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

Psalm 96 celebrates God’s kingship and says that the kings of the earth worship gods that are not gods at all. These kings must answer to the real God, the one strong enough and wise enough to create a world out of chaos. This God will again exert his creative power by judging the nations righteously and fairly, deposing the kings of earth. 

We share the poet’s  great religious and political hope, that one day God will set the world right–economically, socially, racially, politically. 

James Dobson, founder and former head of Focus on the Family, was shocked and disappointed at President Trump’s defeat in the US election. In a post-election newsletter, he wrote that millions of evangelicals prayed Trump would be re-elected. He couldn’t understand why God didn’t answer their prayer. How could God let the presidency be overrun by the most leftist regime in American history, he asked. (https://www.drjamesdobson.org/newsletters/november-newsletter-2020).

Then Dobson says, quoting from his book When God Doesn’t Make Sense: “We must never forget that [God] is God. He is majestic and holy and sovereign. . . . He is not an errand boy who chases the assignments we dole out. He is not a genie who pops out of the bottle to satisfy our whims. He is not our servant—we are His. And our reason for existence is to glorify and honor Him . . . even when nothing makes sense” (ibid.).

We may not agree with Dobson’s politics, but his description of God’s greatness mirrors Psalm 96. God is king of the nations, even when he doesn’t support our political candidates or answer our political prayers, even when evil and injustice carry the day. As Christians we pray that God will protect and guide our country, but that is secondary to the larger prayer Christ taught us: “Your kingdom come, God. Your will be done.”

Let’s pray. 

Our father, the poet tells us
    You will judge the world in righteousness,
      and the people in faithfulness (v. 13). 

We point out to you some of the poorest nations in the world who need a righteous and faithful judge, an honest king. 

Sierra Leone is still suffering the effects of a decade-long civil war that  destroyed much of the infrastructure, from an ebola epidemic, and from corrupt governments. Liberia, famous for its activity in the nineteenth century slave trade, has suffered civil war and ebola and allegations of government corruption and abusive. In Burundi, where over 80% of the people live by subsistence agriculture, deforestation, soil erosion, climate change, and political instability make their livelihood risky and uncertain. And the list goes on, through Malawi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Niger and Eritrea and South Sudan. O God, with the poet, we ask you to judge the world in righteousness and the people in faithfulness. 

We think also of refugees and victims of oppression in Asia. The Myanmar army viciously attacked the Rohingya ethnic population, forcing them to leave their homes and go to refugee camps in Bangladesh. Yemen is engaged in a brutal six-year civil war, with the Houthi ethnic group fighting an international coalition led by Saudi Arabia. The Chinese government oppresses the Uyghur Muslims, suppressing the Islamic religion and indoctrinating the people into Chinese culture and values. In Iraq, home of ancient Babylon where the Israelites were exiled, racial and religious violence have run rampant since the United States deposed Saddam Hussein, but was unable to replace him with a functioning democracy. O God, bring your righteousness and justice to these ancient corners of the world. 

Bring it also to North America, where we too wish an end to political posturing, to right wing and left wing populism, to divisiveness and hate in politics and culture. Rule the nations Lord, set the world right.

Amen.

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

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

Psalm 95 communicates two different messages. The first is a beautiful call to worship, an invitation to praise God in a community of worshippers. The second is a stern reminder, repeated from the previous psalm, that true worshipers listen to God and obey his voice.

The call to worship summons us to praise God because he rules over creation. The depths of earth, the heights of the mountains, the roiling sea and the dry land are all works of his hand. 

A second call to worship summons us to kneel before God, thankful that we too are his creation. But we are not  mere created objects, wandering aimlessly through a vast universe. We are God’s sheep, God is our shepherd. The hand that formed the worlds cares tenderly for his flock. 

The poet now moves to his second theme, saying:
    If only you would hear his voice
         do not harden your hearts (vv. 7-8). 

Here, the poet speaks as prophet revealing God’s heart. God longs that people would listen to him and heed his voice. But he has often experienced the opposite: His people turn from the place of worship back  to lives of faithless struggle. Our songs of praise get lost in lives of employment, pandemic, personal failure, social injustice, or outright idol worship. “O, if you would only listen to me and heed my voice” says God. But sadly,
      Their hearts go astray
          and they have not known my ways (v. 10). 

Let’s pray. 

Our father, we worship you in the temple of creation. 

Yours are the depths of the earth and the height of the mountains. The title deed to my small property on earth excludes mines and minerals lurking below. But your ownership extends from the centre of the earth to the highest mountains. You built the world, and your name is on the title deed. 

We praise you for the seas, the vast oceans that we use for work and play, where we harvest food, where our ships travel for commerce and our navies patrol against enemies. Thank you also for the dry land, for we are land animals who walk the solid earth, and work it,and  build on it, and fight over it.

Thank you for sunsets and sunrises as earth spins from day to night and night to day. Thank you for the phases of the moon that regulate the tides and mark our months, for the seasons that attend our pilgrimage around the sun. Thank you for our home in the solar system, for the Christmas conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter that reminded us of the Star of Bethlehem.

Thank you that you are our shepherd, the guardian and overseer of our lives. In the pandemic, conspiracy theorists derisively call us “sheeple”, accusing us of giving away our freedoms by wearing masks and following questionable medical advice.

O God, our shepherd, we are not your sheeple, we are the sheep of your pasture, who listen to your voice and  search for your truth.  In the social and political confusion of life, our society shows the weakness of its hold on sanity and wisdom. Care for us, God, lead us through problems bigger than we can understand and solve. We are not the independent, self-sufficient cowboys of the American myth, we are people bound together by a common culture, a shared civilization, worldwide medical problems, and governments that triy to act wisely. 

Help us to live as the sheep of your flock, help us to speak your truth to our world, help to live your life into our culture. And save us, Lord, for we need your deliverance.  

Amen.

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

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

In Psalm 94, the poet speaks with three voices of prayer: a voice of complaint, a teaching voice, and a voice of confidence and praise. 

The psalm starts with a complaint to Jehovah, God of vengeance.

This psalm, and others, present two different views of God’s vengeance. The first view is the vengeance as imagined by the poets. The poets are not impartial judges, objectively suggesting measured punishments for measured evil. As victims of ruthless oppressors, bloody wars, slander in court, sometimes hounded to death, they want God to set things right…now… by stopping the evil and stomping on the evildoer.. The poets offer helpful suggestions for how to punish enemies and destroy their lives and property. While we approve the poets’ desire for justice, we are sometimes shocked at their vicious suggestions for revenge. 

The other view of God’s vengeance is how God works to bring about justice. He rarely follows the poets’ violent suggestions. Instead, he’s fair and just in protecting the innocent, delivering the weak, and helping the poor against abusive adversaries. God’s administration of justice often lets people reap what they sow.Those who live by the sword die a violent death. 

After his prayer for justice, the poet adopts a teacher’s voice, pointing out that ignoring God is not an option. Despite God’s silence and apparent indifference, he is attentive to the world he made and the people he loves. God who created ears . . . hears what is happening. God who created eyes . . . sees injustice. God who disciplines the nations . . . will set things right. But perhaps not on the urgent schedule the poet would prefer.  

The poet now moves to his third voice, expressing praise and thankfulness to God. He says,
  When my foot was slipping,
        your unfailing love supported me.
  When anxiety was great within me,
        your consolation brought me joy (vv. 18-19).
  The Lord has become my fortress,
        my God the rock in whom I take refuge (v. 22). 

Let’s pray. 

Lord, we feel that violence should be rewarded with violence. Isn’t the answer to bad guys with guns, good guys with guns? Isn’t the answer to murder, to kill the perpetrator by capital punishment? Isn’t the answer to assault and bloodshed to visit violence on the guilty? Are you not God, the avenger? Do you not find our suggestions helpful?

O God, you are slow to avenge, slow to stop the violent in their tracks, slow to rescue the orphan and widow and alien. Is this because you are not paying attention? Do you not see? Do you not hear?

But you who created the eye, you do see. You created the ear, you do hear. You discipline the nations, surely you will punish the wicked and set the world right. We submit our case to you, God. If our violent solutions are not acceptable, if our proposed schedule is unhelpful, we invite you to do your work in your way and in your time.  

We give thanks that you are God. When we have great anxiety, you console us with joy. When we are vulnerable, you are our fortress. Lead us and protect us until our lives are safe and our world is at peace.

Amen.

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

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

Psalm 93, which we look at today, highlights three immovable foundations of the poet’s faith: God on his throne is eternal, the earth is immovably fixed in place, and God’s law is unchangeable. 

For us moderns, these fixed foundations raise questions. The poet imagined a stationary earth, with sun and moon and stars circling around it. Our modern imagination pictures a moving earth circling the sun, part of a solar system moving through space, belonging to one galaxy among millions traversing the universe. The earth is far more moveable than the poet imagined. 

The poet also cites God’s law as immutable. To him, God’s law was the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. These books regulated ancient Israel’s diet, clothes, sacrifices, worship, and morality. Our modern understanding of the Old Testament law divides it into obsolete bits we’ve discarded (like animal sacrifices and unclean foods), flexible bits we tweak (like choosing Sunday instead of Saturday for our sabbath), and inflexible bits which we see as mandatory (like most of the Ten Commandments). When we take the Bible literally, we don’t mean we do everything it says. We mean we subscribe to a system of interpretation that carefully selects the bits that apply to us. God’s law in the Bible is not immutable for us in the same way it was for the poet; because we discard bits we think are culturally conditioned and emphasize bits we think are unchanging moral laws. And argue endlessly about how to tell the difference.. 

The poet’s third immovable foundation is God’s eternal throne. Here we are on firmer ground, because like the poet, we believe God is eternal, that he created heaven and earth, and that he rules them a hidden providence. We have moved beyond the poet’s understanding to a faith in Christ who will one day bring the world under his direct and visible government.

Let’s pray. 

Our father, even though our cosmology and our relationship to the Old Testament law differ from the poet’s, we share his articles of faith. 

With him we say,
  You reign Lord,
        you are robed in majesty and armed with strength.
  Your throne was established long ago,
        you are from all eternity (vv. 1-2). 
   The seas have lifted up their voice,
        the seas have lifted up their pounding waves.
  Mightier than the thunder of great waters,
        mightier than the breakers of the sea–
        the Lord on high is mighty (vv. 3-4). 

You, God, are mighty: greater than Carribean hurricanes and cyclones in southeast Asia and tsunamis in the Pacific. In the short history of mankind as we know it, the earth has provided a predictable home for us. The waters of the ocean are held back by land, the rain and sun nurture crops, the climate has been stable. But now, as the globe warms, perhaps due to natural cycles or to human activity, we see the stability of the earth changing. Lands once fruitful are becoming deserts, coastlands flood as oceans rise, weather events are more destructive. 

O Lord, are these changes your judgement for our greedy stewardship of the earth? Or in the cycles of nature that you supervise, is it time for the earth to change, causing the death and dislocation of billions as we seek liveable climate and politics and security? 

Your statutes, O Lord, stand firm. May our lives be defined by your laws, whatever happens in our government and weather. Help us to welcome strangers instead of building walls and buying guns. Help us preserve life instead of destroying it. Help us build community instead of escaping off the grid. As others turn to lies and selfishness, help us hold fast to the truth.  

You are mighty Lord, mightier than floods and winds and changes of time. In our short, uncertain lives, may we be good stewards of everything you have given us. Hold us in your eternal hand, bring us at last to your eternal home. 

Amen.

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

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

Psalm 92 is constructed like a Big Mac. The bun on the outside and in the middle is praise to God. The top and bottom halves are identical twins: each contains a meaty offering of the poet’s experience of God’s faithfulness, garnished with an assortment of predictions about the overthrow of God’s enemies. 

Or, to describe it more technically, the first half of Psalm 92 begins with praise to God,then  predicts the downfall of his enemies, and climaxes by stating the central theme, “You, Lord, are forever exalted” (v. 8). The second half of the psalm repeats these themes in reverse order, predicting the destruction of God’s enemies and concluding with a confident statement that yes, the righteous will flourish and praise God. 

Let’s pray some phrases from the psalm. 

   It is good to praise you, Lord,
    and make music to your name,
  proclaiming your love in the morning
      and your faithfulness at night (vv. 1-2).

Lord, in the evening I  see a full moon over a glittering field of snow. In the morning I see sunlight sparkling in the winter white. You paint a beautiful world, Lord, with palettes for each season. In our dark northern winter, we sing your love and faithfulness in morning sun and evening moonlight,

    You make me glad by your deeds, Lord,
        I sing for joy at what your hands have done.
    How great are your works, Lord,
        How profound your thoughts (vv. 4-5). 

We praise you for your works: creating and sustaining the universe, giving your son to save us. We thank you for healing our minds from fear and superstition and ignorance, for freeing out hearts from narrowness and isolation, for caring for our bodies with medicine and exercise and food, for our souls with salvation and communion. 

How great are your works, Lord, how profound your thoughts. Johannes Kepler, an early pioneer of the hypothesis that the earth circles the sun, said his research was “Thinking God’s thoughts after him.” In the 15th century, he studied the motions of the planets and cast horoscopes for his classmates and tried to explain scriptures where the sun was circling the earth. Lord, take our modern minds with their modern superstitions and assumptions, and change them until we think your thoughts after you. Give us the mind of Christ.

As the psalm says,
      Senseless people do not know,
          fools do not understand,
      that though the wicked spring up like grass
          and evildoers flourish,
          they will be destroyed forever.
      But you, Lord, are exalted forever (vv. 6-8). 

Yes, Lord, your presence and your thoughts are light to our darkness, overshadowing senseless and foolish worldviews. With the poet, we believe that those who reject the light of your truth and reality and morality will be consigned by their choices to darkness. But you, Lord, will reign forever in light, you are forever praised. 

   Your enemies, Lord, will be scattered,
      but the righteous will flourish like a palm tree.
    They will still bear fruit in old age,
      proclaiming, “The Lord is upright” (vv. 9c, 12a, 14a, 15a).

Yes, Lord, you alone are upright, you alone are our rock in the shifting sands of modernity, you alone are our compass in a morally bankrupt society, you alone our health in a diseased and decaying world. Care for us, that we may flourish like trees, bearing fruit even in our old age. 

Amen.

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