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

Psalm 81 opens with a hymn of praise, performed with vocals, drums, a stringed instrument (perhaps an ancient ancestor of the guitar) and a unique wind instrument–a ram’s horn. Sounds almost like a modern worship band!

This rollicking celebration at the new moon festival was part of Israel’s constitution–the standard operating procedures given by God when he freed them from Egyptian slavery. God didn’t legislate a culture of dour, straight-laced correctness. He invited people to celebrate, to rock a bit. 

He also wanted a culture that honored him as the God who gives freedom. Author Vernard Ellard in his book, The Mad Morality paraphrases God as saying to Israel, 

   “I’m the God who set you free, right?”
    Right.
  “I’ve adequately demonstrated that your freedom is my prime concern, right?”
    Right.
  “So I’m going to give you 10 suggestions for how to stay free. I’ve dealt with your slavery to Egypt. But beware of other people and other things that offer freedom. Because I’m the only God out there who wants people who are free, not a nation of slaves.” (Paraphrased from Ellard, Vernon. The MAD Morality or the Ten Commandments Revisited. New York: Abingdon Press, 1972. pp. 16-17). 

But the people broke God’s rules and his heart by giving their freedom to false gods. Listen to God’s cry:
    If only my people would listen to me,
      if Israel would only follow my ways,
    how quickly I would subdue their enemies
      and turn my hand against their foes
    I would feed you with the finest of wheat;
      with honey from the rock I would satisfy you (vv. 13-14, 16). 

Let’s pray. 

Our father, we bring to you the false gods that offer us freedom.

Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein worshipped the god of sex, but ended his life hanging in his prison cell. Lord, help us not to offer our freedom to the god of sex. 

We think of the T-shirt that reads, “Don’t mess with my freedom, my firearms, my family, my faith”. Is the wearer confident that if anyone messes with him, he is strong and wise enough to mete out justice with a gun? O Lord, help us not to offer our freedom to the god of individualism, the god of self.

We think of rigid doctrinal purists who are confident they have the right method to interpret scripture, and the right doctrines derived from scripture, and the right morality based on scripture. O Lord, help us not to offer our freedom to the god of rationalism, the god of rigid systems, the god that places our own definition of truth above the command to love you and people and creation.  

We think of people who are slaves to conspiracy theories, waiting anxiously for the next cryptic revelation from QAnon or the next announcement of world-ordering decisions from the Illuminati or the next hint of suspicion about which evil actors developed and distributed COVID-19. Lord, help us not to lose our freedom to anxious thoughts and to fearful imaginings about the great evils that stalk our world.

With the poet we pray, 

• help us listen to your voice.
• help us believe your words more than all the clamor on the Internet.
• help us rest in the fact that it is you, not the Illuminati nor the wealthy nor the powerful, that rule our world.
• help us hope in your soon coming that will set the world to rights. 

Amen

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

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

Today we look at Psalm 80, a lament for the overthrow of Israel, and a plea for God to make a U-turn, to stop delivering the country to destruction and to begin restoring it. 

The psalm is marked by several striking pictures of God. It opens,
    Hear us, shepherd of Israel,
        you who lead Joseph like a flock.
    You who sit enthroned between the cherubim. . .
      Awaken your might;
      come and save us (v. 1-2).

In these two verses, the poet addresses God as shepherd of Israel, as king whose throne is in the temple, and as a mighty saviour who ought to rescue his people. 

Then follows a refrain that occurs three times in the psalm (vv. 3, 7, 19). The poet says,
    Restore us, God of Armies,
      make your face shine on us
      that we may be saved (vv. 3, 7, 19).

Do you find it odd asking God, the commander of armies, to smile at you? President Trump is the commander-in-chief of the U.S. army, but he isn’t famous for his smile.

As the poem continues, it describes God as a gardener who transplanted his vine, Israel, from Egypt into the Promised Land.There, he carefully tilled the ground and planted the vine, tenderly caring for it until it covered the whole Promised Land from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean. But now, God has let the wall around his vineyard crumble. Wild boars trample the vines, insects infest them, and passers-by help themselves to the grapes. “Why have you let this happen?” asks the poet. “After all the trouble you took transplanting and tending the vine, have you suddenly quit caring about it?” 

Let’s pray the pictures of God from this psalm. 

Our father, God of Armies, the nations of our world look for strongman leaders. 

• Leaders who project decisiveness and strength in the face of racial and economic and social conflict. 
• Leaders who express sympathy for the troubles and prejudices of common people. 
• Leaders who do not care about political correctness or moral values. 
• Leaders with simple solutions to complex problems. 

God of Armies, it is your strength we need, for the time is coming when the strength of human leaders will fail, when their power will be revealed as weakness, and their wisdom as foolishness.

Our father, shepherd your people in these times. Lead us to wisdom. It is simple to believe in you, but not easy. In much of your church we see rigid theological opinions, strange political affiliations, unscriptural belief in individual freedom, and little understanding of community. Bring us out of our worldly values into the fellowship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Expose our illusions of self-sufficiency and lead us into community.

You who sit enthroned in your holy temple, help us live as holy people, as members of your family, as people set apart to serve you. Anxiety disorders increase during COVID-19, government support for the unemployed draws to an end, the count of sick and dead surges. O God, repair the wall around your garden, care for your vineyard again, look in mercy on all you have created, for the sake of your son Jesus Christ, who shared our human condition.

Amen

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

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

Today we look at Psalm 79, a wrenching lament for the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 586 B.C. A hundred years earlier, when the Assyrians attacked Jerusalem, God protected the city and sent the invaders packing. So the people concluded that they lived in God’s special city with God’s special temple, and that God would provide special protection forever.

The Babylonians, however, ran their cruel army right through the heart of that theory. Listen to the poet’s prayer:
  O God, the nations have invaded your inheritance;
      they have defiled your holy temple,
      they have reduced Jerusalem to rubble.
  They have left the dead bodies of your servants
      as food for the birds of the sky,
      the flesh of your people for the animals of the wild (v. 1-2). 

The poet implicates God in the disaster, pointing out that God failed to look after his people and his property and his religion. 

The poet also blames Israel for the disaster, saying to God,
  Do not hold against us the sins of past generations;
      may your mercy come quickly to meet us,
      for we are in desperate need.
      …deliver us and forgive our sins (v. 8, 9c). 

The poet believes that sin in generation after generation contributed to Israel’s great disaster. He asks God to forgive the sins, and to stop the generational consequences. Tellingly, he includes himself among the sinners as he says, “Forgive our sins.” 

The poet also blames Babylon, and pleads to God to take measureless vengeance on that nation. He says,
  Before our eyes, make known among the nations
      that you avenge the outpoured blood of your servants.
  Pay back into the laps of our neighbours seven times
      the contempt they hurled at you (vv. 11-12). 

Like the United States after 9/11, the poet had a deep feeling that the destruction should be avenged, quickly, purposefully, violently, completely. He did not suggest a moderate eye-for-an-eye and tooth-for-a-tooth justice–he wanted God to pay back the perpetrators seven times over. 

Let’s pray. 

Our father, as I read Tolstoy’s War and Peace during the Covid pandemic, I am amazed by his vivid descriptions of violent battles, destroyed cities, looting peasants and soldiers, wounded and dying civilians and military as Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812. Like the destruction of Jerusalem in the poet’s time, the burning of Moscow left a stench in 1812, 9/11 left a stench in New York in 2001, and America left a stench in Afghanistan and Iraq. Will it never end, Lord? Do war and vengeance go on forever? 

We ask you, we expect you, to protect our country and our religion, for they are yours. But we see in this psalm your willingness to let empires rise and fall, to permit the endless suffering of war, to let even your holy places fall into ruin and decay, and to let your people suffer in the sufferings of the world.

O father, bring us to the place the poet came to in this psalm. A place where instead of planning our own vengeance, we wait for your judgement. A place where we are content to be the sheep of your pasture, and to praise you forever.  

Amen

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