Ep.225: Psalm 104: God’s Playhouse.

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray with Me”.

Psalm 104 opens with an amazing description of God:
The Lord wraps himself in light as with a garment;
he stretches out the heavens like a tent
and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters.
He makes the clouds his chariot
and rides on the wings of the wind.
He makes the winds his messengers,
flames of fire his servants (vv. 2-4).

These striking pictures of God playing in his creation. He dresses himself up in light. The heavens are the tent he plays in. The upper story of his house goes right through the blue sky, with its joists fixed on the water above. He makes a chariot of the clouds and employs fire as his personal valet. He uses wind for the messaging app on his world wide web. God who created light, water, wind, clouds, and fire, now uses them for his clothes, transportation, servants, and messaging app.

Let’s pray some of the phrases from this psalm.

Our God, we have seen wildfires in California and Australia and Siberia, driven restlessly by wind, consuming the plains and forests, sending smoke to the heavens. You are the God who rides on the wings of the wind, whose servants are flames of fire.

The poet says:
You water the mountains from your upper chambers;
       the land is satisfied by the fruit of your work.
You make grass grow for cattle,
and plants for people to cultivate.
        The earth provides food:
     wine that makes our hearts glad
oil that makes our faces shine,
bread that sustains our hearts (vv. 14-15).

You provide the necessities and luxuries of life: wine, oil, flour for bread. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, and which incorporates itself with the grapes to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy!”

The poet says,
All creatures look to you
to give them their food at the proper time. . . .
When you open your hand,
they are satisfied with good things.
When you hide your face,
they are terrified;
when you take away their breath,
they die and return to the dust.
When you send your breath,
they are created,
and you renew the face of the ground (vv. 27-30).

We, like all creatures, Lord, receive our food from your hand. When your hand is open, we are satisfied with good things. When you hide your face, we are terrified. When you take away our breath, we return to dust.

But when you send your spirit, we are born again, and you renew the face of the earth.

O Lord, this is the mystery of life. Our bodies come from the ground, and our food grows in the ground, and our lives end in the ground. But our breath, our spirit comes from you. We try to own the ground from which we come, and manage the clay bodies we live in, but it is you who sets the limits of our lives. You breathed into us when we were dust, you sustain us on this dusty earth, and one day our breath will return to you.

With the poet we pray,
May your glory be forever, Lord,
may you rejoice in the work of your hands (v. 31).
Let us sing to you, Lord, while we live,
let our hymn be of you as long as we have breath (v.33).

Amen.

I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”.

Ep.224: How God’s Covenant Went Wrong.

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

The book of Hebrews makes this comment about the covenant Moses mediated with God at Sinai: “If there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, there wouldn’t be a need for another” (Heb 8:7). That’s strong language. Something was wrong with the covenant God organized? So he had to abandon it? And make a new one?

To describe what was wrong with the covenant, Hebrews quotes the prophet Jeremiah,
The days are coming, declares the Lord,
when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel. . .
It will not be like the covenant
I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they did not remain faithful to my covenant,
and I turned away from them,
declares the Lord (Heb 8:8-9).

Did you notice: the author used that quote to turn a hidden corner in his argument. Instead of telling us what was wrong with the covenant, he tells what was wrong with the people who agreed to the covenant. That’s a big difference.

Then, Hebrews tells us what the new covenant will look like, again quoting Jeremiah:
This is the covenant I will establish with the people of Israel. . .
after that time, declares the Lord.
I will put my laws in their minds
and write them on their hearts. . .
No longer will they teach their neighbours,
or say to one another, “Know the Lord,”
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest (Heb 8:10-11).

I have three observations about the new covenant.

First, it was promised to Israel, not Gentiles. So does the new covenant belong to the Church? Jesus and the New Testament do not clarify how the transition from Israel to the church worked. The church has discarded parts of the old covenant, like animal sacrifice, and claimed other parts as its own, such as God’s promise to bless the whole world through Abraham. The church has consigned much of the Old Testament to the category of “stories about God from which we can learn lessons”. What we learn is not to repeat Israel’s wars, its politics, or its religion. Instead, we want to reproduce something of the relationship with God which Israel expressed through the prophets and the psalms.

A second observation on the new covenant: it has not yet been fulfilled in the way Jeremiah explained it. For example, he says,
No longer will they teach their neighbours,
or say to one another, “Know the Lord,”
because they will all know me (Heb 8:10-11).

If you’ve attended church or browsed some Christian books recently, you’ll notice that a frequent topic is, “How to know God better”. Clearly, we’re not yet where Jeremiah promised, where it’s no longer necessary to preach that sermon.

My third observation on the new covenant is a personal question: “Has God put his law in your mind and written it on your heart?” Or does your heart, like mine, keep going astray? As far as I can tell, God has not given me one life-changing event in which he wrote his law on my mind and heart. Rather, he writes it bit by bit, day by day, as I meditate on scripture and engage in spiritual disciplines.

Let’s pray.

Our father, we want to receive the new covenant you promised Israel. We want your law written on our hearts and in our minds. Help us grow out of our immaturity, out of our need for constant teaching and reminders. Help us grow into the place where we know you in a deep and permanent way.

We pray the Anglican collect, “Grant us so to hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest [the scriptures] that by patience and the comfort of your Holy Word we may embrace and hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ. . .” (Book of Common Prayer, collect for Second Sunday of Advent).

Amen.

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.

Ep.223: Psalm 103: Bless the Lord, O My Soul.

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray with Me”.

Psalm 103 opens with a well-known call to worship:
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and all that is within me
bless his holy name (v. 1).

Some modern translations say “Praise the Lord” instead of “Bless the Lord”, but I prefer the word bless. I like the reciprocity, the relationship implied by mutual blessing: God blesses us, and we bless him back. When we feel God’s goodness in our lives, we respond by speaking blessing to others and back to God. Bless the Lord, O my soul.

The poet blesses God for the good things he gives. God forgives, heals, redeems, crowns us with love and compassion, satisfies our desires with good things, and renews our life like the eagle’s (vv. 3-5). God’s blessings move us toward lives of wholeness, health, and meaning.

The poet, who has faced God’s anger and displeasure, does not give way to fear, but asserts positively:
He will not always accuse,
nor will he harbour his anger forever;
he does not treat us as our sins deserve,
or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us (vv. 9-12).

Author Walter Brueggemann says, “Psalm 103 stuns those in the chaos of the exile with the proclamation that YHWH [God] acts out of compassion rather than a precise moral calculus. Divine generosity far outlasts the encounter with divine wrath” (Psalms, by Walter Brueggemann and William H. Bellinger, Cambridge University Press, 2018, Kindle, chapter “Psalm 103”). God doesn’t crunch the numbers, weighing our bad deeds against our good. He forgoes punishing sin, he discards the memory of it, and acts with infinite love.

Let’s pray to this generous God.

As a father has compassion on his children,
so you have compassion on us, Lord.
You know how we are formed,
you remember that we are dust (vv. 13-14).

Our father, where we have castigated ourselves for broken relationships, failed resolutions, and endless sin, we come to you for forgiveness, healing, and redemption. Where we have lived with long regret for things done and said, and for things not done and not said, we come to you. We remember your promise to satisfy our desires with good things and to renew our life like the eagles (v. 5). Satisfy us, Lord, with the healing of our bodies and minds, with the restoration of relationships, with growing character, and hearts at rest. Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days (Ps 90:14).

The poet says,
The life of mortals is like grass,
they flourish like a flower of the field;
the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and it’s place remembers it no more.
But from everlasting to everlasting
your love is with those who fear you,
and your righteousness with their children’s children (vv. 15-17).

Yes Lord, we feel our lives and our world passing away like grass. The great American democracy drifts toward chaos, Russian politics revert to brutal dictatorship, and the Chinese empire assets its power in a violent world. Our bodies age, our loved ones decline, we attend more funerals than weddings. But your love, O Lord, is from everlasting to everlasting, and your righteousness with our children’s children.

With poet John G. Whittier, we respond to your love, as he says:
Yet, in this maddening maze of things,
And tossed by storm and flood,
To one fixed hope my spirit clings,
I know that God is good.
I dimly guess from blessings known,
Of greater out of sight,
And with the chastened psalmist own,
His judgments too are right (The Eternal Goodness, lines 41-44, 53-56)..

Judge us, O Lord, as you must, but in mercy and love, in kindness and gentleness.

Amen.

I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”.

Ep.222: Psalm 102: The Ephemeral and the Eternal.

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray with Me”.

Psalm 102 has a two-line title which describes it as:
The prayer of an afflicted person who has grown weak
and pours out a lament before the Lord.

In this psalm, the poet is shaken to his core. He says,
My days vanish like smoke;
my bones burn like glowing embers.
My heart is blighted and withered like grass; (vv. 3-4a).
I eat ashes for food
and mingle my drink with tears
because of your great wrath. . . (vv. 9-10a).

Sleepless nights. Tearful days. Starvation diet. Burning bones. Little wonder the poet feels his life is lost, vanishing like smoke in the wind. Shadows lengthen on his years. He withers in the heat of the day and passes into evening like sun-scorched grass.

Not only is the poet shaken: his city, Zion, is also shaken. He prays for restoration, saying:
You will arise and have compassion on Zion,
it is time to show favour to her. . .
For her stones are dear to your servants;
her very dust moves them to pity (vv. 13a, 14).

Returning to his personal troubles, the poet contrasts his brief, painful, and ephemeral life with God’s eternity:
In the course of my life, [the Lord] broke my strength;
he cut short my days.
So I said
Do not take me away, my God, in the midst of my days;
your years go on through all generations.
In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
They will perish, but you remain;
they will all wear out like a garment.
Like clothing you will change them
and discard them.
But you remain the same,
and your years will never end (vv. 23-27).

The poet frames the brevity and pain of his life against God’s eternity and creative activity. The poet’s life is wearing out. The world he lives in running down. The heavens above are aging and passing away. God made them all like a fashion show, where the costumes that dazzle the runway today will be discarded at the end of the season.

Let’s pray.

O Lord, our life is smoke, a vapor that disperses in the air, a grass that withers and dies. We live a few short days, never achieving the glory you made us for, leaving no permanent trace of our passing.

But you, O Lord, outlive the changes. The earth that to us is unshakeable will wear out like a garment, the heavens will collapse like clothes thrown in the laundry hamper. But your life and watchfulness outlast it all. You remain the same, your years will never end.

With the poet we pray,
Do not hide your face from me
when I am in distress (v. 2a).
Do not take me away in the midst of my days (v. 24a).
May the children of your servants live in your presence;
establish their descendants before you (v. 28).

Amen.

I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”.

Ep.221: Endless Intercession.

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

Hebrews 7 points out that Jesus is superior to other high priests of the Hebrew tradition, because his lineage traces back to Melchizadek, an obscure priest in Genesis to whom Abraham tithed his plunder of war.

Of the Hebrew high priests, the author says,
There have been many of those priests,
because death prevented them from continuing in office;
but Jesus has a permanent priesthood,
because he lives forever.
Therefore he is able to save completely
those who come to God through him,
because he always lives to intercede for them.
Hebrews 7:23-25

Two comments on this passage.

First, the author suggests that a central weakness of the Hebrew religion was that priests had to make yearly sacrifices to keep up with the annual accumulation of sins. When a high priest died, another took over to keep the forgiveness going.

Jesus, in contrast, has a permanent priesthood. He made one sacrifice to deal with all sin for all time. But like the old-time priests, he didn’t entirely solve the problem of sin. The author says Jesus lives forever to intercede for us, implying that we, like the Hebrews, need someone to help us obtain recurring forgiveness for recurring sins.

I do wish Jesus had solved the sin problem. But despite my relationship with him, I keep on sinning day after day, year after year, and Jesus keeps interceding on my behalf with God.

A second comment on this Hebrews passage: it says Jesus is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he lives forever to intercede for them. I don’t feel he’s saved me completely yet, because I keep sinning. My mind, my imagination, my relationships, and my behavior often seem more unsaved than saved. I hope Jesus is planning a future state in which he will save me completely, as he promised.

Let’s pray.

Our father, here are three things I believe.

I believe I am a sinner. As I age, the problem of sin seems more deeply entrenched than ever. I am not the man I set out to be. I have not had great success at living a holy life, or loving you and my neighbors as I ought. I agree with the author of Hebrews that what I need is not just a yearly brush-up of forgiveness, but a dose of eternal salvation.

I believe that Jesus is my Lord and Savior. That he dealt with the problem of sin, that he is present at your throne, and that he always prays for me. Do receive his prayers, accept me because he has introduced me to you, look at me in the light of his intercession, and forgive all my sins: past, present, and future.

I believe Jesus is on my side, that he deals with the sins I have confessed, with the sins I have not yet confessed, with the sins I confess but am unable to shake, and with the sins I am unaware of.

Jesus has made me his brother, your child. Have mercy on your family, O God.

Amen.

I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”.

Ep.220: Psalm 101: What to do until God Comes.

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray with Me”.

Psalm 101 opens with a song to the Lord, praising his love and justice. Then it moves quickly to personal application as the poet says:
I will be careful to lead a blameless life–
when will you come to me? (v. 2).

What a poignant question. If prayer is a dialogue with God, when will God show up and speak with us? And what shall we do while we wait for him?

The poet starts the psalm with two things he does while he waits:
First, he sings to the Lord, praising his love and justice (v. 1).
Second, he affirms his commitment to lead a blameless life (v. 2a).
The remainder of the psalm describes this life the poet intends to live.

Let’s pray some phrases from the psalm.

Our father, we wait for you. When will you come to us? We long for your presence. As we wait, we renew our commitment to you and to your law, our commitment to live lives that are moral, loving, holy. As we review our commitment, we invite you to remember your commitment to us as our saviour, shepherd, helper, and friend.

The poet says,
I will conduct the affairs of my house
with a blameless heart (v. 2b).

Give us blameless hearts, Lord. Pure hearts, free of self-promotion, self-indulgence, self-pity. Hearts that act in love and mercy, treating our neighbors with dignity and respect.

The poet says,
I will not look with approval
on anything that is vile.
I hate what faithless people do;
I will have no part in it (v. 3).

Yes, Lord, help us to discern good and evil in our hearts, our lives, and our society. Cure us of delusions, of false dreams about the good we would do if we were rich and powerful and influential. Help us to live graciously and thankfully our small lives of faith. As we wait for you, we submit our lives and our thoughts to your law.

The poet says,
The perverse of heart shall be far from me;
I will have nothing to do with what is evil.
Whoever slanders their neighbour in secret,
I will put to silence;
whoever has haughty eyes and a proud heart,
I will not tolerate (vv 4-5).

Yes, Lord, save us from personal and professional relationships that would corrupt us. Give us courage to silence those who slander others. Help us to recognize haughty eyes and proud hearts, and to avoid them.

The poet says,
My eyes will be on the faithful in the land,
that they may dwell with me;
the one whose way of life is blameless
will minister to me (v. 6).

Set before our eyes the faithful in the land. May we reject what is violent and corrupt and evil, and learn from those who live by faith and righteousness.

The poet says,
No one who practises deceit
will dwell in my house;
no one who speaks falsely
will stand in my presence (v. 7).

With the poet, Lord, we commit ourselves to the truth, and to those who speak truly. We renounce conspiracy theories and fake news; we renounce those who spend their spiritual energy by meditating on the evils of big pharma and deep state and lamestream media. Help us to meditate on your word, to discern and live by its truth. Help us to see this present evil age as you see it, God. Give us eyes of faith to see Christ and his kingdom.

And do not forget to come to us as we wait for you.

Amen.

I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”.

Ep.219: A Weak and Useless Law.

Hebrews 7 discusses the priesthood and law that Moses set up for Israel, with Aaron as the first high priest. Comparing Aaron’s line of priests with Jesus, who came from a different line, the writer says,
The former regulation [that is, the priesthood of Aaron] is set aside
because it was weak and useless
(for the law made nothing perfect),
and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God.
Hebrews 6:17-19

“Weak and useless” is a rather harsh judgement on God’s law that established ancient Israel’s religion. If the system was weak and useless, why did God bother to set it up? And why are we still studying it?

The Book of Hebrews explains that it was weak and useless because the law can’t make anything perfect. Interesting thought. What use is God’s law if it can’t make things perfect?

I answer that question by looking at the two moral problems we need to solve.

The first is how to eliminate, or at least reduce, evil. Laws of all sorts do impact this problem, but law of any type has severely limited effectiveness. If laws could solve the problem of evil, our country probably has enough laws to make a perfect society! Russia and China have lots of laws too, but they may be less perfect than ours.

The second moral problem: how to make people good. Goodness is not simply obeying laws and avoiding evil. It is being motivated to actively love each other and God.

Laws are helpful, because they contribute to solving the first moral problem. They do motivate some of us not to murder and steal, and to drive only a little faster than the speed limit.

But “law and order” politicians are wrong when they think harsher punishments increase public safety and reduce serious crime.

Imagine two conspirators planning to rob a liquor store. Do they call in their accountant to do a cost-benefit analysis on the project? If the prison term for armed robbery is longer than the prison term for unarmed robbery, are they likely to leave their guns at home? If the punishment for break and enter is harsher than the punishment for robbing without property damage, are they likely to hire a locksmith instead of breaking the door down?

The punishments written into law do provide some incentive not to do evil, but not everyone attends to this. The author of Hebrews watched the high priest make the same sacrifices year after year for his own sins and others. Is there any way out of this never-ending cycle of never-ending sin?

The system is so broken not even God’s law can fix it. To stop sinning and begin loving requires stronger motivation and greater willpower than any list of rules can supply.

In our verses today, the author hints at an answer, saying, “The former law is set aside because it is weak and useless, and a better hope is introduced by which we draw near to God.”

Let’s pray.

Our father, we feel the weakness of your law in our lives. It is a sad week for us when our best efforts yield only the news that we didn’t murder anyone, that we didn’t commit adultery, that we didn’t rob a liquor store. You made us for better things than that, father, for relationships of love, for communication and community and good works.

Your law is not able to motivate and empower us to live the life of love we need. Help us then to find that better hope, the hope with which we draw near to you. Replace our never-ending cycle of sinning and repenting with a better cycle of drawing near, of receiving your spirit, of learning to loving you and others.

Amen.

I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”.

Ep.201: Psalm 100: Sheeple.

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray with Me”.

Of all the COVID-19 inspired vocabulary–like social distancing, flatten the curve, COVIDiot, doomscrolling, and others–my favorite is probably “sheeple”, a portmanteau of the words “sheep” and “people”.

The word “sheeple” is used by self-confident, self-righteous conspiracy theorists to point out how docile and easily influenced the rest of us are, because we believe lies about COVID-19, propagated by the Deep State and Big Pharma and the Lamestream media and Bill Gates. Those who are not sheeple flock to right-wing media and social media they believe are free from corrupting motives like profit and audience size and corporate attachments. They graze on sources of information they think are courageous and objective purveyors of truth, who see and denounce the hoaxes we sheeple graze on.

Psalm 100, which we look at today, says:
Know that the Lord is God.
It is he who has made us and we are his.
We are his people and the sheep of his pasture (v. 2).

When I was a child, my mother taught my older brother Psalm 23, the shepherd psalm, and she taught me Psalm 100, the thanksgiving psalm. Each night at bedtime, my brother would quote Psalm 23 and I would quote Psalm 100. Then mother turned out the light, and we would drift off to sleep confident that God cared for his little sheep.

Sheep, that is, not sheeple. Because the Biblical image of people as sheep is based in truth and reality, not in pandemic denial or conspiracy theories. My childhood version of the psalm said,
Know that the Lord is God.
It is he who has made us and not we ourselves.

It is comforting to remember that we are part of God’s creation. We are not random products of evolution. We are not self-creating, self-defining beings. We are creatures, made and watched over by a creator, who cares for us like a shepherd tending his sheep.

Let’s pray.

Lord, we pray some of the phrases of this thanksgiving psalm.

We worship you with gladness, we come before you with joyful songs (v. 2) because you are creator and shepherd. You made us. You breathed into us the breath of life. Christ breathed on his us and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). You are the breath that breathes in us, the spirit that lives in us, the shepherd who leads us, the God who provides for us in good times and bad.

We enter your gates with thanksgiving and your courts with praise. Like a lover coming home to her beloved, like a sheep coming home to the fold, we step from our profane world into the sacred space of your temple. You are our true home, our lasting abode, our heart’s desire.

We seek you and love you, not as docile unthinking sheeple, but as humans made in your image, as creatures who need the care of a shepherd, as subjects who honori a wise and good king. Watch over us forever in goodness and love, protect and guide us in your faithfulness, speak to us and lead us to your home forever.

Amen.

I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”.

Ep.217: Anchor.

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

Hebrews 6 says,
Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose
very clear to the heirs of what was promised,
he confirmed it with an oath.
He did this so that,
by two unchangeable things
in which it is impossible for God to lie,
we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us
may be greatly encouraged.
We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.
Hebrews 6:17-19

Hebrews pictures our souls as ships adrift on the ocean, needing an anchor or port. Today’s passage describes the anchor and its use.

“We have this hope as an anchor for the soul,” says the author (v. 19). I find this odd, because we hope for things future, not things present. How can I cast my anchor into the future?

Are we driven by fear to use this anchor? Hebrews says we have fled to take hold of the hope set before us (v. 18b). Why do we flee? What do we take refuge from? The book of Hebrews says we run from hard hearts that are ready to give up the faith (Heb 3:15). We run from suffering that teaches obedience (Heb 5:8). We run from temptation (Heb 4:15), and we run from baby-bottle immaturity (Heb 5:12-14). Paul says, “Flee evil desires. Pursue righteousness” (2 Tim 2:22).

The anchor of hope that Hebrews offers attaches itself to “two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie”–his promise and his oath (v. 17-18). We’re not sure what promise and what oath, but the author is clearly impressed that God doesn’t just make promises. Sometimes he swears an oath to convince sceptical hearers that his promises are real. Perhaps the author remembered God’s oath to Abraham after he prepared to sacrifice Isaac. God said, “I swear by myself I will bless you” (Gen 22:15). Or perhaps it was God’s promise to David: “I swore an oath to David . . . One of your descendants I will place on your throne” (Ps 132:11). Or perhaps it was God’s promise that the Messiah would be a priest: “I have sworn an oath. . . you are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek ” (Ps 110:4).

The hope Hebrews offers as an anchor of the soul is a destination and an attitude. We flee from our troubles and temptations into Port Hope, casting our anchor on God’s firm promises, waiting for storms to is better than our past. This hope encourages us, enabling us to live with patience and optimism.

Let’s pray.

Father, our lives are adrift on an ocean of chance and change. Our thinking slows, our bodies age, our memories fuzz. The news shouts at us every day of earthquakes and wars, pandemics and winds of political change. What is our place in all of this? Are we flotsam and jetsam on the ocean of life? Bit players in a cosmic drama? Disposable pawns in the chess game of life?

Lord, help us not to believe the future is just more of the present. Draw us into Port Hope where we can anchor on your unchanging promises. Help us wait patiently until you bring a better future.

Amen.

I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”.

Ep.216: Psalm 99: Holy God.

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray with Me”.

Psalm 99 says three times God is holy.

In ancient Israel, to be holy was to be set apart. When we think of God as set apart, we imagine a great and remote king on a throne somewhere in the universe. We see his righteousness and wrath like a consuming fire. He is incomparable, different, distant.

But Psalm 99, doesn’t emphasize the distance and difference between God and the world. Instead, it emphasises that relationship and communication are the distinctives that set God apart.

In verses 1-3, God’s “set apart” relationship is that of an awesome and divine king. The world and Israel are right to fear his power and submit to his decrees and praise his great name, because he actively rules the earth and the nations.

In verses 4-5, God’s “set apart” or holy relationship is his love of justice. Unlike other kings, human or divine, God is not a self-promoting, self-enriching, self-protecting despot. He cares about his people, he establishes righteous laws that apply to everyone. No king or president is given a pass to commit murder, adultery, and slander. No peasant is given a pass to complain and denounce and rebel. When a community embraces God as king, and enters into the relationship he offers, it becomes a society of order and wholeness.

Verses 6-9, describe God’s “set apart” relationship with the prophets and priests of the religion he established. When the Israelites worshipped a golden calf in the desert, God threatened to wipe them out. Moses interceded until God changed his mind. When God in his wrath sent a plague among the Israelite wanderers, Aaron interceded and God stayed the plague (Numbers 6). When the Philistines attacked the Israelites at Mizpah, Samuel interceded for the people until God gave them victory (1 Sam 7). These three intercessors illustrate God’s “set apart” relationship with his people: he hears their prayers and responds by granting their requests. He saves them from their enemies–and from themselves.

Let’s pray.

Our father, thank you that you are holy. You are set apart from other gods and kings. Thank you that your “set apartness” is not just distance, but also difference. You are different from others because you desire relationship. You initiated a relationship with Moses, inviting him to lead your people to freedom. You initiated a relationship with Aaron, inviting him to be your priest. You initiated a relationship with Samuel, speaking to him when he was a boy, sharing with him your pain when Israel rejected you as king, when they insisted on a human king like the nations around them.

O Lord, we fear that if you come near to us, your greatness will overwhelm us. Your world-embracing love will expose our narrow and provincial loves. Your ceaseless activity for justice will expose the sloth and laziness of our service. Your freedom from sin and evil will expose our slavery to anxiety and lust.

O Lord, forgive us for our fears that avoid you and resist your approach. Come near to us as we come near to you. Be the love that conquers our selfishness, the king that inspires our loyalty, the God who hears our prayers.

Amen.

I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”.