Archive for March 2016

Details Matter

2016-03-08 Devotional with Hymn No comments

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m reading through the Old Testament in the original Hebrew. But my Hebrew skills are rudimentary at best, so some portions of the Old Testament are quite challenging.

For example, I had trouble getting through 1 Kings 6 and 7. They describe in some detail Solomon’s construction of the temple and his own palace. The subject matter necessitates the use of numerous technical terms that I didn’t know. Add to that my own limitations: I barely know which end of a hammer to hold, and I can’t picture physical structures from verbal descriptions. I have to see them with my own two eyes. So for a zillion verses, I struggled through words I didn’t know to try to picture structures I just couldn’t picture. For me, it seemed an extended exercise in frustration and futility.

But such details matter. 1 Kings 6 and 7 remind me of Exodus, chapters 25 and following, which provide seemingly-endless detail about the building of the tabernacle in the wilderness. There God specifically warns Moses:

“See that you make them after the pattern for them, which was shown you on the mountain.” (Exodus 25:40, NASB)

By the time I finished Exodus, I began to understand the importance of those details, even without the ability to accurately picture them in my mind. I could see that each of the details in the tabernacle were given by God to help the people know Him. Each of the furnishings – the candles, the incense, the bread, the curtains, the ark, and more – provided the worshipers with a sensory experience of God, however partial. In a sense, God was “incarnating” Himself in the tabernacle, making Himself physically knowable centuries before Christ. He was glorifying Himself, proclaiming His presence, His greatness, and His goodness in ways perceivable by our five senses.

Thus, details matter. They mattered in the building of the tabernacle. They mattered in the construction of the temple.

And they matter in my work as well. As a hymn writer, I can’t see God’s full purpose in the work I do. I can’t see the end from the beginning. But He can, so I carefully follow His lead. I am like Bezalel, who worked on the tabernacle (Exodus 31:1-11), and Hiram, who helped construct the temple (1 Kings 7:13-14). They were craftsmen, gifted, prepared, and called by God to perform specific tasks as a small part of God’s greater purpose.

That is my role as well. In ways I didn’t plan and can’t imagine, God is using me, in some small way, to glorify Himself through Jesus Christ.

And that is your role, too. Aren’t we blessed? Each of us is a tiny part of all the marvelous, eternal, creative work God is doing in Jesus Christ. 

Listen and sing:
Hymn: God’s Mysterious Ways
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics

Crucifixion

2016-03-06 Devotional with Hymn One comment

Some early historians credited the Persians with the first use of crucifixion, while others said it was a cruel practice the Romans picked up from various barbarous peoples they had conquered. The Greeks had used it – Alexander the Great crucified 2,000 people after the siege of Tyre.

The Romans originally considered it a slave’s punishment. It was later extended to foreigners and robbers and those convicted of treason.

Crucifixion was designed to subject the victim to the greatest possible humiliation. For that reason corpses were sometimes crucified.

Some form of torture customarily preceded crucifixion, such as flogging, in order to start the blood flowing. The victim often had to carry his own crossbeam to the place of execution, which was intentionally very public. He was most often tied to the cross, sometimes nailed. Stretched and immobilized, the victim could find no relief from searing pain. Movement was excruciating. Not moving was torture. The suffering was intense and protracted. Death rarely came sooner than 36 hours (thus Pilate’s surprise when Jesus was dead in only a few hours – another sign that Jesus had given up His own life). The final cause of death is uncertain, but gradual suffocation resulting from fatigue is most likely.

In 1968, the first skeleton identifiable as a victim of crucifixion was unearthed in Jerusalem. The two heel bones were still fastened together by a single iron nail. 

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Crucifixion Hymn
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics

Psalm 23: I Shall Not Want

2016-03-03 Devotional with Hymn, Pictures of God No comments

from the devotional book, PICTURES OF GOD

Read Psalm 23:1

For most of us, when we think of God as our Shepherd, one scripture passage comes to mind: Psalm 23. For Old Testament Jews, this picture of God as Shepherd would have been rich with associations.

  • It would have reminded them of the Exodus, when God shepherded His people for forty years through an empty wilderness, faithfully providing for their every need.

He led forth His own people like sheep
And guided them in the wilderness like a flock;
He led them safely, so that they did not fear. (Psalm 78:52-53, NASB)

  • It would have reminded them of King David, a simple shepherd who led Israel to their golden age as a nation.

But for me, it’s the personal flavor of the language that draws me. It’s so warm and simple. With most Old Testament references to God as Shepherd, God’s people are the flock. But here, the Lord is MY Shepherd. That gives this psalm its unique appeal.

If the Sovereign, loving God of all reality is my shepherd, what is the logical result?

I shall not want. (v.1b, NASB)

If God Himself is my Shepherd, my perfect Guide and Provider, I will lack nothing. How could I?

  • He is complete in love. He always wants what is best for us.
  • He is complete in wisdom. He always knows what is best for us.
  • He is complete in power. He is able to do all that is best for us.

Of course, our lacking nothing is measured by His perfect wisdom, not by our fear or greed. He supplies everything we need, though not everything we may want. And this sufficiency in Him extends to every area of life, including the demands of holiness in this evil world: His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3, NIV).

The opening words of this Psalm are so very familiar: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want” (Psalm 23:1, NASB). But what peace would they bring if we could live in them constantly and completely?

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Lord, Why Am I Anxious?
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics

Fulfilling a Dream

2016-03-01 Devotional No comments

At age 59, the Lord began fulfilling a dream He had been pressing on my heart for my entire adult life: reading the Old Testament in the original Hebrew. I had taught myself Greek when I was ages 23-25, and the process went relatively smoothly. (I still use it daily.)

So soon after I tackled Hebrew. I got through the initial grammar, but then life’s other demands moved in, and I couldn’t make the time to continue into reading from the Hebrew Bible. Without that exposure to the Hebrew text itself, the grammar was soon lost.

That pattern repeated itself perhaps a half dozen times over the following decades. I would get through the grammar, only to lose it because I couldn’t carve out enough time to continue into translation.

Finally, at age 59, having been forcibly freed from my “day” job, I had the time to tackle Hebrew and follow through with it. But as I began the grammar again, I found that I no longer had the memory to master the myriad of verb forms involved. They just wouldn’t stick in my aging mind. Sadly, reluctantly, in great disappointment I began to face the fact that my lifelong dream would never be fulfilled.

But the Lord wouldn’t let the dream die. He continued to prod me toward learning Hebrew. Then He made clear to me that while I no longer had the memory to forcibly conquer Hebrew, if I repeatedly exposed myself to it over a period of time, I could gradually absorb it.

I began using that approach, with the help of some excellent tools (first, A Reader’s Hebrew Bible from Zondervan, then Hebrew tools for my Kindle from OliveTree.com). At first I read two-to-three verses per day, then worked up to ten verses per day. As a bonus, since I knew Greek, I decided to daily read the same Old Testament passage from the Greek Septuagint immediately after reading it in Hebrew.

I began reading straight through from Genesis 1, and as of this writing (November, 2015), I am in the last chapter of 1 Kings. Am I a Hebrew expert? Not by anyone’s definition! But what an enjoyable process! I’m finding that having to patiently plow through the text a word or phrase at a time has some of the benefits of meditation. Such a slow, systematic approach to the text, necessitated by my primitive Hebrew skills, is helping me see many truths that I would have missed during a quick reading in English.

This process is helping me realize again several important truths:

  • The Lord delights to give good gifts to His children (Matthew 7:11).
  • If we allow Him, He will bring to completion every good desire that He instills in us (2 Thessalonians 1:11).
  • God’s Word is absolutely marvelous and will richly repay all the time and effort we invest in it.
  • The Old Testament is a treasure house full of riches. God is a God of action, and He reveals Himself by what He does. If you want to understand Him better, watch Him in action. In the Old Testament we watch Him over a period of perhaps 1,500 years or more (compared to about 60 years in the New Testament). All the foundations of the New Testament are in the Old Testament. If you want to more fully understand the New, read the Old.

Interesting postscript: during these recent years while learning Hebrew, I listened to an audiobook of a biography of the hymn writer, John Newton (writer of “Amazing Grace”). I was fascinated to hear that my fellow hymn writer, born two and a half centuries before me, also felt compelled to teach himself Greek and Hebrew. He conquered both, even without the wonderful language tools available today. It seems that God is very serious about giving His hymn writers broad and deep Biblical training.

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