The Lord Keeps Watch Over You

Monday, September 11, 2023

I look up to the mountains—does my help come from there?  My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth!  He will not let you stumble; the one who watches over you will not slumber.  Indeed, he who watches over Israel never slumbers or sleeps.  The Lord himself watches over you!  The Lord stands beside you as your protective shade.  The sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon at night.  The Lord keeps you from all harm and watches over your life.  The Lord keeps watch over you as you come and go, both now and forever.  

Psalm 121:1-8

For more than two decades today’s date on the calendar brings remembrances of the coordinated attacks on American soil in 2001.  It also recalls other times when the sovereignty of our nation was tested.  By the late 1950’s Baby Boomers were losing sight of what happened at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  Memories fade as generations age-out.  However, as the 2^nd-Century church father, Tertullian, wrote of the church being persecuted by Roman emperors:   We multiply whenever we are mown down by you; the blood of Christians is seed. 

This strong belief spawned the ideas of freedom, which produced this nation, birthed in the blood struggle of revolution.  Renewed times of sacrifice are the hallmark of any nation committed to living free.  We enjoy freedom, but the cost is anything but cheap.

The same can be said about the freedom of a human soul.  Such freedom is not from tyrants of flesh-and-blood.  Rather it is the enslavement of human will, chains that restrain us from living as intended by our Creator. 

Genesis records that when God made Adam and Eve, He blessed them.  It was that first blessing which instilled in humankind the desire for freedom.  That remains our heritage and future…freedom in Christ. 

Today’s text views how God intended for that to work.  When we feel small, weak, or threatened, we look for help.  The mountains are symbols of great strength and endurance.  The Psalmist asks:  will help come from what I can see…those mountains which are forever?  The question is rhetorical, and implies the answer with the absurdity of piles of dirt, rocks, and trees providing help.  Those hills are beautiful, but impersonal; they are impassable hinderances to travelers, or beautiful reminders of home and majesty, but help is something that comes from the Lord who watches over us.

So, it is folly to look to mountains for help.  Rather it is Scripture’s intent to remind us to look past the gift of such majestic beauty like mountains, or freedom.  Look past the gift…all the way to the Giver, He who created, and gifted those mountains to the likes of us.  Governments and their programs are gifts to us of order, controlling what might be the mayhem of evil.  Other humans are capable of both good to help, and evil to harm.  Your own strength is a gift, and God expects you to use it for his divine and benevolent purposes.  But ultimately, you can depend on nothing more (or less) than the divine, loving heart of God, filled with compassion and love for you.

For You Today 

It is right for us to honor the lives lost on September 11^th.  And all lives taken too soon by wars and all sorts of evil.  It is a Godly thing to remember, and bless that memory. 

Let us also go further than ceremony; let continued resolve recall the source of our freedom:  He who watches over us without sleeping or skipping a beat.  It was His blood which bought freedom for the soul.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,600 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road library. 

Title Images:  Pixabay.com   Images without citation are in public domain. Unless noted, Scripture quoted from NLT^©   

Looking Backward - Looking Forward

Wednesday, May 10, 2023

Jesus said to the people who believed in him, “You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings.  And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”  “But we are descendants of Abraham,” they said. “We have never been slaves to anyone.  What do you mean, ‘You will be set free’?”  Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave of sin.  A slave is not a permanent member of the family, but a son is part of the family forever.  So if the Son sets you free, you are truly free.  Yes, I realize that you are descendants of Abraham.  And yet some of you are trying to kill me because there’s no room in your hearts for my message.  I am telling you what I saw when I was with my Father.  But you are following the advice of your father.”  

John 8:31-38

The obvious is sometimes missed in the prejudice.  The difference between what Jesus meant, and what the short-sighted people wanted to know, is that simple! 

·       They looked backward to Abraham, tracing their beginnings to a man; Jesus was pointing for them to look above earthly lineage, forward to the One who had created both Abraham, and everyone else. 

·       They saw things from a point in time, honoring another point in time; Jesus had held both time and eternity in His hands when He created it all. 

·       They were held captive by their backwards-look; He wanted them to be set free to a Kingdom-forward-look of Who was standing in front of them. 

·       They were looking-back, stuck in pride over their Abrahamic heritage; He wanted to free them to see an eternally blessed forever family.

There are two outcomes in this encounter with the people that were following Jesus.  There are those who could not see, because they had never had their eyes opened by living truth.  And there were those who would not see, because they held their eyes shut, despite having the living truth standing in front of them.  And that prejudice makes all the difference between traveling the road lesser taken, and remaining broken in the past.

How do you tell the difference?  Jesus said that some of them (the ones he was speaking to in that moment) were trying to kill him.  That meant the others were truly seeking the truth, not looking for a reason to stifle the truth.  Closing your eyes against the light does not extinguish what truly exists.  And that is the difference of humility, ready to confess ignorance, and receive forgiveness.  It’s how light enters the heart and you see the forever family Jesus came to create.

For You Today 

Whatever point you have reached in life, regarding a relationship with your Creator, the genuineness of salvation (God’s forgiveness of our sins) was/is dependent on confession of our inability to be forgiven, without the shed blood of Jesus Christ.  You do not begin that relationship with prejudice on the side of human strength; it is only available to those willing to surrender their will to God’s divine, unlimited strength!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,500 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper explore some of these:   Words Chiseled in Stone  and  How Was Your Weekend?   

Title Image:  via Pixabay.com   Images without citation are in public domain.

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

Of Greater and Lesser

 

Wednesday, May 25, 2022

Then he [Josiah] gave these orders to Hilkiah, Ahikam son of Shaphan, Acbor son of Micaiah, Shaphan the court secretary, and Asaiah the king’s personal adviser:  “Go to the Temple and speak to the Lord for me and for all the remnant of Israel and Judah.  Inquire about the words written in the scroll that has been found.  For the Lord’s great anger has been poured out on us because our ancestors have not obeyed the word of the Lord.  We have not been doing everything this scroll says we must do.”  So Hilkiah and the other men went to the New Quarter of Jerusalem to consult with the prophet Huldah. She was the wife of Shallum son of Tikvah, son of Harhas, the keeper of the Temple wardrobe.  She said to them, “The Lord, the God of Israel, has spoken!  Go back and tell the man who sent you,  ‘This is what the Lord says:  I am going to bring disaster on this city and its people.  All the curses written in the scroll that was read to the king of Judah will come true.  For my people have abandoned me and offered sacrifices to pagan gods, and I am very angry with them for everything they have done.  My anger will be poured out on this place, and it will not be quenched.’  “But go to the king of Judah who sent you to seek the Lord and tell him:  ‘This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says concerning the message you have just heard:  You were sorry and humbled yourself before God when you heard his words against this city and its people.  You humbled yourself and tore your clothing in despair and wept before me in repentance. And I have indeed heard you, says the Lord.  So I will not send the promised disaster until after you have died and been buried in peace.  You yourself will not see the disaster I am going to bring on this city and its people.’”  So they took her message back to the king.  Then the king summoned all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem.  And the king went up to the Temple of the Lord with all the people of Judah and Jerusalem, along with the priests and the Levites—all the people from the greatest to the least.  There the king read to them the entire Book of the Covenant that had been found in the Lord’s Temple.  The king took his place of authority beside the pillar and renewed the covenant in the Lord’s presence. He pledged to obey the Lord by keeping all his commands, laws, and decrees with all his heart and soul.  He promised to obey all the terms of the covenant that were written in the scroll.  And he required everyone in Jerusalem and the people of Benjamin to make a similar pledge. The people of Jerusalem did so, renewing their covenant with God, the God of their ancestors.  So Josiah removed all detestable idols from the entire land of Israel and required everyone to worship the Lord their God.  And throughout the rest of his lifetime, they did not turn away from the Lord, the God of their ancestors.  

2 Chronicles 34:20-33

In the 21st century culture of the United States, this act of King Josiah would be considered treason.  He took the Scriptures, held it up to God and vowed he would live by it (a good model for any world leader), and then (the treason to a modern-day American) King Josiah required everyone else in his service, and all the citizens of the land to pledge likewise. 

I feel a storm brewing here, between the modern-day culturally-hallowed icon of individual freedom and a Josiah model of surrendering-all to the will of God.  The former, being popular, ingrained from the first time we say the pledge of allegiance, or sing the Star Spangled Banner, is no longer an outcome of the later, but the very target at which every allegiance is aimed these days.  Yet, Biblically, our personal freedom is still the lesser, compared to the greater claim on our lives by the Creator, the God of Josiah’s Scriptures.

For You Today

I get it…as those who honor a God who gave us free will, we cannot abandon the quest for liberty, but I get it even more that, when it comes to obeying God, that personal liberty is the first idol that must go.  Anything other than God in first place is an idol; such is the essence of His first commandment: 

Then God gave the people all these instructions:  “I am the Lord your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of your slavery.  “You must not have any other god but me.  Exodus 20:1-3

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road with Jesus; have a blessed day!  

[1] Images:  WikimediaCommons Calvin Wesley Luther Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

After the Fire

 

Wednesday, December 1, 2021

Therefore, the Lord, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the Mighty One of Israel, says, “I will take revenge on my enemies and pay back my foes!  I will raise my fist against you.  I will melt you down and skim off your slag.  I will remove all your impurities.  Then I will give you good judges again and wise counselors like you used to have.  Then Jerusalem will again be called the Home of Justice and the Faithful City.”  Zion will be restored by justice; those who repent will be revived by righteousness.  But rebels and sinners will be completely destroyed, and those who desert the Lord will be consumed.  You will be ashamed of your idol worship in groves of sacred oaks.  You will blush because you worshiped in gardens dedicated to idols.  You will be like a great tree with withered leaves, like a garden without water.  The strongest among you will disappear like straw; their evil deeds will be the spark that sets it on fire.  They and their evil works will burn up together, and no one will be able to put out the fire.  Isaiah 1:24-31

When God starts a fire, no human being can end it before Heaven allows.  To the inhabitants of Jerusalem, Isaiah brought the quintessential Bad News/Good News message.  The moral/spiritual climate of the nation was past reforming; only transforming by the judgment of God would purge the slag from their government. 

That God does such things, moving in judgment on whole nations, is evident in nature; the parallels of God’s merciful hand straightening our crookedness are impossible to ignore. 

When God judges a nation for its sin, the true story (when recorded accurately) also shows the rebirth of justice.  A forest burns thousands of acres until the natural cycle is reborn…out of the ashes.  The forest regrows, in God’s time, and in God’s way.

Lately I’ve been thinking about that cycle. 

When I was a teenager in the early 1960’s my parents looked at the mania that followed the singing group from England, The Beattles, and they imagined the rapture and Apocalypse couldn’t be far behind.  In retrospect the only revolution John, Paul, George, and Ringo started was a fire that would bring deeper moral wickedness, which always accompanies the downfall of (supposedly) great societies. 

Founded on principles of freedom, and the opportunities a level playing field offers to all persons, America has always stood precariously close to the judgment fires God brings to burn off the slag of turpitude.  The great awakenings of American History with Jonathan Edwards, Finney, Whitefield, and, of late, Billy Graham, always held up the image of God’s fire, and the response saw American culture draw-back, like spiders threatened in their web.  In many ways our blessed beginnings have stood in memory sufficiently to avoid the cataclysmic shattering of America on the level of Greece, Rome, or the Third Reich.  But we aren’t (ever) that far removed from the imposing hand of God’s righteous judgment.

Should that judgment come during my lifetime, or after, is entirely a matter for God’s own choosing.  But the falling of judgment is as certain on sinfulness as the sun is hot, and floods sweep away whole landscapes.  Should America keep on the path it now slithers, Isaiah’s prophecy will be revisited from 7^th century BC Jerusalem to these days in Washington, D.C.  May God have mercy on us.

For You Today

No single person moves history (other than what happened at Calvary!).  But each of us has our own part in history.  Like Whitefield, Wesley, and the firebrand preachers of our history, there were men and women who helped…a little here, a lot there…and God gave the increase. 

May the increase be our shedding of the slag before God has to melt us down.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title and Other Images:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

For another post on this topic see Awakening and When the Light Dawns