Faith

 Thursday, 1st Week of Lent – Good things in God’s time  –Matthew 7: 7-12 

Today we study Matthew 7:7-12. You could say we are entering the final lap, the final chapter of the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount covers some very diverse topics and spans  three chapters. 

When we read this text, we feel bound to ask if this Gospel is true? On the surface, it sounds like we have just been asked to make a wish list. We think of Jesus’ words as carte blanche. It looks as though whatever we ask for, whatever we seek, whatever door we open, God will give it to us. Hence, some people take this to mean just about everything; you can have whatever your heart desires, all you have to do is ask. Yet, so often our prayers seem to go unheard or unanswered. We tend to feel that our prayer was such a waste of time.

This passage also raises certain questions; one from the text itself and the other a consequence of the thoughts in our heart. First, what does the word, ‘it’, refer to in the sentence, “ask and ‘it’ will be given to you?” In other words, when Jesus said, “ask, and it will be given you,” what might we expect to receive? The second, what is the ‘it’ in our life? In other words, if we were to ask God for something, what would it be?

This way of thinking pushes our materialistic nature and plays on the thought that if we ask God for anything (since he said so) we could have anything we wanted, as if in having IT (there is that word again) we would be happy. It sounds like “ask, and it will be given you” is a blank cheque, where all you have to do is fill in the amount and sit back. This way of thinking brings out the worst in us and leads us to think of life in terms of material wealth and of God as  a giver of all that I can demand. 

This text is also misused especially by those who preach the prosperity gospel, sometimes also known as the health and wealth gospel. Such teachings say that God wants all Christians to be wealthy and healthy, and that if you are a Christian and you are not living in financial abundance and good health it is because you haven’t asked and haven’t believed God in what you are asking for. All you need to do is stand on the promises of God and claim your inheritance as a child of God.

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Psalm 51 – A Biography of Sin

Psalm 51 is a familiar picture of dust, disaster, and deceit. It is heartfelt cry to God from one who has committed an unspeakable sin in the eyes of God. The particulars of the sin are not enumerated in the Psalm itself, however the super scription added to the psalm fills in the blanks.

The historical background for Psalm 51 is 2 Samuel 11-12. David was in residence in Jerusalem while his armies are battling the Ammonites. He observes Bathsheba, the wife of one of his military generals, bathing on her rooftop. He sends for her, has intercourse with her, and then conspires and has her husband, Uriah, killed in battle. When Nathan confronts David with the implications of what he has done, David’s only words are, “I have sinned against the Lord” (2 Sam 12:13). Psalm 51 could thus be read as the rest of David’s words; David’s confession of sin and his plea for forgiveness.

Awareness of sin can come through many different ways. In David’s case, awareness came as the prophet Nathan proclaimed it to him through his parable and his condemnation, “You are the man.” For many of us, awareness of our sin comes through the teaching of the church and personal reflection on our own shortcomings and sins. Awareness of sin can come through hearing the stories of those whom we have sinned against—either directly or indirectly, through systems of sin and oppression. Such awareness is crucial to the process of repentance and forgiveness and reconciliation.

Psalm 51 is, by any measure, one of the best-known and most often read penitential texts. Of the seven penitential Psalms (6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143), Psalms 38 and 51 are the only two that focus explicitly on confessing sin. This Psalm is often and fitly called the ‘sinner’s guide’. It is one of those bold and courageous prayers that contains all the promise we need to begin the process of reconciliation, renewal, and restoration this season offers us.

Psalm 51:1-17 can be dissected into four sections: verses 1-6 which address God’s character and human frailty, verses 7-12 which plead forgiveness and restoration, verses 13-15 which looks expectantly toward reconciliation, and verses 16-17 which offer closing thoughts on sin, sacrifice, and repentance.

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When David turned a test into a testimony. – Psalm 34

Psalm 34 is classified as an individual hymn of thanksgiving. There are fifteen individual hymns of thanksgiving that occur in the book of psalms. In them, psalm singers give thanks to God for deliverance from various life-threatening situations: illness, enemies, and dangers. Psalm 34 consist of 22 verses and while the liturgy of today’s Eucharist dwells on eight of them, I will also take you into a journey of the whole psalm. Please READ THE TEXT AND KEEP IT OPEN WHILE YOU FOLLOW THIS EXPLANATION. Then you will experience the miraculous healing in this psalm.

In Psalm 34, David praises God for deliverance from a life-threatening situation. How do we know this? If you look at your Bible you will see a title to the psalm or as we call it a superscription. In this case the superscription includes the name of the author and the circumstances that caused him to write the psalm. Most psalms include a superscription but scholars believe that the superscriptions were not originally written with the psalms that they accompany, but were added later.

This superscription places the psalm within a particular life situation of King David: “when he feigned madness before Abimelech, so that he drove him out, and he went away.” Ironically, the Bible doesn’t include a story of David pretending to be insane before Abimelech. So how did this title get it all wrong? The only story in the biblical text that might be associated with Psalm 34’s superscription is found in 1 Samuel 21:10-15 which tells us of David feigning mental illness before Achish, king of Gath (Philistines). David fled from Saul and went to King Achish, not Abimelech but Achish recognized him and David was afraid for his life, so he feigned madness to disguise his true identity. It is possible that the person adding the superscription inadvertently substituted Abimelech’s name for Achish’s name.

Before we dwell into the psalm itself, we must acknowledge the psalms literary style which is unique. Psalm 34 is an alphabetic acrostic. What is that you may ask? Acrostic poems and psalms were the works of highly skilled literary artists. These psalms begin the first verse with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet (alef) and each successive verse with the next letter of the alphabet. In short, they summarized all that could be said or that needed to be said about a particular subject, summing it up from alif to tav, from A to Z. The acrostic model is one of several models of Hebrew poetry and were most likely memory devices to aid in private and public. To write an acrostic psalm requires great ability and discipline, so it isn’t unusual that the psalmist skips a letter or two, as this psalmist does in this case.

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Psalm 23 – A Psalm for the living not just for the dead

If you were to describe God in one word what would you call him? David called him a shepherd but that also meant that David called himself a sheep. David had himself been a keeper of sheep, and understood both the needs of the sheep and the many cares of a shepherd. But David, (as should we) in admitting that he was a sheep also admitted the nature of the sheep and his own nature; weak, defenceless, and yes even foolish.

Sheep are not brilliant creatures. Leave a sheep without a shepherd, and he nibbles a bit of grass here, wanders over there for some more, sees a patch just past that rock; and before you know it the sheep is lost, or has fallen into a ravine, or been devoured by a wolf.

David opens the Psalm with a noble tone of confidence. The Lord IS my shepherd; there is no “if” nor “but”, nor even “I hope so”; but he says, “The Lord IS my shepherd.” In doing so he declares that he has cultivated a spirit of assured dependence upon his heavenly Father.
But he also follows this declaration of faith with another; “I shall not want.”

That response, “I shall not want,” immediately puts us at odds with our culture, in which we are conditioned to be consumers who always lack something. If people lived by Psalm 23 (lacking nothing because the Lord is their shepherd) our economy would collapse. So, we look at the Hebrew text which is perhaps better translated as, “I shall lack nothing,” or “I shall lack no good thing.” Think about it, our whole life is about wanting: I want, I shop, I look, and when I have it, I want new stuff. So here is a question we need to ask ourselves. What do I lack? Well? Perhaps I lack the latest iPhone or a great job and lots of creature comforts. I lack a beautiful house and I lack… We can fill in the blank endlessly.

To live by Psalm 23 would mean ignoring the constant barrage of messages saying, “you are unhappy, you need more stuff.” Psalm 23 resets that consumer mentality. If we genuinely and in the marrow of our being believe that God is with us, then the only logical consequence would be, “I shall not want.”

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Help needed, help sought, help found – Psalm 86:1-6

Psalm 86:1-6 is the Psalm for today’s liturgy at the Eucharist. However, it would do well to read the entire psalm. It is one of the five prayer psalms of King David in the book of psalms. This psalm is an individual lament (compare psalm 56), in which David expresses his distress and overcomes that distress through praise and worship. But while the psalm may seem to resonate the desperate plea of the king asking for help, nothing can be further from the truth.

This is a psalm of a confident servant placing his prayer and his petition before his Lord. However, there is a sense of urgency demonstrated by some 14 prayer requests in the psalm. So is King David merely crying out to God because he is in need of something? Verse 3 tells us that he is in the habit of “crying all day to the Lord.” Which does not mean he is a ‘cry-baby’ but indicates to us that in all things he turns to God. David was in the habit of turning to God for everything, even if it was his fourteenth petition that day.

Everyone needs God, even a king like David and David expresses his confidence in God. He knows his prayer will be heard, in fact there is an assertion of confidence. That confidence is seen in the covenantal relationship shared between David and God. (verse 2, 5, 13).
Seven times in the psalm the psalmist refers to the LORD as “my Lord,” while three times the psalmist refers to himself as “your servant.”. This relationship, lord to servant, means that the servant can cry out to his Lord and that he can confidently expect a positive response to his cry.

The psalm opens with a sense of familiarity. This is not a stranger approaching his God with a request; this is clearly a ‘servant’ knowing who is capable of solving an issue. David begins by asking the Lord to “incline his ear” and answer him. I love this imagery. Imagine a child who indicates to a parent, asking them to stop down to their level because they want to whisper something into the parents’ ear. David does the same and once again in verse six he will ask the Lord to “give ear to his prayer.” David is confident that the Lord will bend down to hear him. Such was his confidence and this confidence is reflected in the way David addresses God as “MY Lord.”

There can be no reason for praying if there be no expectation of the Lord’s answering. Who would make an effort of pleading with the winds, or find a solace in supplicating the waves? The mercy seat of God is a mockery if there be no hearing nor answering. David, as the following verses show, believed the Lord to be a living and potent God, and indeed to be “God alone”, and it was on that account that he resolved in every hour of trouble to call upon him. David was confident that his singular plea would be answered by the singular grace of God.

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