Monday,
June 28, 2021
For the choir director: A psalm of David, the servant of the Lord.
He sang this song to the Lord on
the day the Lord rescued him from all his enemies and from Saul. He
sang:
I love you, Lord; you are my strength. The Lord is my rock, my
fortress, and my savior; my God is my rock, in whom I find protection. He is my shield, the power that saves me, and
my place of safety. I called
on the Lord, who is worthy of praise, and he saved me from my enemies. The ropes of death entangled me; floods
of destruction swept over me. The
grave wrapped its ropes around me; death laid a trap in my path. But in my distress I cried out to
the Lord; yes, I prayed to my God for help. He heard me from his sanctuary; my cry to him
reached his ears. Psalm 18:1-6
A church message board I drive by regularly will
often advertise the pastor’s sermon for the coming Sunday. The message was:
Good News; You Can Be Saved
I knew what the message was all about – I’ve been
preaching that same one for over four decades.
But, in today’s culture, I’m certain there were more than a few who don’t
even read message boards outside churches, and, among those who do read, there
were more questions than answers to that sign’s sentence, Good News; You
Can Be Saved…among the possibilities I imagine:
Saved? From What?
I’m not drowning – why would I need to be rescued?
For those who would respond like that the significance
of God’s salvation is certainly in question, and probably in danger of a shoulder
shrug, and off to the next round of reading FaceBook posts. But, for those who read a sentence like that
and experience even a slight cringing tug on the line that leads to their
conscience (call it guilt if you like), means that they’re not far from the Kingdom.
It is the “distress” of that guilty twinge that
alerts us in the innermost depths of who we are – that soul-deep, spiritual-center
of our personality, our being, that King David expresses. He called to the Lord in a real-time
physical, personal, political, relational crisis, and was saved
in every one of those respects. Physically
King Saul, was a former-friend-turned-enemy, who hated David, and hunted the
countryside to find and kill him. Personally
this crisis turned David’s world upside down.
Politically David understood he was God’s choice to
replace Saul, but there were all sorts of internal and ethical questions about
replacing a king you had previously sworn to protect, even with your life. And Relationally David
was even more conflicted by the rejection of someone he’d admired and
loved. David had no answers, on the run,
hounded like the guest of honor at a fox-hunt, hiding in caves, afraid to
sleep. All he could do is cry-out to God
in that kind of dilemma.
And that is the essence of what it means to (as
the pastor’s message board proclaimed) Be Saved. That is the very destination to which any of
us must arrive if that message is to have meaning between us and God. We have to recognize our lostness, and the
futility of attempting to BE ALRIGHT, when we know deep
down we ARE NOT ALRIGHT.
We need to recognize our own need of salvation. To be saved, one must know
that we are lost.
For You Today
It’s
not a trick question, or a trite old saying…it’s the central question a soul
needs to know to arrive at the place of internal (and eternal) peace with a God
who cares enough to ask the question.
You
chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!
[1] Title Image: Pixabay.com Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
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