Out of the Slimy Pit

Psalm 40

Welcome! Today is the last Sunday of the month, so we will have a shorter message followed by a time of remembering the Lord with the bread and the cup and then a sharing time, in which anyone can share what the Lord has been teaching them. Throughout this year, we have been reflecting on various psalms in preparation for our communion times, and today we will look at Psalm 40. This psalm is one of the many psalms written by David, who was inspired by the Holy Spirit to use the exact words and ideas that he wrote.

I think this particular psalm also fits in beautifully with the series we have been going through and are still in the midst of, Law and Grace, which began by giving a 30,000-feet-in-the-air view of the Old Testament Law as revealed in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and which in the last few weeks has been contrasting this to the grace of Christ that is found in Galatians. And so as we go through Psalm 40, I will point out the parallel threads that run there and here. 

Unsupervised

 Galatians 3

Carl laid the foundation for the Law in his teachings on the first 5 books of the Old Testament. Then John Farmer explained how the Galatian church was deserting Christ and His Gospel of Salvation for a different Gospel (a Gospel of works).  Last week Brian Bridgeman taught on how Paul describes to the Galatians his reproof of the apostle Peter for reverting back to the works of the law and leading new believers astray.  Paul tells the Galatians that he has died to the Old Testament Law and that by the persecution that he received from the Jews, he had shared in Christ suffering and that he (Paul) no longer lives but Christ lives in him.

Today we will learn a little more of how the Galatians so quickly abandoned their new found faith in Christ and the Gospel that Paul preached to them and began following a different Gospel.  This different Gospel was based on the works of the law again.

Galatians 3:1You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.

Dead Men

Galatians 2 

Recently, we’ve been going through a series on Law and Grace. We started out when Carl gave an overview of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. One of the things that grabbed my attention the most was learning that there were some laws that were easier to obey because they involved outward obedience. The Israelites were better at obeying these laws. Some of these laws included things like making the Tabernacle and the objects that belonged in the Tabernacle, and also setting up for worship sacrifices. It was these things that the Israelites did very well, at least most of the time. But again these were outward actions. This is comparable to what we do today: going to church, setting up chairs and tables for a meeting, making meals, etc.

But the more difficult laws involved those that required obedience from the heart. Some of these laws included things like the Passover found in Exodus, or the command to “love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength” found in Deuteronomy. They had to obey God in the Passover without having a reason for every command. For example, God didn’t explain why they needed to place the blood of the lamb on the doorpost. Why couldn’t God know that they had sacrificed the lamb and let that be enough? Why did it have to be a lamb? Why couldn’t they break any of its bones? 

AWOL

Galatians 1 

Good morning! Today, we are making the transition in our summer series on Law and Grace.  Carl has been sharing the last several weeks about the books of the Law.  We have taken a very high level view as each week encompassed an entire Old Testament book.

We began with “Redemption and the Tabernacle” discussing the book of Exodus.  Already in Exodus, we saw that the Law was presented in two main types.  There were requirements that are character based, actions of the heart, loving God, stuff on the inside.  An example would be the Ten Commandments.  Then, there are requirements that are activity or accomplishment based, doing stuff, external things.  An example would be the detailed construction of the tabernacle.  It is much easier for us, in our own strength, to do stuff than to be holy.

Rehearsal and Ratification

Deuteronomy

Welcome! Today we come to our final message on the Law, focusing in on the book of Deuteronomy. In the coming weeks we will explore the wonderful book of Galatians, hearing this Word like the Galatians would, in sight of the Law. 

The setting of the book of Deuteronomy is in the desert, with Moses and the grown-up children of the generation that God had freed from the harsh slavery of the Egyptians. The Israelites, despite God’s personal provision through the manna and other food, despite God’s personal leadership through the column of cloud and the column of fire, and despite God’s personal promises that He was for their good and would help them, despite all this, the Israelites repeatedly rejected God, complaining and revolting against Him. Finally, God declared that they would not get to go to the Promised Land after all, that the promise would pass on to their children, the next generation. For 40 years they wandered around the desert, still led by God, and at last, it was time for the next generation to fulfill this promise. The book of Deuteronomy is primarily Moses’ farewell address to these people, for he, too, had sinned, and he, too, would not be able to go to the Promised Land.

I Am Bowed Down

Psalm 38
 
Let’s pray before we look into Psalm 38,

Lord Jesus, thank you for including Psalm 38 in Your Word.  Sometimes we do feel far away from You.  We allow our sin to separate us from You.  We desire to draw near to You.  I pray that You would speak to us this morning.  Teach us to enjoy sweet fellowship with You.  We ask this now in Jesus’ name.  Amen.

I happened to give the message on Psalm 16 back in January.  I remember I complimented David for setting the example of not dwelling on his circumstances.  In the first verse of Psalm 16, David cries out to the Lord to keep him safe, but from there on, David praises God.  It is a good thing to “rejoice always.”  That is a clear exhortation from Philippians 4.

But Psalm 38 is an anguished and even desperate plea.  So, if the right thing to do is to “rejoice always,” why did God allow Psalm 38?  I think it’s here in part because it is real, it is genuine, and it is honest.  We are told to cast our cares on him because he cares for us.  Sometimes our cares are so big that we can barely articulate them much less speak of them with praise.

Failure and Preparation

Numbers

Welcome! Today we come to our third message in the series entitled Law and Grace, focused on looking at the Old Testament law and then the gospel of grace as explained in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Two weeks ago we looked at Exodus, and last week we looked at Leviticus. I want to start by giving you a quick summary of what we have talked about so far.

Both Exodus and Leviticus combine a sequential telling of the story of the Israelites’ history and God’s progressive revelation of His Law for the Israelites. God’s first command to the Israelites was to celebrate a new holiday called the Passover, commemorating God’s delivery of the Israelites from Egypt. He gave them this command, telling them to do it every year, even as He was preparing them for the night in which the firstborn of the Egyptians would die. The Israelites were released and then crossed through the miraculously parted sea. Then they were led by the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire and given water and the manna, and then reached Sinai. There they were given the Ten Commandments along with other regulations. On multiple occasions during these events the Israelites grumbled and complained against their God, and they even made an idol to worship while the Ten Commandments were first being given to Moses, who smashed the tablets when he saw what his people were doing. Moses went back up the mountain and received a second set, and when he came down, he began instructing the people in what God required of them. 

Sacrifice and Sanctification

Leviticus

Welcome! Today we continue our series entitled Law and Grace, looking at the book of Leviticus as a whole. As I explained last week, the reason we are going through the Law is that it helps us to better understand grace, and in the second half of this series we will go through the book of Galatians, using what we have learned in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy to better understand and appreciate the incredible gift of grace we have received through Christ.

Leviticus is a big book; we could spend many weeks exploring it. My approach this week is to first give a general overview of the book, and then say a little about each chapter, focusing on what people of the Law really had to do and, also, explaining how these things are hints of Christ.

The name “Leviticus” comes from the Septuagint, the translation of the Old Testament into Greek made a few hundred years before Christ. Leviticus means “of the Levites,” and the Levites were set apart to serve as tabernacle caretakers and priests. A significant portion of Leviticus focuses on what the Levites were to do in their service to God.

Redemption and the Tabernacle

 Exodus

Welcome! I am excited to begin a new series called Law and Grace. This series really has two parts. The first part focuses on the Law, also called more specifically the Mosaic Law, based on scriptures in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and the second part focuses on Grace, based on the book of Galatians. You may wonder why these two topics are paired together. It is because Galatians becomes much richer when you better understand what it is talking about when it refers to the Law. Indeed, this is not just true of Galatians but of many New Testament books, but Galatians specifically, I think, has some wonderful truths open up when you really understand the Law.

This month and a little bit into the next, we begin our first part, on the Law. Today we focus on those parts of the Law given in the book of Exodus. What comes to your mind when you think about the Law? For many Christians, I think the whole issue of what we are to do with the Law is kind of fuzzy. Clearly, Christians do not keep the entire Law today. Unless you completely abstain from pork, only eat bread that is unleavened during the Passover, go to Israel annually for the feast of Ingathering, bring animals to Jewish priests to be sacrificed, and so on, you do not keep the Law.

He Heals

John 4:43-5:15

Good morning, welcome.  Today, we will continue our study of the book of John near the end of chapter 4.  Before we start that passage, I thought we might take a couple of minutes to review what has occurred in the previous chapters so far.  Chapter 1 begins with the beautiful testimony of Jesus as the Word of God and that “in Him was life, and that life was the light of man.”  Then, we were introduced to John the Baptist who came “to testify concerning the light, so that through him all men might believe.”  John the Baptist is not the light and he denies openly to the people that he is not the Christ.  Then, when Jesus arrives the next day, John declares, “Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!  This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”

One of the attributes of the Bible which I marvel at again and again is its truthfulness.  When you read the Word of God, there is no feeling that something is being concealed about the lives of the men and women.  If I were writing a book about heroes, about the chosen prophets, the spokesmen of God, I would try to leave out their warts and weaknesses.  But the Bible seems to go the opposite direction.  It is almost as if God went out of His way to include the weaknesses of the men and women of the Bible.