AUSTRALIAN BIBLE CHURCH March 14, 2010
A CONTINUATION OF THE THRUST
AND BASE OF THE WELL-FOUNDED AUSTRALIAN
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
(1901) ON BIBLICAL LINES …
UNDERSTANDING THE LOVINGKINDNESS
OF THE LORD
VISION
THROUGH VICISSITUDE
PSALM 107
THE INTRODUCTION
Today, since there is plan to present this sermon orally on the internet, we will content ourselves with notes to help perspective, without dramatising the three cases, merely describing them.
There is love and love, kindness and kindness. As to love, what goes by this name can be lust, parade, pleasures of seduction, control paranoia, selfishness possessiveness and many other features. What is presented as kindness can be ostentation, publicity manipulation, social ambition and a dictatorial love of moving others, sublimated into temporary pleasantness.
There is, for most ideal features, a number of erratic foci, of brigandages, of rapes, ruins, falsetto imitations; and these in that, are not different.
To understand the lovingkindness of the Lord, therefore, is eminently needful. As HE is the source of man, of love and kindness, the salutary healing wonders and imbuing glories of the Creator's goodness to our 'kind', and moreover the explanation for such features appearing at times in our race, it is best to have a register and a definition of His love and His kindness, indeed of His lovingkindness, His faithful love, and as it may be presented, His mercy. In Psalm 23, there is a wedding of goodness and mercy, and indeed they are a beautiful couple.
In Psalm 107, there is a series of tableaux, vignettes, occurrences, and explanations and desired consequences; and there is shown to us what is in Psalm 107:43, a nurture for the mind of man, an instruction for his spirit, leading to the summary: "whoever is wise will observe these things, and they will understand the lovingkindness of the LORD." This translation has LORD in capitals, because it presents not just any lord, or any sort of lordship, in some generic fashion, but GOD, the Creator of heaven earth, the Redeemer for man, and no one else. As to God, there IS no one else, there is no other.
NOW as to God's goodness and kindness and mercy, the Psalm commences with a bugle note, "Oh give thanks to the LORD, for He is good! for His mercy endures forever: let the redeemed of the Lord say." This comes as pulse throughout the various instructive and impactive episodes which follow, like a refrain.
The people who speak (Psalm 107:2) thus are those who have been "redeemed from the hand of the enemy", and therefore freed, from the discipline of cold duty, or negligence, human concepts and plans, for the delight of responsible, loving obedience, past normal duty because seen in its ultimate light, and wrought in its ultimate manner. This is that of love, thankfulness, gratitude, realisation of all that is involved in life in the Lord, for sinners such as we are, and in particular, it is emphatic for those who have felt and found as functional in their own lives, the lovingkindness of the Lord.
Thus we have covered verses 1-3.
THE EPISODES
Now come what we shall here present simply in notes.
1) Wilderness Wandering - 107:4-9.
Here is the case of want, impervious seeming circumstances, leading to the realisation of personal need parallel to the divine provision and the necessary acute linkage with Christ in that call that He hears (Psalm 145). This deadly seeming drill is transformed into the deity-centred thrill of divine leading.
2) Experience of the Sentence of Bitterness, darkness, looming death - 107:10-16.
Here rebellion against truth, the personal nature of the Lord has led to trouble, punishments that purge, death as a crow seeking carrion, and haughty and overbearing superiority to the counsel of God has led to strenuous labour that does not deliver. Then they cry to the Lord, when no one else is helping, and He saves them.
3) Indulgence of Follies, where healing is needed, and divine interposition - 107:17-22.
In this case, folly has misled the erratic, food itself becomes nauseous, affliction becomes a brother, and as death threatens they cry in their anguish and the Lord hears them.
There are several more vicissitudes, which are kept for next Sunday, DV. These are for today.
THE ADDITIVES
Each of the above cases has an additive, individual to itself. Thus while the refrain is the exclamation,
"OH that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men,"
that is not the end of that adventure.
1) Thus, there is for the first case, Wilderness Wandering, this addition:
"For He satisfies the longing soul, and fills the hungry soul with goodness."
This gives that personalised, that particularised resonance, that sense of divine feeling in the midst of the troubles, as if to say,
"Yes, lonely and in travail as you were, now you have a sense of spiritual satisfaction which is of a kind not found elsewhere, like cream on bread and milk, sunshine on the sea, peace in the Autumn woods by a lake; there is a repleteness, a wonder to digest, for the gift to you is of the Lord, and in it, there is His touch!
In this way, we see that it is not only that the hand of faith may touch the hem of His garment, but HE may touch the heart of our life, for each one, with that intimate relish of reality which is better than life. That, it is like HIS lovingkindness, it IS better than life, its core, its transcendence, its glory (Psalm 63:3).Notice how in Psalm 63, this is followed by the reflection of the intensity of his longing, that led to such replete results:
"When I remember You on my bed, I meditate on You in the night watches. Because You have been my help, therefore in the shadow of Your wings I will rejoice. My soul follows close behind You. Your right hand upholds me" (63:6-7).
Love produces zeal. Many other things do, of a type. But this zeal is not only warranted, but safe, sensible and spiritual; and in it is worship.
2) In the second case noted above, verses 10-16, the addition is this:
"For He has broken the gates of bronze, and cut the bars of iron in two."
Thus the constraint, the prison sentence style of rebuke suffered by the pilgrim here, is followed by an exultant liberation, and so vast was the imprisoning force, that now it is as if not mere wood, but bronze gates were broken, not merely forced to yield. Again, it is as if bars of confinement were simply cut, and not merely eroded. It is like the state of mind of Peter, in prison at the crafty will of King Herod (called 'that fox' by Christ), who had already killed James, when an angel came and opened the various doors leading to his miraculous exit. He scarcely realised what had happened, doors that closed in, now simply incapable of holding him any more, in a route march of marvels. When the suddenly awakened Peter understood what had happened, it was as if he were in another world, and he declared this (Acts 12:11):
"Now I know for certain that the Lord has sent His angel,
and has delivered me
from the hand of Herod
and from all the expectation of the Jewish people."
3) In the third case, the addition is this.
"Let them sacrifice the sacrifices of thanksgiving
and declare His works with rejoicing."
There is the exultancy of a divine deliverance so immense and intense, that the thankfulness chimes in like church bells, to announce something that seems parallel for the individual, to the rescue of the British army, at Dunkirk. Thus the national can give a sense of glory; but the personal no less, for each person is made in the image of God, and this being a Psalm for the pilgrim, it is a delight for the pilgrim nation, whatever form it may take, when any one is so led out of darkness into the light. This now shines on the heart brought right through from devious dealings in decline, to delighted understanding and relief.
Had not Britain foolishly ignored Churchill's warning, to a point near that of pure, unabated calamity! That was as it is now with those who warn churches today of their carelessness and seeming indifference to the commandments and fear of God in which there is security by faith, those who do not concern themselves with keeping mere commandments, unless they appeal on cultural or psychological grounds, or seem to pay, or to be cute.
This ecclesiastical and personal case is parallel to the national one noted above, for there is the payment to be made in due course. It is either going to be the removal of presumptuous complacency lacking the fear of God, defying His word, or defiling or ignoring it, or there must be remedy applied. Otherwise, the bane unremoved, there may come altogether, and that perhaps sooner than expected, the removal of such churches altogether as appointed places of shed, reflected light from the Sun of Righteousness, as revealers of the One with healing in His wings, so that they come to appear as mere sites for crafty manipulation of souls, often in an approved, profit-making manner, just like a business (Revelation 2:5). If there is no shame at sham, then shamed indeed is the inveterate clinging to guilt, sin through wilfulness, lacking a vast transformation at the very brink of death.
Remember that in the case of the Church so addressed in Revelation 2:5: this was no vast failure in many things, for it had been seeking to reform doctrine back to its rights, remove those who were false, had laboured patiently, and might have been thought all but a paragon. However, it had "lost its first love", and since the OBJECTIVE of the commandment is love with faith unfeigned, a clear conscience and a pure heart, this was bordering on death. Yet there was the call to repentance and overcoming, so that if the church revived, well, and if not, then of course the godly would have to go out of it as in Romans 16:17. It is not then a matter of rats leaving a sinking ship, but of a rotting ship, sublime in indifference to the seas, warned and unstable, sinking to its due doom, while ex-mariners intent on the crossing, go where the vessel had long failed to proceed. Ours is the crossing of the Cross, which brings land to the lost, as the seas churn.
But what of this Church, that of Ephesus, seen in Revelation 2. No wonder then, if such a church could be delivered back to a fresh and fervent love of the Lord in its beautiful reality, no more wearied in the greatness of its goings, then its other excellent features, so far from swallowing up this one, would adorn it the more! What divine power is involved, for in the case in Psalm 107, "He sent His word and healed them," Psalm 107:20. Always, it is the operation of His word which in the power and demonstration of the Spirit, acts.
Yet whether the fault be false doctrine, false apostles, or lack of the first beauty and reality of love, it is not the one or the other, but ALL of the above which are crucial. Sickness is common; it is health, spiritual health which is to be sought, longed for, not for its mere pleasure, but for the fulfilment of the beauty of divine holiness. This leads to the completion of all He has appointed in His love, to be done by each one of us, and by each Church, indeed by His own body, which is the entirety of those who believe in Him in all simplicity (Romans 12), who follow His word in all longing desire and application (Romans 14-15) and seek His will with all thrust.
Moreover, they do not acknowledge in blind confusion, nor mix with what rebels against and betrays the Lord (Romans 16:17ff.); for rebellion in the ranks, even if it is by high officers, is mere hypocrisy, which has its reward. Who wants that, when sincerity of purpose, fear of God, the love of His holiness and beauty and His peace beckon, as a man to his hunting dog, alight with desire and duty, delight and love in his master's dealings, doing and adventures.