UNBLOCKING THE WELL OF THE LIVING WORD

PSALM 11-15

SUGGESTED PATTERN Read Psalm 11-15 with your spouse or household  then re-read Psalm 11 again with spouse or household, then spend 2 mins in silence focussing on  Psalm 11: 3-4 asking the Lord, the question “What does this text mean?” then 2 mins in silence asking the Lord what He is saying to you personally through Psalm 11: 3-4 and then share together with your spouse or household what the Lord has been saying. Finally one person reads out loud the devotional below and then pray for one another.  

PSALM 11: 3,4.  “ When the foundations are being destroyed what can the righteous do? The Lord is in his holy temple, the Lord’s throne is in heaven. He observes the sons of men; his eyes examine them.

John Bevere says  (1) “Can you imagine erecting a building without a foundation? If the weather is calm, the building can rise high and remain standing .But when a strong storm arrives, down comes the building!”  We live in stormy times for the western world. Global pandemic, increasing threatening signs of war, financial instability and foundational teachings of the church on sexuality are being questioned.  Are there any foundations we need to attend to personally that are being destroyed or even neglected?

The praying of the psalms corporately is a foundation that has been neglected by many . Eugene Peterson says  (2) “If we dismiss the Psalms, preferring a more up-to-date and less demanding school of prayer, we will not be without grace, but we will miss the centre where Christ worked in his praying. Christ prayed the Psalms – the Christian community was early convinced that he continues praying them through us as we pray them…The practice of Christians praying the Psalms is straightforward: simply pray through the Psalms, psalm by psalm, regularly. That’s it: open our Bibles to the book of Psalms and pray them – sequentially, regularly, faithfully across a lifetime. This is how most Christians for most of the Christian centuries have matured in prayer.”If  you have read Eric Metaxes award winning book Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy  (3), maybe you were struck, as I was  by how important the psalms were for Bonhoeffer, his individual life  and his communal life. In 1940, Bonhoeffer published his final book before his death, The Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible.(4) In this book he urged Christians to recover the Psalms as the prayer book of Jesus. Bonhoeffer was arrested and imprisoned three years later in April of 1943, and eventually hung in 1945.

Teaching on eternal judgement is another foundation that has been neglected or destroyed. In his book “The awe of God”  (5) John Bevere quotes Hebrews 6:1-2 which says “Therefore leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection,  not laying again the  foundation of … repentance from dead works and of faith toward God and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands , the resurrection of the dead and  eternal judgement.”  (Hebrews 6:1-2). He says “The fact is… all of us will give an account for the way we lived. What transpires at this judgement will last forever – it’s eternal! For the believer, it is referred to as “the judgement seat of Christ.” At this judgement seat we will not be judged for our repented sins- they have already been eradicated by the blood of Jesus. God has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west” Psalm 103:12. Again, He says “I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins ” Hebrews 8:12..So what will our judgement entail? We’ll be examined regarding how we lived as believers, and both good and bad will be examined.”(He says) “I find many believers are unaware of the judgement they will face or at best they are only familiar with the term but haven’t investigated it thoroughly. This could be compared to merely knowing that the basic elementary school skills are important but never actually learning them. A very important question to ask is, how are believers building their lives in Christ without this elementary truth.”

Salvation by allegiance alone is another foundation or a least a secondary substructure  that has been neglected or destroyed. Tom Wright wrote a book “How Jesus became king”. (6) The only adequate response to aking is allegiance. In Matthew Bates’ provocative book “Salvation by allegiance alone” (7) Scott McKnight says in the foreword, that “The Church’s  one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord”… Upon the absolutely secure foundation of Jesus, the true gospel sits as a secondary substructure and is undergirding  the universal church. So when the gospel is compromised, despite its unshakeable foundation, the building leans sways and slides… the superficiality of America’s evangelicalism and gospel-obsession with security and assurance has led me at times to wonder if we should not teach justification by discipleship or justification by faithfulness but Matthew Bates has landed on a beautifully and biblically sound of term: allegiance.”

Prayer

Lord ..my foundation is you Lord Jesus Christ. You are my cornerstone. Help me to build my life on you Lord Jesus and like the wise builder, to hear your words that you are speaking to me today and to put them into practice. Reveal those foundations  that I have been neglecting, I pray.

References

(1) Bevere, J The Awe of God.

(2) Peterson, E. Answering God: The Psalms as tools for prayer, San Francisco, Harper and Row,  1989, p4, 7.

(3) Metaxes, E. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.

(4) Bonhoeffer, D. Psalms: Prayer book of the bible

(5) Bevere, J. The Awe of God.

(6) Wright, N.T. How Jesus became king.

(7) McKnight, S. Foreward  page ix, in Bates, M. Salvation by Allegiance alone.