AUSTRALIAN BIBLE CHURCH March 21,  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

Part II 

As noted last week, 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."

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. We have so far  considered three of these, and  today we look  at  two more with some reflections, based on the  closing words of the Psalm. 

THE PROFUNDITIES THAT INUNDATE     Psalm 107:23-32

The vignette here is that of a sudden lustiness in the elements, an ocean storm, those who venture on the depths, caught in a tempestuous violence, stunned, faced in awe with their end in terror,  calling on the name of the Lord.

Since this Psalm is about understanding the lovingkindness of the Lord, we consider carefully, extend our view. This reminds us of the tininess of the stature of man. The universe has great depth and wonders, great torments since the Fall (Romans 5:1-12, 8:18-23).

It holds great truth (Psalm 19), but it labours under great duress since the curse (Romans 5), and the death which it enshrines. Instead of being simply that marvellous, that magnificent piece of instructibility and awe, of fascinated interest and joy in life, that conjunct to the realities God made, with a mind to investigate, a heart to relish and a spirit to thrust happily into the midst of 'home', man has become a pilgrim and a stranger, like an  alien in this world. It is, at the temporal level, largely being run on wholly contrary lines to those of God (John 14:30, James 4:4), to  the point that James intimates this: if you love this world, you are an enemy of God.  I

if you want, he says, to become a friend of this world, you make  of yourself an enemy of God. If Vanity Fair is your friend, God is your enemy (I John 2:15-17).

Hence duress surfaces amidst the magnificence of creation, and strife, which creates nothing, but can cut off what is neither blessed nor needed. Disciplines direct much to the point  that  some confused philosophers imagine that staying alive is the objective, and that in doing so, we improve. It is nonsense: improvements in the spirit of man are are not a notable feature of our forlorn and reckless, maniacally killing generation. Indeed, even since 1914,  man in militant zeal has despatched scores and scores of millions of people, like specks of dust, often with the additional  relish to remove the mentally  maimed. Moreover,  some deem human life better to thrust than dust, since various victims can be made to hurt as an endless seeming stream of zealots kill them. This  too is for those who live at all costs, for their accounts in the system. Nor does man's body move upwards, that it might abuse freedom the more, in heart, spirit or body; or else find God. Kinds are the evidence, and the kindness of humankind,  even to itself, is worse than spotty.

In short,  some seem to worship the curse that sin brought to the earth, and use punishment for vision. Many are the tests, challenges and hard places on the way, therefore,  for man in this world. Sometimes  the sheer wonder of the power of the creation - visited on it by God in an initial thrust (for the energy did not come from nowhere, nothing ever does or  can),  this tied up in matter, merely to name one aspect - can be overwhelming. On the oceans those who set forth are readily faced with events towering like vast waves, and they totter and fear. Such is illustrated, even in recent times, by both the unsinkable yet sunk Titanic, and the completely safe and untouchable Lusitania, which was more than touched.

Thus, again, some yachtsmen in the horrendous 1998 Sydney to Hobart race, were not only facing surging waves, but multi-surface cross-waves on  waves,  towering in rampant disregard of uniformity, venturing into wild enormity, becoming a horror to consider, a breach to experience, some drowning even at that time in our unsinkable century, which nevertheless is sinking fast.

In Psalm 107, such events are depicted, and the afflicted totter and reel as if the whole vulnerability to misplaced passion which is found in man were being given an oceanic depiction, as if the very ocean were crying this, I too, I can  rage and fume and leave nothing to the imagination! You like it ? then let me illustrate in watery terms what you too readily produce in your own hearts and conduct, the unthinkable powers, the ruinous thrusts.  See and learn, that man is not made for this; and peace and not war is what is prosperous. If you INSIST on provoking the mighty powers of God, then, hold your tongue and purge your heart.

In this Psalm, we see that the message comes through: they are in a place where ONLY GOD can help them. So they cry to Him. It is a step often taken  too late, and with too little heart (as in Hosea 7:14, where they did not cry to the Lord with their hearts!), and  too lightly, like a formal letter from which you expect but little in return from some  stilted  seeming government department.  God moves to man through faith, and where through your lack, this is your expectation, this is likely to be your response,  care of your own  frivolously loose approach to your Maker!

Yet in this case, they cry to the Lord in their trouble and He "brings them out of their distresses". How ? In this case, as in that of  Mark 4:35-41, there is a command issued by God, so that the waves are still. It is fascinating how God can take a narrative, like this,  and simply show His power and prevenience by turning it into an actual episode in life. There were the disciples, there was the storm, their sinking seemed imminent, and Christ was asleep.

So great was their confidence in Him,  that they did not hesitate to awaken Him (when the peril seemed in earnest to their very lives, like a typhoon at the start of the shoreline), crying in such a way as to show they fully expected that were He awake, the problem would be met, overcome and deliverance granted. He did awake, rebuking their lack of faith (for while they were hoping for such an outcome, the terror was enough to engulf their attention, just as it threatened to engulf their bodies), and telling the wind and  waves to be muzzled.

So in the Psalm, where the story preceded its enaction,  like a playwright's script, before it is produced before an audience, "He calms the storm." How often the Bible tells us a principle or provides a picture or vignette, episode or tableau, and we have the imagination: yet for  all that, we are too slow,  and it has to be enacted before us (in some cases, costing millions of lives, as when people  make foolish alliances with other nations who know not God), before we understand. Letting us see such things here in Psalm 107, God is showing us how to understand the lovingkindness of the Lord.

When Christ came,  it became inter-personal, Saviour and sinners in the most categorical possible fashion. Where the work of God is concerned, what it takes, He does; where the cry for its completion goes up, the power to perform  goes down, whether it be to endure a cross or to win a million souls, in ways expected or wholly unexpected, as the everlasting Gospel is presented (Revelation 14).

Thus God may practically elect to turn a narrative into a happening, or a happening into a warning, a witness or a confirmation. Watch God! more than you watch the rising temperatures, water levels and wars of wild confusion, and you do well; but do not shut the eyes, for this is where you are to act, and as you cry to the Lord, await HIS action, and depend on Him, not on our own wits (Proverbs 3:3-5). 

THE SIMPLICITIES THAT CAN  SUBDUE    Psalm 107:33-38

Next the vignette provided in the Psalm is on a more mundane plane.  Here is a pulsation, an abundance of fertility and opportunity, then a decline, followed by a pick-up, and re-establishment.

This is by no means something happening by necessary laws and directive principles, as if a cycle were the way to go. Rather the movement from abundant provision to abasement and need is the response to pride, whereas what follows in constructive arising, is for those of a willing spirit, no more drugged by desirers and rotted by ease. When reason returns, as one hopes may be the case in increasingly and sadly volatile Australia, so that no more are ill-researched and slatternly expenditures of billions rushed into place, as if to indulge some dream, when reality calls: then consolidation comes.

A battle is not won by wild reaction, but by intense concentration on reality, and judicious and adaptable care in meeting developments, presented to the  Lord and confirmed by Him, adapted or replaced. It is here that fixity without adequate enquiry, except that of purpose, can become merely a prelude to ruin. Money, reputation or opportunity long in the preparation, is gone in months, and things needed are lost, while things unneeded run on like blood from a wound. It needs healing, so that the amplitude of power does not corrupt.

The vignette in Psalm 107 continues with the Lord's quiet and seemly rescue from that ruin. The people now resume normal ways in a more normal perspective, and no more to be found are prodigies of arrogance, presumption or imprudence. Such for example is that of a body vested with control of private school curricula: they boom, they dictate in this State.  You may not refer to mere RESULTS of experiments, oh no, nor to failures of theories without preference or prejudice, awarding credit where it is due, nor may you simply exterminate a theory, as in scientific method, when its forecasts are not verified, nor may you prefer one which has NO FORECAST UNVERIFIED, as in the biblical case. You may not mention any source which works for a theory, or any perspective. Philosophy rules science's tools.

You must fondle matter as a brother, and ideas as a tyrant, and make truth your captive. This is essentially what the relevant Committee has just done in S.A. (South Australia, not South America), in a buffoonery scarcely to be believed, a scientistic assault^*1, based ONLY on philosophy WITHOUT warrant, and free from the discipline of what works! As in aristocracy, it is not what works, but where you come from that matters. THAT evidently means EVERYTHING!

What has to be tested has to come from realms in which their philosophy is invested: exclusions therefore apply. As when Christ Himself, the Truth, came to earth, you could believe many different things (just as organic evolutionists have believed and contest various ideas without joint conviction, quarrelling among themselves), but one thing you could not follow, and that was the Christ.

In parallel now, the creation which Christ taught, while you may believe a variety of discordant evolutionary views (Nilsson,  Gould, Darwin, Lamarck, maybe even Goldschmidt), this, creation, uncrushed logically or scientifically for millenia,  in science you may NOT believe; or if you believe it, you must in scientific education be a secret disciple. Philosophy has said so, and it is riding so-called science, at the dictate of politics, which has it so.

It is THEN, under such duress, that science is no more science. Verifiable truth is excluded by rote and regimen, just as Christ was, by a more total death sentence, in His own day. HE was resurrected, and creation remains incapable of being held by death because in every test, it works, is internally harmonious, continually verified, incapable of invalidation, and this uniquely. It is OUT just as mankind has put certain things IN and other OUT for millenia, and paid the penalty of its obstinacy and its pride.

This is the sort of splendour of spirit without humility of heart which arrogates the powers of truth and makes short shrift of its substance. This can only lead to evils innumerable, in multiplied lives, in offence to children such as Christ made gravely warned against,  in Matthew 18. As for me, not for the entirety of this world as my personal property would I join in the least part in such pseudo-scientific, scientistic, philosophic actions as have here been taken; for not only is the Lord Jesus Christ the One whom I love, and revere, but God is to be feared; for that is a clean fear. It loves truth and fears no test. What does impious fiction matter, when facts are not faced, and all things are not to be tested for effectiveness!

It is when people take off airily that they may land badly. Such is the form of the wisdom in Psalm 107 in this vignette, which one has sought to apply to a practical case, one which threatens the lives and minds of thousands of children with folly by mandate, talk by dictatorship. exclusion by decree, making truth to be in manacles, and discussion pre-ordained in direction.

SOME ILLUSTRATIONS

This sort of up and down movement, the quiet grace and labour leading to abundance, the pride that disrupts and disperses, the mercy which picks up the fallen and restores naturalness, is clear in the Bible. Its sustaining grace in fact can only come by being based on supernaturalness, for of such we come, and to such we go, and to walk in that way in the middle of His path,  is the way to consistency and quietness. How dramatically Isaiah 30 puts it:

"In returning and rest you shall be saved;  in quietness and confidence
shall be your strength. But you would not, and you said,
'No, for we will flee on horses. Therefore you shall flee! and
'We will ride on swift horses''- therefore those who pursue you shall be swift!"

It is in Isaiah 32 that you see one other result that helps to have understanding of the lovingkindness of the Lord. Having scolded the vanity of many, their absurd and false preoccupations, lesser things on top, major things forgotten forlornly, God proceeds in this helpful manner. They will reap what they sow, but the Lord has an answer, and will wait till the time is ripe, and it is then it will be that

"the Spirit is poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness
becomes a fruitful field, and the fruitful field is counted as a forest.
Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness remain
in the fruitful field. The work of righteousness will be peace,
and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever."

Here is the Isaiah 52-53 Gospel where His righteousness breaks sin and brings peace, and to faith in Him who saves, this brings quietness and assurance for ever (Ephesians 1:11). It is then that you gain UNDERSTANDINGS THAT DWARF MISUNDERSTANDINGS, and iniquity shuts its mouth.

NOTE:

*1   For a more detailed consideration of the School invasion by the Committee in charge of Private School education:

FOLLOW THIS LINK.