The Lord Says . . .

Today is Saturday, September 15, 2018. Day 22,101.

21 days until Galveston!!

60 days until Fallout 76!!

“There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.” ~ Alfred Korzybski, 1879-1950, The Quotations Page

The word for today is piacular, “expiatory; atoning; reparatory.” Also, “requiring expiation; sinful or wicked.”

Yesterday evening made the second week in a row that we didn’t have to work overtime! In fact, most of the receiving work was done before 3:00 PM! I still had plenty to do in my area, so I was busy right up until the time I left. But it was nice being home on time on a Friday night.

I have everything all packed up for tonight’s Night of Worship in Alvord. It will be at Mount Zion Baptist Church, at 6:00 PM. We will be meeting up there by 2:30 for set up and rehearsal. And, then, apparently, the church is feeding us at 5:00. That’s pretty awesome.

What is not awesome is the Red Sox score from last night. They lost to the Mets, 8-0! They only got four hits. I’ve never heard of the losing pitcher before. Alex Cora must be experimenting, getting ready for the playoffs. Personally, I wish he would concentrate on winning the division first. While they have a playoff birth locked up, they should not be content being the Wild Card, as anything can happen in a single game Wild Card playoff. Nevertheless, they are still 9.5 games up on the Yankees, the magic number is still 6, and there are fourteen games left. They are 101-47, and will play the Mets again, this afternoon.

The Rangers beat the Padres 4-0, in San Diego. Their record is 63-84. They have fifteen games left, and play the Padres again tonight.

TODAY’S DEVOTIONAL AND PRAYERS
All Scriptures are from the ESV unless otherwise noted

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
John 13:34-35

Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling.
1 John 2:9-10

(From Where Your Treasure Is), Eugene H. Peterson

The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” 
The LORD sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies! 
Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power, in holy garments; from the womb of the morning, the dew of your youth will be yours. 
The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind, “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” 
The Lord is at your right hand; he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath. 
He will execute judgment among the nations, filling them with corpses; he will shatter chiefs over the wide earth. 
He will drink from the brook by the way; therefore he will lift up his head.
Psalm 110

I ended yesterday’s blog with the idea that Christians in earlier times take a different position on prayer, in terms of the private nature of it. Eugene H. Peterson mentions that the most popular Psalm in the New Testament appears to be Psalm 110. It is “quoted seven times and alluded to fifteen times.” This community of Christians “pondered, discussed, memorized, and meditated on Psalm 110.” Peterson wonders how many twentieth-century Americans (again, the book was written in 1985) have even heard of Psalm 110?

By far, the most favored Psalm in America is Psalm 23. While most definitely deserving of that popularity, it is not quoted even once in the New Testament. On the other hand, Peterson, says, Psalm 110 does not deserve the neglect that it suffers. “It is an extremely important Psalm, skillfully and vigorously written, and it directs us in prayer that uncenters the self – rescues us from self-centeredness by recentering us in the being and action of God.”

What makes it so important? His answer refers to two statements in the Psalm. Verse 1, “The LORD says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.'” And verse 4, “The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.'” Both of these are direct addresses from God, and, says Peterson, they split the Psalm “into two precisely balanced parts.” In fact, in the Hebrew language, according to David Noel Freedman, “each stanza has exactly seventy-four syllables!”

These two statements catch the attention of the first-century Christian, because these people “were interested above all else in hearing what God had to say to them. Their thirst for what they had come to realize was good news was insatiable.” They had a non-stop appetite for God’s Word.

I’m going to close this with a lengthy quote from the book.

“The deep-rooted, me-first distortions of our humanity have been institutionalized in our economics and sanctioned by our psychologies. Now we have gotten for ourselves religions in the same style, religions that will augment our human potential and make us feel good about ourselves. We want prayers that will bring us daily benefits in the form of a higher standard of living, with occasional miracles to relieve our boredom. We come to the Bible as consumers, rummaging through texts to find something at a bargain. We come to worship as gourmets of the emotional, thinking that the numinous might provide a nice supplement to sunsets and symphonies. We read ‘The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want,’ and our hearts flutter. We read ‘You will not fear the terror of the night,’ and we are tranquilized. We read ‘He does not deal with us according to our sins’ and decide we have probably been too hard on ourselves. But when we read ‘The LORD says . . . the LORD has sworn,’ our interest flags and we reach for the newspaper to find out how the stock market is doing.”

While the first century people may have been somewhat the same, they did develop a thirst for God’s Word that made this Psalm one of their favorite prayers. “Praying Psalm 110 brought them to centered attention before the word of God and involved their lives in the work of God.”

Father, make us more eager to hear Your Word! We have, indeed, become more interested in what You can do for us than what You say to us. I believe Peterson’s words to be spot-on! We love the verses that talk about You being our Shepherd and how we don’t need to fear because You are our protector and how You have forgiven us. All of these are great verses, well worthy of our attention. But when we see verses that say, “Thus saith the Lord,” we tend to drift away. Have mercy, Father! Show us the way back to Your truth, and restore us to a love for Your Words!
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!