Psalm 7 Words can Hurt

Sticks 'n' Stones!

The words of Cush the Benjaminite had got under David’s skin. Cush was a tribal ally of King Saul (and might even have been a nickname for Saul himself) and he was trying to undermine David in the eyes of people. David was trying to be the best he could be in God’s service, but enemies like Cush were trying to destroy his reputation. The words hurt and troubled David; so he brought both those words and his anxious feelings to God.

We may say ‘sticks and stones can break my bones but names can never hurt me’ – but actually, the threats and gossip of others frequently shakes our confidence. This is especially true if we sincerely want to please God with our lives.

In this Psalm, David wrote about his experience. In it we learn that David hid in the Lord. He privately took his fears and his vulnerability to his God, whom he knew to be a fort (palisade; refuge; place of safety; hiding place). Like the image of the lone cowboy riding hard for the safety of the fort with the Indians in pursuit, David went in to God to envelop him and fight off his pursuers.

This is an echo of Peter’s advice: Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you. 1 Peter 5.7

It was his soul that was under attack (v2) – it was not so much the physical damage his enemies could wreck on him that bothered David. Cush’s words were attacking his soul and tearing at his confidence so he was losing his peace and joy.

Evidently Cush was spreading rumours about David, the veracity of which David spread out before God (v3). He asked God to judge the matter of these rumours and to declare what was true (v4,5). He asks God to judge both the peoples and himself to see and bring to light where the truth lies (v8). David openly invites God to test him and his enemies because he does not want to be found wrong in God’s eyes; he is not afraid to have God bring him in line.

David understands the indignation that God feels about evil (v11) – an indignation that God experiences every day as sin-damaged humanity marches towards the last day.

David knows that repentance is essential – he embraces repentance; he does not want to be found to be God’s enemy for he is a dreadful opponent that cannot be resisted (12,13).

As David unpacks his troubled soul to God, he remembers how the evil are really digging pits and traps for themselves; their mischief redounds upon them - like the recoil of a canon that lurches back when fired and flattens those behind it.

David’s shoulders seem to visibly relax and his racing heartbeat slows to its healthy rest as his soul gets things back into their correct perspective. Cush’s rumours and threats mean nothing compared to the righteousness of the Lord. David’s compass has found true North again and his mind and soul are set on the Lord. He gives thanks and praise (v17).

Lesson from David: When rumours, threats, criticism and malicious words eat away at your joy, peace and confidence, go in to the Lord and spread out your concern to him. Tell him of your strong want to be right with him at any cost – just as David did. Now we are in Christ we have no fear of God’s judgement. We can hide in it, knowing that he will correct our wrongs and vindicate our faith in Christ. He will shield us from our enemies and use their own evil to trip them up.

Serving (Part 2)

Matthew 2.20-28

So why did Jesus come not to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many?

And why do we need to know what he does for us before we can usefully serve God?

Jesus came to serve and not to be served for 4 reasons:

1. Because he doesn’t need what we could give
2. Because he doesn’t want what we could give
3. Because we need HIM to provide what will qualify us to be blessed by God
4. Because the wisdom of the world is plain wrong

1. Jesus came NOT to be served - Because He doesn’t need what we could give

I have always, since childhood, thought it was a terrific waste giving the Queen presents. Everywhere she goes she gets artworks, precious artefacts, ancient books and treasures. But she doesn’t need them! She must have warehouses full of things she doesn’t even have room to display. It always seemed stupid to me to give the Queen even more stuff that she doesn’t need.

One reason Jesus did not come to be served is that he does not need what we have to give. In Psalm 50 God claims to own all the cattle on a thousand hills, so he does not NEED sacrifices – it is not as if God drinks blood! He said that if he was hungry, he wouldn’t need men to feed him – he can look after his own needs.

9 I will not accept a bull from your house
or goats from your folds.
10 For every beast of the forest is mine,
the cattle on a thousand hills.
11 I know all the birds of the hills,
and all that moves in the field is mine.

12 “If I were hungry, I would not tell you,
for the world and its fullness are mine.
13 Do I eat the flesh of bulls
or drink the blood of goats?
14 Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving,
and perform your vows to the Most High,
15 and call upon me in the day of trouble;
I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”

God does not need your personality, your money, your expertise, your talents or your things! He already owns everything (including you!) – and any good thing you possess, it was he that gave it to you. Notice, that it is thanksgiving and obedience (14) that God requires of us (in other words, for us to return our thanks to him that he is the giver of every good thing we need – and for us to demonstrate our faith in him by committing his promises). Plus … notice (50.15) our job is to call on God in our day of trouble (to remain as a dependent – unless you change and become like a little child you will never enter his kingdom) and HE will deliver us.

In this way … by our thankfulness, our serious uptake of his promises and our childlike calling on him to help us in our times of trouble … we will show off the magnificent capacity and glory of God!

He must increase and I must decrease!

Christ came to serve you because he does not need what you could give to him. It is your lack, your emptiness, your thinness that makes what he can provide to you so desperately needed. You need to dispense with your ideas about what you can do for God. Jesus said: Apart from me, you can do nothing! Jn 15.

2. Jesus came not to be served … Because he doesn’t want what we could give

Not only does he not need it – he does not want it!

Other’s might be quite impressed by your skill-set or your personal qualities. You might treasure your possessions and your position in life. To God these are nothing. He doesn’t want them and he certainly doesn’t want you managing them.

All human effort is polluted. Even the best attempts at generosity are marred by ignorance or bent motives. The NZ Party trumpeted their own generosity in presenting to the children’s hospital a large cardboard cheque for $150,000 – but it was clear to everyone that it was not the needs of little children that motivated the gift – it was the need for publicity, self-promotion and political point-scoring. It was embarrassing when that cheque was returned to them.

We men and women don’t fully realise just what damage sin has done to us. Back before there were high-powered microscopes that could magnify bacteria to a size where they could be seen, people lived in ignorance about how diseases were spread. Because they couldn’t see bacteria they only washed their hands if there was obvious dirt on them. It was a mystery to them why they kept on getting ill.

It is a mystery to most men and women why there is trouble and suffering, decay and death in the world; they don’t see that it is our sin that is ruining everything. Christ serves us because we have nothing of value to give. This is hard for people to accept. They look down on others and feel superior and won’t accept that God considers their best efforts to clothe themselves with respectability to be no more than filthy rags. Isaiah 64.6 We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.

You must be washed clean before you can begin your work for God in a way that will bring blessing to you. God doesn’t want your or my sin-sticky fingerprints all over his perfection. He wants to create a new Christ-like character within us, so by abiding (settled living) in Christ we can produce the fruit that pleases God.

Jesus came not to be served, because he does not want our polluted service. He came to serve, so that we could be renewed in our inner person. Without Christ, we can’t even want the right things. So he comes to provide us with a new ‘wanter’ – a will that agrees whole-heartedly with God’s will.

The ‘wanter’ you are born with is sin-damaged. It wants the wrong things – things that will ruin you and others. This is why new birth is SO important. Becoming a Christian is a spiritual matter. It is not just deciding to be more ‘Christian’ or ‘put into practice’ some Bible lessons! It is the birth of a new ‘wanting system’ within you. At new birth the Holy Spirit brings your spirit to life and he stays there in your spirit to give you new wants that hunger and thirst for God and God’s things. For it is God who is at work within you – both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Phil 2.13 Jesus does not want what you could give – that’s why he came to serve you – to equip you with a life that both shares in and magnifies the glories of his perfections.

3. Jesus came to serve (not to be served by us) … Because we need him to provide what will qualify us to be blessed by God

When small children go to shop for a present for their daddy, they don’t have the money or the capacity to fulfil the task. Mummy goes with them to provide the money and help them choose the present. At the counter, mummy might put the money in the child’s hand to pass over to the shop assistant. On the day the birthday gift is opened -with ‘To Daddy’ written in uneven childish letters on the card - the child is hugged and praised by daddy for the present from the child.

Everything we need to give that will please God, must involve us - but is beyond us. Jesus came to serve by providing the righteousness without which no one will see and know God. Jesus gave his life to cancel our moral indebtedness and he continually pours his life into us so that we can live in a manner that pleases God and attracts his blessing. This is why a Christian’s most important work is to put to death their old self with its polluted habits. We must put on the new life from Jesus Christ. We do that through eating the Word of God and drinking from the Holy Spirit.

4. Jesus came not to be served but to serve … Because the wisdom of the world is plain wrong

You cannot properly understand this world, people, God or even yourself without the wisdom of God which is revealed from beyond what you can see, smell, taste, hear and touch.

We need information and help from outside this world. The world cannot get things right without God’s wisdom. The world deliberately ignores God’s wisdom because it speaks against what our sinful nature dictates to us that we need. That’s why, in spite of the technological advances and the uncovering of how things work, humankind can’t put it all together successfully to make it all work reliably and sustainably for the good of men and women. Their minds are closed to God and his wisdom. The wisdom of the world is wrong and we need Christ’s insight. This is why Jesus said:

If you settle and live (abide) in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. John 8.31,32

James, John and their mother approached Jesus with a request that the two men should have special positions when Jesus brought in his kingdom. They were out of their minds. They had no idea how God’s Kingdom operates. They assumed it would be the same as the way the world works, where the ambitious and dedicated strive to the positions of high status and give orders to those beneath them. Jesus said that in his kingdom, the people of highest status were those who could offer the most service – not those who had the most control over others. He pointed to himself as their example: “you must be a slave even as the Son of Man came” (27,28). So, in the ways that Jesus was a servant or slave – that is the pattern for his disciples for follow.

Of course, James and John could not drink the cup that Jesus was shortly to drink – they could not go to the cross and experience the wrath and rejection of God and then come back victoriously from death, having stripped Satan of his power over God’s people! That was a cup they could never drink and live. They could not serve as Jesus serves. So why did Jesus say, “You will indeed drink my cup”? Because James and John (and to some extent you and I if we are Christ’s apprentices) will share in Christ’s sufferings for his people. They (and we) must first of all be properly prepared for God’s service by Jesus’ one and only sacrifice at the cross. We don’t contribute to that in even the minutest way! Our sufferings cannot be compared to him receiving God’s wrath in himself on the cross. However, as Jesus gave his life for us, we have the chance to ‘lay down our lives’ for others. This might not involve actually taking a bullet for the sake of another. But it will most certainly involve laying down (putting aside) a self-centred life where we pursue our own interests and gather the things we think will make us most happy. As Jesus’ apprentices, we will spend our lives for others.

Our happiness now comes from a totally new angle. A different wisdom to the world’s – a turning upside down of the world’s values. It was said of Jesus: For the joy set before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Heb 12.2

Our joy is the same as his. We are exhilarated at the certainty of our goal. We know that God’s kingdom will prevail and our faith in Jesus Christ has guaranteed our share in its glorious and complete victory over all evil and over death. We have Jesus’ joy, so we can endure the cross. We can put up with the loss of everything – we laugh in the face of the world’s disparaging shame – and we pour out our lives for the growth of God’s kingdom in our own and others’ lives. The more it grows in us and others, the more of Christ’s glory is seen. We live for the supremacy of Christ in all things. We serve his glory!

1 John 3:16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17 But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

Here is our serving explained. Self-sacrificing love (laying aside our selfish wants to take up the good of our brothers and sisters) – is our way of emulating the love that Jesus has given to us. He came to serve and he did so by giving his life as a ransom for many. As his disciples, we are called to spend our lives – not store them up for selfish use.

Mark 9. 35 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it.