Psalm 148 is called the Choir of Creation by Derek Kidner, one of the supreme commentators on the Psalms. His little work is just outstanding and has taught me an incredible amount about Hebrew poetry and how to pick out the features of the psalms, not to mention keen insights into each individual psalm.

The first thing to notice about this psalm is the ‘locale’ of each potential worshipper. The psalmist begins in heaven, calling the angels to worship (1-2). The first half of the psalm (1-6) descends ‘Jacob’s ladder’ to the realm of sun, moon and stars then to the ‘firmament’ and the waters above the ‘firmament’ (to use the Genesis 1 kjv terms!) — that is, the third stage refers to the clouds and the air above the earth. All things in the heights are called to praise our God.

The second half (7-14) of the psalm begins in the ‘deeps’ and works its way up through the earth and the creatures on it, to man, even man in covenant relationship with God, i.e., Israel itself, in the midst of the earth. You can see by this ‘movement’ that all creation is compassed by the various groups called to praise the Lord.

There is a precious kind of parallelism that we often see in Hebrew poetry called chiasm (that is, a parallel outline of the material looks like the left face of the letter X — the Greek chi — hence, chiasm). There is a majestic chiastic structure to this psalm, which intensifies the interest on the covenant people of God. I will try to reproduce it here (this is where a visual aid would have been handy).

Level 1 of the chiasm parallels the ‘sentient beings’ of creation. Level 2 parallels the things ‘on the surface’ of each sphere; sun moon and stars are just ‘above’ the atmosphere, as it were on the surface of the ‘firmament’; while hail and snow, mountains and hills, trees and beasts are on the surface of the earth. Level 3 parallels the things that are ‘below the surface’ of each realm – the waters that are above the heavens (clouds) and the highest heavens that are below the clouds, compared to the deeps and the creatures of the deeps.

The point of this structure seems to be the place man occupies in God’s mind – parallel to the angels in his regard. But notice that God goes a step further in the second summation and names Israel, a special class of men  in covenant relationship with him. They are ‘a people near to him.’ (14, emphasis added)

There is one more thing to note about the structure of the psalm: the ‘summations’ are parallel in thought to one another. The creatures of heaven are exhorted to praise the name of the Lord on the basis of their creation by fiat (command). The whole of them are established and function according to the laws of God’s command. No wonder they reward fruitful study!

Psalm 111:2
Great are the works of the LORD;
They are studied by all who delight in them.

But what of the men who are likewise exhorted to praise the name of the Lord in the second summation? Well, they are reminded of God’s great name, but it is great in their eyes because he provided for men “a horn for his people” (14) – a refuge, a place of salvation!

This is a word of redemption! Hear Zechariah after the birth of John the Baptist:

Luke 1:68 “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, For He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people, 69 And has raised up a horn of salvation for us In the house of David His servant

Here then we have the real heart of the psalm. All the Choirs of Creation are called to sing praise to the name of the Lord of Heaven because he has caused his people to be near to him through the redemption he himself provides. He is the horn of salvation!

Revelation 21:3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them,

Praise ye the Lord!

This last Sunday night was one of those occasions. (I was also heading up to pick up my beloved pickup truck which had been repaired by a man up there. A perfect Father’s Day, getting one’s truck back!) My brother preached a fine sermon from Daniel 9 (but ran out of time to finish everything – rats!)

The service included a number of favorites requested by the people. One of them especially ministered to my heart, a hymn we don’t have in our hymnal, but one well worth our consideration. To me, it encapsulates everything a believer should ask of the Holy Spirit, and one people so often miss in this age.

Note especially the second stanza: we aren’t asking for an experience, a vision, a sign, but rather that we might see and know our God better. And also note the line about unanswered prayer. Even in that there is a spiritual blessing we need from the Holy Spirit.

Spirit of God, descend upon my heart;
Wean it from earth; through all its pulses move;
Stoop to my weakness, mighty as Thou art;
And make me love Thee as I ought to love.

I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies,
No sudden rending of the veil of clay,
No angel visitant, no opening skies;
But take the dimness of my soul away.

Teach me to feel that Thou art always nigh;
Teach me the struggles of the soul to bear.
To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh,
Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer.

Hast Thou not bid me love Thee, God and King?
All, all Thine own, soul, heart and strength and mind.
I see Thy cross; there teach my heart to cling:
O let me seek Thee, and O let me find!

Teach me to love Thee as Thine angels love,
One holy passion filling all my frame;
The kindling of the heaven descended Dove,
My heart an altar, and Thy love the flame.

As you think on this hymn, I hope it might minister to your heart as well. You can hear the tune here at the cyberhymnal.

NAU  2 Corinthians 2:17 For we are not like many, peddling the word of God, but as from sincerity, but as from God, we speak in Christ in the sight of God.

“Peddling the word” – the KJV puts it ‘corrupt the word’, but the idea is more that of dishonest peddlers who try to swindle their customers.

The NET Bible notes explain the word this way:

The participle … refers to those engaged in retail business, but with the negative connotations of deceptiveness and greed – "to peddle for profit," "to huckster"

We’ve all met with fellows like this before, haven’t we? (If you haven’t yet, you will.)

Our preacher last night illustrated this kind of peddler this way: He’s like a man selling apples. He has some good ones, some so-so ones, and some ‘past due’. How does he display his wares? Does he put the best ones on the bottom of his basket, the so-so ones next and the ‘past due’ ones on the top?

No! Of course not. The best are put on top and the ‘past due’ ones are hidden on the inside.

Then came this application, not quoted exactly verbatim, but close:

“The worst thing about attracting people to church with rock music and then preaching Christ is the place it puts Christ in the basket.”

Think about it.

HT: Jeff Musgrave, our preacher of the evening.

I am wondering, however, about the second verse:

Complete in Thee! No more shall sin,
Thy grace hath conquered, reign within;
Thy voice shall bid the tempter flee,
And I shall stand complete in Thee.

Is this verse teaching some kind of perfectionism? It seems odd that it should, the author being a Presbyterian and the year being 1858, but it is the "no more shall sin" line that makes me wonder.

I haven’t been able to find any comments on this elsewhere, so thought I would throw this out for discussion to see what others might think. It could be that the writer is thinking of the future, not the present, although all but the last verse of the song seems to refer to the present:

Complete in Thee! no work of mine
May take, dear Lord, the place of Thine;
Thy blood hath pardon bought for me,
And I am now complete in Thee.

Refrain:
Yea, justified! O blessed thought!
And sanctified! Salvation wrought!
Thy blood hath pardon bought for me,
And glorified, I too, shall be!

Complete in Thee! no more shall sin,
Thy grace hath conquered, reign within;
Thy voice shall bid the tempter flee,
And I shall stand complete in Thee.

Complete in Thee— each want supplied,
And no good thing to me denied;
Since Thou my portion, Lord, wilt be,
I ask no more, complete in Thee.

Dear Saviour! when before Thy bar
All tribes and tongues assembled are,
Among Thy chosen will I be,
At Thy right hand, complete in Thee.

An interesting paragraph on CyberHymnal gives a bit of a background to Aaron Wolfe and the quality of his spiritual life.

The last two weeks have been overtime weeks for me. Our men and I decided to renovate our fellowship room – to improve insulation and keep our heating costs somewhat in control next winter.

Of necessity, I became the designated painter for the project. [Note: this is not due to skill but due to availability.] Two days of painting last week, and two days of painting this week added hours to my responsibilities.

This is not a complaint, but an observation. In the midst of all this, I managed to listen to a Minnick message from his Whetstone Conference last summer on the value of personal devotional time for ministers. Yes! It is valuable. But…

But too often neglected. There are many responsibilities, and we do study the Bible for a living anyway…

My observation these weeks though brought some sympathy in my heart for those who sit in our pews and whose lives are filled with hours of labour. We constantly urge our people to be people of the book, to make time for themselves in the Word and in prayer. We should always urge these things.

But we should also be sympathetic to those whose lives are filled with bone-crushing physical labour day after day. When they arrive home after an exhausting day – do they want to read? Would they stay awake if they did? [And by the way, I don't mean just physical labourers, though surely they know a special weariness that others do not know. But those who work in offices and to 'mind-work' are as wearied at home as those who do 'body-work'.]

It is so easy to arrive home weary, eat a meal, and let body and soul relax in front of the television. In fact, last night, I did just that, and watched my boyhood favourites, the mighty Eskies thump the Argonauts, that benighted team from the center of evil in the universe, Toronto. After the game, I did get back to work, but I didn’t read much…

The weary man should adopt a few simple principles in life to ensure regular personal worship of God:

1. Set limits on mindless ‘zoning out’ in front of the television or other such pursuits.
2. Go to bed early – and get up early.
3. Read your Bible and pray first (or at least immediately after the shower).
4. Make less commitments to time-consuming extra activities – set priorities.

These few things will help. May God help us to build the character to keep the main thing the main thing.

First, consider this lifestyles article from the lakecountrycalendar.com, Keepers of the sacred. The article discusses the decline in Canadian church attendance, among other things. The article comes to no real conclusion, certainly to no conclusion satisfying to me, but it does contain a telling observation concerning the focus of affection in Canadian hearts:

In Canada, the fastest growing religion is “none.” Fifty years ago, less than two per cent of census returns indicated “no religion.” Today, 17 per cent do nationally; in B.C., 35 per cent.

A quotation often attributed to British author G. K. Chesterton says “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing – they’ll believe in anything.”

So other things become “sacred.”

Lottery sales suggest that many transfer their faith to the almighty dollar. The volume and content of spam e-mail suggests that vast numbers now worship at the altar of sex. A significant number have raised nature to the status of god.

Meanwhile, church membership has plunged.

The exchange of the truth about God for the lie of the lottery, sex, or any number of other demi-gods is well established in secular society. I was thinking of this the other day and realized that the reason society has so many different gods is that no one of them can satisfy like the One True God. Instead, men and women pursue the little satisfactions that can be hand from the hand of many little gods like lottery and sex as mentioned here, but also including things like glamour, status, worldly prestige, sports (it’s Stanley Cup time here, and the hockey god provides much short-term satisfaction … to a point). The list of little gods is endless.

Scott Aniol addresses the notion of idolatry a little differently, instead of making observations about a secular culture, he makes a comparison of religious cultures in a piece called Leading Music at the Conference on the Church for God’s Glory. Some will no doubt be quite critical of Scott’s analysis, but rather than self-righteous self-justification, critics would probably be better to echo the disciples at the last supper and their anguished questions, “Is it I?”

Scott makes this observation near the end of his piece:

The saddest moment for me at that conference was when a good friend of mine, who grew up in conservative churches, told me that he loves the more contemporary style because he’s never worshiped better. We conservatives often get charged with idolizing certain styles of music, but I would suggest that comments like this reveal the real idolizing – people can’t experience what they believe to be worship without that kind of music.

Christians have idols too, you know.

How do you know whether you are idolizing something? When you demand certain feelings instead of walking by faith. When people enter a small Bible-preaching church, for example, they can’t expect the inspiring sound of a swelling choir. But by faith they can worship God in the small Bible-preaching church just as well as they can in the large Bible-preaching church. Why? Because we walk by faith, not by sight. Right? Right???

It seems to me that the animus behind charismatism is a kind of sanitized and Christianized idolatry – I want my feeling so that I can feel I have worshipped God. This desire for feeling infects all kinds of churches, from the charismatic movement to the most right wing fundamentalist independent Baptist with, say, stirring-emotion-manipulating evangelists and story-telling preachers and so on.

Please don’t misunderstand: I am not advocating boring for boring’s sake, but we have to get beyond the need to ‘feel like I’ve worshipped’. We need to worship God in spirit and in truth. This involves faith.

Scott concludes with this line:

The fact of the matter is that the only certain evidence of true affection is holy living. The external feelings may or may not accompany affection, and the feelings can be stimulated apart from affection. Feelings are not certain evidence that affection is present. So the only way to know for sure that someone is rightly responding to truth is by their life, not by the external “enthusiasm.”

I think Scott is right on on these points. You would do well to make his blog a regular stop on your internet pathway.