UNBLOCKING THE WELL OF THE LIVING WORD

READ PSALM 91-95

SUGGESTED PATTERN Read Psalm 95 with your spouse or household then re-read Psalm 95 again with spouse or household, then spend 2 mins in silence focussing on  Psalm 95:5-9 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 95:5-9 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 95: 5-9

“Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care. Today, if only you would hear his voice,“Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah as you did that day at Massah in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested me”

When the Covid lockdown began in March 2020 in the UK, Steve Uppal  of All Nations church in Wolverhampton began a series entitled “Wake up”. See clip below (1). Charles Wesley preached a sermon 250 years ago, during the First Great Awakening (2) with a similar title ‘Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead and Christ shall give thee light.’Ephesians 5:14, on 4 April 1742. He said ‘What then do you mean O sleeper? Arise, call upon your God if your God will think of you. A mighty tempest is stirring around you and you are sinking into the depths of perdition. Awake, awake!” Even further back… over 1500 years ago, Benedict at the beginning of his ‘Rule’ also challenged his monks to “Wake up”, and Psalm 95  verses 7 and 8 were his inspiration.(3) He said “Now at last we must wake up, …Let us open our eyes to the divine light and listen carefully to what the divine voice tells us to do when it cries out each day, ‘If you hear his voice today, do not harden your hearts.’ Psalm 95:7–8”

Esther de Waal wrote (4) how Benedict wrote his Rule for monastic living, just after the Fall of the Roman Empire, in AD 540, which helped chart many through .. stormy waters. She wrote, (5) “Christians must have looked back with nostalgia to the age of the Fathers and asked themselves if ever again the church could produce a Saint Augustine and (his book) a “City of God” to hold out the promise of peace and order and light on a scene which seemed instead to be rapidly descending into chaos. And then on the scene there appeared the man who built an ark to survive the rising storm an ark not made with hands.” (6) “Benedict’s call in his Prologue, was to a deep and challenging life, focused on prayer and laying down one’s life, following biblical Christian principles living in community with a committed body of believers. It wasn’t explicitly evangelistic, but these small groups of believers became like a beacon set on a hill. Many were drawn to the light and culture of the Western European nations and were transformed by the biblical Christian worldview.” 

I believe that Europe needs another Benedictine missionary monastic movement today, beginning with a similar “Wake up” call. We need to hear Jesus waking us up, speaking to us through both Old and New Testaments. It is Scripture that rouses us. Scripture is a divine voice. Scripture is sacramental.  Early church exegesis was not primarily about observing, interpreting and applying the text, as is customary in bible study today. It was about encountering Jesus the divine logos in the Scriptures and obeying the divine voice. Benedict’s rule consisted of “instructions of a loving father: receive them gladly and carrying them out to good effect so that by the efforts of obedience you may return to him from whom you have withdrawn through the laziness of disobedience. It is to you that my words are now addressed, if you are ready to take up the powerful and glorious weapons of obedience, renouncing your own will with the intention of fighting for the true king, Christ the Lord.’

The Scriptures are a sacred text. Scripture is not about timeless truths, to be objectively applied in a scientific way. Lesslie Newbiggin, the hugely influential Anglican missionary statesman of the 20th century said (7) “the idea of a purely objective knowledge is an illusion… but it is a prime and dominant illusion of Western culture.”  We are all children of a divine heavenly father and knowledge in the bible is a personal knowing (“yada” in Hebrew). Have you had the revelation that your bible including the Old Testament should be read in the light of the resurrection, by the community of faith, as a coherent story? Can …you hear this call afresh today?.. to wake up, to encounter Jesus Christ, the divine logos, to hear His voice and to obey Him in the fear of the Lord?              

Prayer

Lord help me to read both Old and New Testaments, in the light of the resurrection in the community of faith as a coherent story and as I meet you the living Lord Jesus Christ, help me to hear your voice and obey you, in the fear of the Lord.     

Reference

(1) Uppal, S. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=A4oYyz82xD0 starting 6 mins 14 secs.

(2) Wesley, J. Sermon, Volume 3, 4 April 1742.

(3) Benedict. The Rule. The Prologue: 7.

(4) De Waal, E. Seeking God, 1.

(5) De Waal, E. Seeking God, 1.

(6) Taylor, A.  Launch out into the deep. drawn from 2,3.

(7) Newbiggin, L. Faith in a changing world, 73,74.