Sunday Morning Meditation: Nehemiah 9:16-17

They Refused to Remember

“But they, our forefathers, became arrogant and stiff-necked, and did not obey your commands. They refused to listen and failed to remember the miracles you performed among them. They became stiff-necked and in their rebellion appointed a leader in order to return to their slavery. But you are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. Therefore you did not desert them…”

Our memories can be short…and selective. Yesterday may have been full of the goodness of God, but what of today? Where are my blessings for today and why, O Lord, haven’t you given me what I’ve asked for? The history of the Israelites is replete with God’s intervening power – delivering them from enemies (Exodus 13-14), providing them with food and water in the desert (Exodus 16-17), and serving as their ever present leader and King (Exodus 40).

But the people of God prior to Nehemiah’s time had neglected to remember the Lord’s faithfulness. Caught up in the sensual desires all around them they abandoned their covenant with God and turned to whatever seemed to provide pleasure and wealth. Despite God’s efforts to remind them through the prophets, the people still refused to remember and hardened their hearts. The results were devastating. An enemy swept into their midst, destroying their temple and breaking down the walls of their city, and carrying them away from the riches of the Lord.

We too forget. In the midst of today’s trials our memories grow cloudy and fail to conjure the witness of yesterday’s trials, through which God carried us on wings of mercy. We forget the wounds we inflicted upon others, and ourselves, and upon the covenant, and we forget how his deep well of grace reconciled us anyway. Together forgetfulness and ingratitude birth the temptation to find security and pleasure in something other than the simple goodness of God himself. As James says, this is not God’s fault:

“…but each one is tempted when by his own evil desire he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full grown, gives birth to death.” (James 1: 14-15)

James goes on to say that part of the problem is that we have forgotten something:

“Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:16)

Are your walls broken down? Are your cities plundered? Is the enemy encamped all around? Don’t be deceived. Nothing but God’s goodness and mercy enables us to persevere – and forgetting so leads to sin and death. Like Nehemiah and ancient Jews – striving to repair their walls and repel the attacks of the enemy – we too can deliberately choose to gratefully remember the mercies of God, thereby strengthening our weak legs and enlarging our feeble hearts as we cry out for fresh mercy to meet our current trials and temptations.

We can be sure that today, as with yesterday, God will come.

Technorati Tags: Meditations, Nehemiah

Sunday Morning Meditation: Psalm 103:8-13

“The Lord is compassionate and gracious
slow to anger, abounding in love.
He will not always accuse,
nor will he harbor his anger forever;
He does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
As far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children,
So the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.”

Sometimes we walk into worship shouldering a terrible debt. Sometimes we enter prayer nursing a hidden wound. We wonder, will He hear me today? Will he see me? Is this the day He finally realizes how dirty, how utterly screwed up I am? We fear this is the day the Lord finally casts His full gaze upon our lives and comes to His senses, rejecting us once and for all.

We know the truth: Our secret thoughts haunt us, and our ugly open words betray us. Our spouses know, our children know. Wherever we go our sin and guilt are right beside us, taunting us, and even in worship and prayer we are sometimes unable to find freedom. Where can we find freedom?

The Psalms are not the songs of the clean and religious; they are the poetry of the barroom and the jail cell. David, the man who sings this song, is no self-righteous zealot; he is an adulterer, a murderer! He is broken and bloodied from his sin, and bearing upon his frame a terrible guilt, and with it, the penalty of judgment. Yet here, in this song of praise to God, he finds freedom from his shame and cries out from the very beginning,

“Praise the Lord, O my soul;
And forget not His benefits
Who forgives all your sins
And heals all your diseases.”

David has found freedom, not just from his guilt but also in spite of his guilt. How? Because, David sings, the Lord is the God who forgives and heals, the God who is slow to anger and rich in love, not the God who receives repayment. David is no longer concerned with paying his debt, because his is a debt he can never repay. The price is too great, the sin too grievous. Rather than paying what he owes David realizes, God “does not treat us as our sins deserve, or repay us according to our iniquities.”

We do not worship an invisible debt collector in the sky, and God is no mere accountant of sin, dispensing punishments and rewards. Instead, God has reserved for himself a role in the universe of far greater majesty and nobility. The Lord is a God of mercy, He does not collect your debt, He pays it! The Lord is a God of compassion, He does not look past your festering wounds, He heals them!

Perhaps harder to grasp, from God’s perch of eternity this work is finished and complete the moment we have placed our faith in him. Hence, David helps us lay hold of this truth by painting for us a picture of the incredible depth and breadth of God’s goodness, sketching distances so great they cannot be measured. How large is God’s love for us David? As high as the heavens are above the earth. How far removed from our sins have we become? As far as the East is from the West.  Tell us David, what is God’s love for us really like? It is like a fathers compassion for his children. “So the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him…”

It’s one of the fantastic paradoxes of Christianity that as long as we fear God, we need not be afraid of Him any longer. When we enter in humility, we enter into grace. However, when we enter in arrogance or self-righteousness, we enter into judgment. When we insist on carrying our own debts, we are insisting on our pride, but Christ died to pay our debts and all that is left for us is humility and eternity. Cast your sins upon the Lord, humbly accepting his gift of mercy, boasting in nothing whatsoever except the grace of Christ Jesus and you will find that your debts are as far from you as the east is from the west, and you will be able to agree with Paul, that “in Him and through faith in Him we may approach God with freedom and confidence” (Eph 3:12).

Technorati Tags: Christianity, David, Meditations, Psalms