Not too many people ventured there.  There are things that give us the whillies.  There are things that are simply too much for most to handle.  There are things that demand our utmost respect.  Those who work in medical imagining need protective clothing so regular exposure to radiation does not get them sick.  There are strict protocols when working with pathogens.  The electrician is sure to cut all power before he installs or makes a repair.  The baker wears protective gloves.  The policeman wears a vest.  And firemen wear fireproof gear.  This shows respect for something that can do great harm.  We use hearing protection against loud noises that can cause damage.  The list goes on and on.  We are conditioned to respect things greater than ourselves.  For our own survival we order choices that acknowledge there are things we cannot control and we need to adapt in order to function.

Of all the things that God has created which can undo man, non is greater than our God.  But what Isaiah saw was not threatening.  The glory of God was not something he saw as a terror to men no matter his condition or response to it.  Rather, what Isaiah responded to was the entire nature of God.  His holiness.  Himself.  Isaiah responded to the person of God because God is infinitely great and holy.  There is no measure to Him.  To say that God is overwhelming is a tremendous understatement.  If only we had the same attitude.  If only we saw God in this way.  If only, but for a brief moment, we could experience the greatness of God.  I wonder how different we would be.  I wonder how different our prayer lives would be.  I wonder how much it would affect our choices.  I wonder how much the glory of God would change the person that we are.  We trifle with Him.  We approach Him in immature arrogance as if He is our parent whom we can manipulate or charge foolishly.  Not so.  Our God is so overwhelmingly holy and great that when we finally meet Him, we will fall flat on our faces completely and wholly undone.

Perfect Bible!

“The words of the LORD [are] pure words: [as] silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.” (Ps 12:6-7 AV)

For those who are apt to think preservation of the word of God is not promised, just pass on reading the following entry.  I will not entertain fools.  Those who dispute the above passage teach preservation believe that the ‘them’ are the saved.  They do not attribute the ‘them’ to the immediate context of the ‘words’ in the previous verse.  Again, I do not entertain fools.  Even those who, through carnal thinking, believe that languages not being equal cannot guarantee a perfect translation are again ignored.  To take that position would mean that any dialogue with a non-Hebrew speaking individual cannot be perfectly inspired by the Holy Spirit in Hebrew.  This would mean the words of Pharoah, Abimelech, and even Joseph are not perfectly inspired in the Hebrew.  Even Paul’s words that were spoken in Hebrew, as it appears in Acts chapter 22, cannot be perfectly inspired into Greek, of which we find the book of Acts written.  When one abandons the idea of the perfect inspiration, preservation, and translation of the word of God, one becomes his own authority.  Even more so, the scholar (so called) who would deny the perfect inspiration, preservation, and translation of the word of God is challenging God’s promise to do so.  And therefore borders on blasphemy.

One of the easiest ways to get away with something is to pit two authority figures against each other, and while they are debating, you do as you wish.  We did that with our parents all the time.  Everyone knows that without an absolute standard, disunity, antipathy, disorder, and tyranny ensue.  There must be a perfect authority above mankind in order to keep mankind in order.  There cannot be more than one standard of math.  One plus one is always two.  There cannot be competing standards of gravity.  What goes up must come down.  When it comes to metaphysical truth, the same applies.  There must be an absolute truth that is perfect and without error.  If not, then humanity and the church become the nation of Israel as it appears in the book of Judges.  Every man will do that which is right in his own eyes because there is no king in the land of Israel.

We have an electronic bathroom scale.  It is a problem scale.  Every so often, I have to service it.  I have to clean the dust off the feet.  I have to level it and re-zero it.  A few weeks ago, it switched from pounds and ounces to the metric system without the hard switch being thrown.  I tried a few things.  The numbers were a bit more than half of what it would have been in pounds and ounces.  I loved those numbers much better.  All of a sudden, I lost 75 points.  Amazing what a bit of technology failure can do for your self-esteem.  I was all set to purchase a mechanical scale, but decided to check the batteries.  Sure enough, they were beginning to fail.  Bummer.  I replaced the batteries, and my weight was back up where it had always been.  If we followed the logic of the carnal theologian, either number would be acceptable and as accurate as the other.  My weight becomes a preference and not an absolute.  Our willingness to accept the inerrantly translated and preserved word of God does not change the fact that it is.  This is the folly of the carnal academic.  He or she thinks that what is believed is the truth because it is believed.  I dare them to speed, get a ticket, and argue that in front of a judge.  It doesn’t wash.  God’s word is perfectly inspired, perfectly translated, and perfectly preserved.  Nothing will change that!