REVIEW
In this series of teachings entitled “Praise the Lord,” our goal is that before we are done, this phrase will mean much more to us than it ever has before. You see, this phrase is not just there for informational purposes; it’s there telling God’s people what to do. In other words, it’s a call to action. So if I read in the Bible, “Praise the Lord!”, what should my response be? It should be to praise the Lord! Yes, if the Scriptures say, “Hallelujah”, then I should stop what I’m doing, act on it, and begin praising the Lord right then! Amen? But we are learning about this subject of praise so that it becomes something that we do the way the Lord intends for us to. Yes, we are looking at some things that reveal to us what God considers true praise to be and what it will look like in our lives. So what we began doing last week was looking at some of these Hebrew words for “praise” and some of the Scriptures that they are used in. And last week, we started off looking at the most common Hebrew word for praise, the word halal. We learned that this word is used close to 150 times in the Old Testament and is translated “praise” the vast majority of those times. However, even though the word “praise” is obviously the primary way this Hebrew word is translated, it actually has some interesting other meanings that we can learn from … We saw that the word halal literally is defined like so – "to be clear (originally of sound, but usually of color), to shine (thus to give light) – which results in to make a show, to boast, to rave, to celebrate, and to be clamorously foolish, or act like a madman." So when we read these various ways that halal is being described, we don’t see a lot of this reflected in people’s praise lives, do we? No, I see very few people “shining” by acting foolish or like a crazy person during the praise time. And that’s not to condemn us, but it does need to be brought to our attention because if this is the job detail of praise, then perhaps we ought to loosen up a bit. Perhaps we’ve grown up too much. Yes, the Lord desires that our praise be “clear” – that is, true, sincere, and pure. I made the point that this to me describes praising & worshipping God in truth. This describes praise that is void of pretense and hypocrisy. He wants praise that is done in truth – that is, sincerely and without shame. But the Lord also desires our praise to “shine” – that is, for it to first be displayed in how we live our lives but also by what the rest of halal’s meaning – “to make a show, to boast, to rave, to celebrate, and to be clamorously foolish, or act like a madman." This means we will stand out from the pack. We’ll be the one that seems to be in the spotlight even though that’s not necessarily our intention. You know, I’ve had people try to tell me about what everyone else is doing during times of praise & worship, and I’ve told these folks – “Yeah, but what were you doing?” Well, the obvious answer was – they weren’t praising God themselves because they were obviously too busy judging how everyone else was doing it. Amen? So we learned that while we don’t want to praise God to be seen of men, we also don’t want to hold our praise back because of the fear of man. We serve a God who is worthy of all the glory, and He deserves our clear and shining praise. Amen? The Todah Package Now another word for “praise” that I would like us to tackle today is a very appropriate one for what we are celebrating this week … Let’s look first at Psalm 42 where we get our very popular song “As the deer” from. This Psalm begins with that chorus, and then when we get to Psalm 42:4, the psalmists say, “When I remember these things, I pour out my soul within me; For I used to go with the multitude; I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with the multitude that kept a pilgrim feast.” So this psalm is describing how the Jewish person would take their pilgrimage to Jerusalem and to the house of God during their feast days. And I want you to notice how the psalmists said that they approached the house of God (i.e. the Temple): It was with the voice of joy and praise. Now the word “praise” here is not the word halal or any other of the popular Hebrew words for praise; it is the Hebrew word todah and this word describes a different aspect of praise. In fact, it comes from the same principal root word as yadah, which we will learn more about next week, but here it is used more specifically. Todah literally describes – "an extension of the hand in adoration, avowal (i.e. an open declaration or acknowledgement), or acceptance." One expositor went on to say the following: “By way of application, it is apparent in the Psalms and elsewhere that it is used for thanking God for ‘things not yet received’ as well as things already at hand.” In fact, it is actually translated “thanksgiving” half the times it is used in the original King James Version. So the idea of this form of praise is more that of expressing gratitude and the giving of thanks to God. So how appropriate is this for today? We are looking at the Hebrew “praise” word for thanksgiving on the week where we celebrate Thanksgiving. So what I want you to see from Psalm 42:4 is that the way the psalmists describe going to the Temple on these Jewish holidays was with both the voice of joy and the voice of thanksgiving. Now as I consider this, I cannot help but think of other Psalms that say the same thing. One of them is Psalm 95:2 where we are told to “come before His presence with thanksgiving” – again, the same Hebrew word todah. But probably the more well known one that also uses this same Hebrew word for praise is the 100th Psalm. The 100th Psalm reads like so … First of all, its described by the Psalmist as “A Psalm of Thanksgiving (or Praise).” In fact, this word for “thanksgiving” is the Hebrew word todah. Then he said, “Make a joyful shout to the Lord, all you lands! Serve the Lord with gladness; Come before His presence with singing. Know that the Lord, He is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him, and bless His name. For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations. Notice Psalm 100:4. Again, it says, “Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, And into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him, and bless His name.” The word for “thanksgiving” here is again the word todah. But what I wanted you to notice here is that like Psalm 42 described approaching the House of God during their feast celebrations, the Psalmist here is also obviously painting the picture of entering the Tabernacle/Temple as well. But what we see in Psalm 100:4 is describing how one truly enters the Holiest of holies, where God’s presence is. And the first step through the gate is “with thanksgiving (Heb. todah).” So just like the first step into God’s presence is through the gates of God’s House, the first step through the gates of His presence is by thanksgiving. Yes, Psalm 100:4 specifically says how we are to enter through them— it’s with thanksgiving. So what we can see through this statement is the best way to approach God in praise is through the gates of thanksgiving! You see, giving God thanks for things that He has done, is doing, or even what He will do in the future is what causes us to enter the presence of the Lord the right way. For one, being thankful to our Creator, Savior, etc. is just the noble thing to do, so it is both the appropriate and acceptable way to approach God. In other words, it is the spirit by which we draw near to God. So, when we look at wonderful promises like James 4:8 that if we draw near to God, He will draw near to you, we understand the first steps to drawing near to Him—and it is “with thanksgiving.” Therefore, when you and I draw near to God with thanksgiving, He will draw near to us—meaning, His presence will be manifested in our lives, and we will experience more of His joy, peace, and power. Therefore, it’s also the best way to increase our awareness of just how awesome He is! How does this work, you ask? Well, one way is how King David said in Psalm 69:30 that we magnify God with thanksgiving (Hebrew word todah), and the word “magnify” means to increase the size of something (or in this case, Someone). This means that through thanksgiving we can actually make God bigger in our eyes, like a magnifying glass makes objects bigger when we look at them through it. Now, of course, we are not going to be able to make God any bigger than He already is, but what this means is that we can make our view & perspective of Him bigger! So todah is what will make the One we are praising larger, bigger, and greater in our eyes! This is what David was saying. So this is exactly why the Psalmist said that we are to enter into His gates with thanksgiving – It is because when we start off by giving thanks to God, He gets bigger and greater in our sight. Then our perspective changes! All the cares of this life begin to shrink, and all that God has done becomes magnified in our sight. This stirs us up, and guess what wells up in us as a result? You guessed it… PRAISE!!! We started off traveling through the gates of thanksgiving and ended up in the courts of praise as Psalm 100:4 teaches us. The Sacrifice of Thanksgiving In fact, oftentimes, this word todah is used when describing the sacrifice of thanksgiving (See Psalm 107:22, 116:17, Amos 4:5, Jonah 2:9). So I believe that one of the pictures of what it means to enter His gates with thanksgiving might be how the Jewish people would enter the House of the Lord with a sacrifice in hand. You see, a lesson I feel we can take away from this is that a lot of times offering thanks to God will feel a lot like a sacrifice. In other words, you won’t always automatically feel thankful. On some days, you might be focused on some current challenges, or your emotional state might just be in a bad place. So at these times, stirring ourselves up to offer up to God thanksgiving might be more of a sacrifice. So we make it a point during these times to stir ourselves up to be thankful by purposefully and intentionally recalling things the Lord has done, is doing, and has promised He will do. You see, it’s important in the eyes of the Lord that we do not just praise or thank Him when He does something for us. Sure, we should certainly do it at those times too, but what about the times where things aren’t going the way we’d like them to? What about the times where we don’t “feel” very thankful? Do we at those times just cater to the feelings & emotions that we are having, or should we still praise & thank Him like we would when we feel like it? I believe that’s when this sacrifice of thanksgiving is to be offered – when it costs us something. Amen? But again, what have we learned? It’s that offering up to Him the sacrifice of thanksgiving has great reward in that it will change our perspective, help our focus, and bring His joy & power into the picture! Therefore, learning to thank God when we don’t feel like it and giving that sacrifice of praise will never be left unrewarded when done right. The Lord always blesses the things we do in faith! Amen? New Testament Thanksgiving But that’s only half of it … Thanksgiving is not just what we should start out with; the New Testament teaches us that it’s what we end with as well. You see, even though we’ve seen thanksgiving mentioned being done first in these Old Testament verses, in the New Testament, we see it mentioned as being done after we’ve approached God. Let me give you three passages of Scripture that teach us this. In Colossians 4:2, the apostle Paul says, “Continue earnestly in prayer, being vigilant in it with thanksgiving.” So Paul was wanting to make sure we apply the last two words of this verse to how we approach the Lord in prayer — “with thanksgiving.” We see this echoed by Paul in Philippians 4:6 when he said that “in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving we let our requests be made known unto God.” So again, we see the prayer and then the supplication followed up by “with thanksgiving.” So if the giving of thanks is left out, we do not have the complete recipe for having the peace that surpasses all understanding come through our prayer life (See Philippians 4:7). And finally in First Thessalonians 5:16-18 we see yet another example of where the apostle Paul puts the giving of thanks at the end. In these verses, the apostle Paul said to the church of Thessalonica: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” Now in the middle verse here, we see the meat—and that is that we are to pray without ceasing. But notice how Paul starts off by saying, “Rejoice always.” But that’s just one half of the sandwich. Notice the other half in verse 18 where Paul goes on to say, “in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” So, now we learn that not only are we to always rejoice in our unceasing prayer & praise life, but in everything, we are to give thanks to the Lord as well. And Paul goes on to reveal to us that this three-part instruction in verses 16-18 is “the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” In other words, we see here that the will of God in Christ Jesus for us when approaching Him is one that is always enveloped in unceasing joy and thanksgiving. What an awesome way to approach God, huh? Start it off with a good attitude that is rejoicing no matter if it’s a good time or a bad time. Let joy be what prefaces everything! Then be sure that after you pray to give thanks in everything as well! So based on these three passages of Scripture, not only is thanksgiving the appropriate way to enter into praise; it’s also the right way to end our time of praise as well. The Thanksgiving Turkey Sandwich So if we combine together the truths of the Old Testament that teach us to come before Him and enter His gates “with thanksgiving” with the truths of the New Testament that teach us to end our times before Him “with thanksgiving,” guess what we get? We get the perfect Thanksgiving turkey sandwich! I’ve spoken before about the “sandwich technique” being a wise way to handle things. Like for instance, if I was dealing with a person and needed to give them some tough to swallow criticism, it would be good to begin that conversation with something positive and then end it with another positive. This way I’m “sandwiching” the tough part with two pleasant things. So today, I want us to look at the perfect Thanksgiving turkey sandwich 😉 You see, if the bread we make the sandwich on is either stale or bland, it can kind of ruin the whole sandwich, right? I mean, you can have the best quality meat, cheese, and other fixings, but if your bread is not good and fresh, you probably will not say it was the best sandwich you’ve ever eaten. Well, I believe there is a spirit / attitude that our prayers can be sandwiched in that makes our constant & continual prayers to be offered up to God more appealing to Him … Church, thanksgiving is not just something we should do at the end of the year; it is what we must do in the beginning of the year and all throughout it. It is how we come before Him and draw near to Him. It is the gateway into the holy of holies where the manifested glory and presence of God is housed. So, let’s incorporate this spirit of thanksgiving into our praise lives—for not only is it the right & noble thing to do towards the One who has given us so much, but it also the vehicle that leads us into His presence. Amen.
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PRAISE THE LORD!
Part Three & Four – Foundations of Praise REVIEW So we started a new series of teachings a few weeks ago entitled “Praise the Lord,” and my intention is that at the end of this series, this phrase means much more to you than it ever has before. Yes, I want it to not just be something that we say, but to be something that we do the way the Lord intends for us to. Let’s look over again at the last Psalm we have recorded – Psalm 150 – where the Book of Psalms comes to a dramatic climax. Again, this psalm is a beautiful summary of the common theme we see in the first 149 psalms, and that is the title of this series, “Praise the Lord!” This Psalm reads – “Praise the Lord! Praise God in His sanctuary; Praise Him in His mighty firmament! Praise Him for His mighty acts; Praise Him according to His excellent greatness! Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet; Praise Him with the lute and harp! Praise Him with the timbrel and dance; Praise Him with stringed instruments and flutes! Praise Him with loud cymbals; Praise Him with clashing cymbals! Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord!” But what we noticed about this phrase/word is that it is a call to action. No, it’s not just there for informational purposes; it’s there telling God’s people what to do. So if I read in the Bible “Praise the Lord!”, what should my response be? It should be to praise the Lord, right? Yes, if the Scriptures say, “Hallelujah”, then I should stop what I’m doing and praise the Lord right then! Amen? So, we’ve seen that praising God is not just something we are to observe; it’s what we are called to do! Yes, everyone is called to be a praiser, not just a select few. In fact, we learned that praising God is more like a profession, occupation, and vocation for us. And like any full-time occupation, there are benefits to doing our job – which we learned are found in the 103rd Psalm when David described all of God’s benefits such as our salary, health/medical insurance, life insurance, dental insurance, etc. Yes, being about our Father’s business yields so many wonderful benefits, so it is in our best interest to walk in our calling. However, in order to partake of your employer’s benefits, you need to be a good employee, right? So we looked at some verses that describe what being a good employee looks like and learned from that how we can praise the Lord in a way that fully pleases our Master! For example, we learned that being a good employee doesn’t just mean we show up and clock in to work. Likewise, we are not participating in the praise service just because we are here in the room when the song service is going on. No, doing our job well means we are participating by engaging the Lord, opening our mouths, pouring out our hearts, lifting our hands, setting our feet to dancing, etc., etc., etc. So if you missed either of these first two teachings, I’d encourage you to go back and watch or listen to them because today, we will begin building on these truths of doing our job well and reaping all the benefits of praising the Lord … JOB FUNCTIONS OF PRAISE But this week, I want to pick back up on this idea of being employed to praise – because like it is with any place of employment, there are certain job functions that are given to us. Yes, like it is with any job, we have a list of duties that our job entails so that we know specifically what is expected of us by our employer. And when it comes to these job functions, we are not at liberty to do just whatever we want when we work for someone else. No, we do it their way or it’s the highway, right? Well, our vocation of praise actually does have some very specific job functions too! Yes, the Lord gives us some very specific ways that our praise of Him is expected to be done. You see, if we look at all the various words used to translate praise and how they are used in context, we get some very specific & Scriptural ways in which praising the Lord is to be done. In fact, in the Hebrew language that the Old Testament was written in, we have a lot of different words used for praising God and all of them describe specific demonstrative actions that reveal what true praise is to look like. Now as we begin looking at these things, you will be tempted in something … Your mind will try and come up with every reason why you can’t do things. You might say, “Pastor, that’s just not the way I am.” Well, like it is when it comes to our jobs, that won’t necessarily fly. If, say, we are in a customer service position, we can’t just wear our feelings on our sleeves when dealing with the customers, right? Well, likewise, we can’t just let the way we feel determine how we praise the Lord either. Like Isaiah 61:3 says, putting on the garment of praise is our responsibility. Yeah, our feet might feel heavy, but if we kick those shoes off and set our feet to dancing, we are doing our job well. I understand that we all like to do what we feel like doing, but I believe one of the best ways to honor the Lord is to do what He tells us to do regardless of the way we feel. It’s called faith. It’s also called honor, when we obey in the face of contrary feelings. You know, there were a lot of folks the week before last who “put on” costumes and “dressed” themselves in things that weren’t at all who they are. Heck, they might have even worn a mask that had a smiling face when underneath, they didn’t feel happy at all. Well, being spiritual is a lot like that – Sure, we have feelings, emotions, and personalities that are not inclined to praise God like we see described in the Scriptures. But “putting on” the garments of praise, like we are called to put on love, humility, kindness, etc., is just what we do as spiritual beings. In other words, we don’t let the way our flesh feels or has been trained determine the way we praise our God. Amen? So what I want to begin doing this week is to look at these words and some of the Scriptures that they are used in so that we can get a clear picture of what the Lord considers true praise to be. And we will begin this week, with the most common Hebrew word for praise, the word halal. So what we are about to learn about this Hebrew word halal is what we need to be prepared to put on. Happy Halal-ween! LOL! First of all, let me remind you that the phrase “praise the Lord” that is used as a bookend on the 150th Psalm actually comes from the word halal, but it adds the word ya to it, which is the word for Yahweh/Jehovah (i.e. God or Lord). So halal is the primary word for praise that is used in hallelujah. But by itself, the Hebrew word halal is used close to 150 times in the Old Testament and is translated “praise” the vast majority of the time. However, even though the word “praise” is obviously the primary way this Hebrew word is translated, it actually has some interesting other meanings that we can learn from … The word halal literally is defined like so – "to be clear (originally of sound, but usually of color), to shine (thus to give light) – which results in to make a show, to boast, to rave, to celebrate, and to be clamorously foolish, or act like a madman." Okay, so when I read these various ways halal is being described, I don’t see a lot of this reflected in people’s praise lives, do you? No, I see very few people “shining” by acting foolish or like a crazy person during the praise time. And that’s not to condemn us, but it does need to be brought to our attention because if this is the job description of praise, then perhaps we ought to loosen up a bit and get to steppin’. But you see, even though we might not see it too much in our modern-day world, we do see it illustrated in the Scriptures, don’t’ we? We’ve looked at this already, but the way David danced before the Lord with all his might when leading the Ark of the Covenant back into Jerusalem certainly looks a lot like halal is being described here. Both David & his wife considered the way he was praising God as being “undignified” and that was obviously because it was considered crazy & foolish. So let’s now look at these descriptions of halal in detail: PRAISE IN TRUTH The first definition of halal as being “clear” is very important. This means that true praise has a clear sound to it – meaning, it’s pure. It’s true. In other words, God doesn’t want our praise to be with pretense. He wants it pure, true, and clear (i.e. sincere). So if you and I are going to praise the Lord according to His standard, then it must be in this manner. You see, what happens a lot of times during times of praise is we hold on to our dignity. We don’t let loose and praise Him with reckless abandon. And if we were being honest, what is happening during those times is we are holding the way we look and the way we sound to others as being more important than the Lord’s opinion. It’s tight but it’s right. Church, the Lord wants clear praise – that is, praise that is void of pretense and hypocrisy. He wants praise that is done in truth – that is, sincerely and without shame. I believe this is what Jesus meant in John chapter four as He ministered to the woman of Samaria: You see, she brought up to him a great religious debate between the Jews and the Samaritans during that time - where ought one to worship - in Jerusalem or on this mountain? (See John 4:20) And of course, this is always what religion wants to do – argue about the technicalities of where to praise & worship and when to praise & worship. But Jesus corrected that error by saying that God is seeking people who will worship Him in spirit and in truth (See 4:21-24). So Jesus corrected this religious debate by basically saying – “It is not where you worship that matters to God. He is more interested in how you worship Him than where you worship Him.” And according to Jesus, the specific way He is seeking us to worship Him is in spirit and truth. What does this mean—in spirit and in truth? Well, this can be argued up and down, but the bottom line is that Jesus was referring to the unseen aspect of worship. “In the spirit” is obviously referring to connecting with God, who is a Spirit- spirit to Spirit. In other words, it is praising & worshipping Him from the inside out, which is an attitude of the heart. “In truth” obviously refers to worshipping Him in all sincerity – totally void of any pretense and hypocrisy. This is what God wants – praisers who do it from their heart and are sincere! So our praise is to be clear, not convoluted with ulterior motives and hidden agendas. The Lord wants our praise to first be done purely and freely. Amen? BE THE LIGHT Now this leads me to the next part of our definition for halal: It means to “shine (to bring light).” So we will see here in a moment what “shining” will look like, but I want to first draw your attention to something very important about praise – that its not just something we do by our actions; its something we also do by just letting God be who He is in us. Amen! I believe Psalm 148, which is loaded with halal’s, shows us how praise is given to the Lord like this. This Psalm describes how all of God’s creation is called to praise the Lord! This includes everything such as the sun, moon, fire, hail, snow, clouds, mountains, trees, cattle, birds, etc., etc., etc. Now how do all of these things halal Him? Sure, man can do some things to praise the Lord, but what does the rest of God’s creation do to praise the Lord? Well, they do this –They “shine” and “make a show” of the glory of God – teaching us that praise is not just something we do; its something we are. Yes, our lives & existence can praise the Lord! And as we learn what praise actually is, you’ll see that it is indeed more than just our own words; it is also who we are that generates His praises from others. For example, have you ever visited a place and saw how beautiful the trees, mountains, waters, etc. were and glorified God for the beauty of His creation? Well, that’s how something else that God has created can generate God’s praise, because you praised Him for what they were putting forth. THE HEART OF PRAISE Now what did we say was the result of this “shining”? It means that as the definition of halal goes on to say, our praise will “make a show, to boast, to rave, to celebrate, and to be clamorously foolish, or act like a madman." Do you know what this means? It means you will stand out of the pack. You’ll be the one that seems to be in the spotlight even though that’s not necessarily your intention. No, if your praise is bringing light then folks will notice you – not because you want the attention or for people to look at you but because you simply don’t care that people are watching you. There’s a real difference there. You see, while we don’t want to praise God to be seen of men, we also don’t want to hold our praise back because of the fear of man. We serve a God who is worthy of all the glory, and He deserves our clear and shining praise. Amen? When we are doing it with the right heart and with no flesh holding us back, it will result in us maybe “making a show, boasting, raving (to speak out wildly & enthusiastically), to celebrate, and to be clamorously foolish, or act like a mad man." Now the only place I ever seem to see what is being described here as being done is at a sporting event when someone experiences their favorite team doing something exciting. Sure, I see those people acting like “mad men, clamorously foolish, and raving.” You see, why is it that these “fanatics” act “clamorously foolish” and like “mad men”? Well, the answer is simple. It’s because their fandom has a big chunk of their heart. Therefore, the key to operating in this kind of praise is having a heart full of the Lord. You know, sometimes in our attempt to do things correctly we forget a simple thing that God desires above anything else. And that is that He wants our heart. We can learn how to technically praise God better, but if our heart is not right, then it does not avail anything. I wholeheartedly believe that God would rather us have right hearts with wrong heads, than right heads with wrong hearts. In other words, regarding praising Him, He would rather have us saying the wrong things with the right heart behind it rather than saying the right things with the wrong heart. Think about it like this: Whenever your kids were young and showed a lot of excitement when you got home from work, didn’t that bless you? I mean, when they met you at the door smiling, jumping, and clapping their hands because they were just so excited daddy or mama was home, that had to make your heart feel good, right? Well, that’s what I’m referring to here. God wants our hearts to be so full of Him that we show genuine & sincere excitement for Him, and we praise Him out of hearts that are so appreciative and in love with Him. You see, when your kids did this to you, what exactly blessed you about it? Was it what they said, or how they said it? Was it because they so eloquently worded what they said or was it the fact that you knew, even though they used such simple terms, it came from their heart? Of course, it is what came out of their heart that blessed you. Well, God is the same. He would rather us mean what we say than say things that have no meaning to us. And He would rather us show great zeal & enthusiasm at the same time. It’s all about the heart, church. A MORE EXCELLENT WAY So now that we’ve dealt with some important foundation issues about praise like how it needs to be done in truth, how our lives can actually praise God just like our words, and how the principal thing is the heart behind our praise, let’s now begin to look at some technicalities of praise. Yes, let’s look at a few verses where halal is being used so that we can see from a Scriptural example what praise looks like … The first time we see the word halal being used in the Bible is in Genesis 12:15, but it was not used regarding praising the Lord. In verses 14-15 we are told – “So it was, when Abram came into Egypt, that the Egyptians saw the woman (Sarai), that she was very beautiful. The princes of Pharaoh also saw her and commended her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken to Pharaoh’s house.” The word “commended” in verse 15 is the word halal. So what were these princes of Pharaoh doing? They were praising Sarai to Pharaoh. Now does this mean that they were approaching Pharaoh and saying, “Oh Pharaoh, we praise this woman!” No, of course not! What they were doing was more like this – “Yo Pharaoh, this chicha is gorgeous, man! She is one hot tamale! You need to see about her!” Someone’s thinking, “They didn’t talk like that!” You’re not that old! How would you know? LOL! My point is that when folks saw how beautiful Sarai was, they started talking. And some of the people that started talking were the Pharaoh’s men. Likewise, when you and I see just how beautiful the Lord is, we will start “commending” Him to others – that is, we will tell of His beauty in a similar way that we would “praise” someone else for their good looks. Here is another example of halal that is similar … In Second Samuel 14:25 the Scriptures teach us that Absalom was “praised” for his good looks. Does that mean that people went around saying, “I praise Absalom! Oh, I praise Absalom!”? Of course not! Since it was his good looks that they were praising this is probably what they went around saying – “Girl, isn’t that Absalom good looking!?! My, oh my, his hair is so beautiful! What a man!” Church, this is praise! So if this is what it means to “praise” God, how do we technically do it? How do we technically commend, applaud, or boast of Him? Is it by saying, “I praise You Lord! I magnify You! I glorify You!” Well, that is what most of us do, but is it the best way? Certainly, as I previously made a point of, the attitude of the heart is what really counts. I have been in certain services where we sung things like “Praise the Name of Jesus, I Exalt Thee, O Magnify the Lord, etc.,” and you could tell that God was pleased. So I am not saying that we cannot minister to God by using this kind of terminology. Again, the heart behind it is what is most important. But what I am saying is there is a more excellent way of ministering to Him. (I feel like Paul when he said, “And yet I show you a more excellent way” in First Corinthians 12:31) Let me give you another Scriptural example … Last, but not least, in Second Chronicles 5:13 we have a great example of true praise… It says, “… and when they lifted up their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of music, and praised the Lord, saying: ‘For He is good, for His mercy endures forever,’…” Notice that it says that they praised the Lord saying. In other words, they were praising God as they said something. Said what? “For the Lord is good and His mercy endures forever!” (which is definitely the single most used “praise phrase” in the whole Bible). You see, this is a true statement of praise – To declare that God is good and that His mercy lasts forever is the praise of God. So from these examples can you see what it truly means to praise God? It means to declare how beautiful and lovely He is to you! It means to boast in all that He has done for you! It means to tell how good and merciful He is! You know, I think this would be a good time for me to demonstrate what true praise looks and sounds like … “God, I thank you for being so faithful to my family. You have been so good to us. Thank you for being true to your Word and performing your promises in our lives. You are so good! Your mercy endures forever! Your love never ends! Hallelujah! What a great God you are. You always provide for us, and we have never lacked any good thing. You are worthy to receive all praise, honor and glory. There is none like you. There is none higher than you. There is none who can compare to you. You are holy! Great is your name! I love you so much Lord. You deserve all of my heart. So I give it to you because you’re worthy.” Amen! Church, this is how we clothe ourselves in praise. It’s what we put on. So while I’m not a fan of celebrating Halloween, I am a fan of this – Happy Halal-ween. This week, I felt led to take a little different direction. So take this message today as a Word from God.
Let’s go over to the 23rd Psalm. Anybody here have any idea what this psalm says? As I like to say about this Psalm that you pretty much only hear at funerals, this is not a psalm that speaks of death; it’s a psalm of life! It is because I believe that it is a beautiful, poetic description of what this good life that God has prearranged and made ready for us to live really looks like. In fact, I taught a long series on this particular psalm a few years ago and we went through each of the things King David said here to describe the kind of life our Good Shepherd wills for all of us have. If interested, I can point you the direction of how to listen to it in its entirety. But today, I just had on my heart to emphasize one verse in this loaded psalm – Psalm 23:5 THE HONORABLE HOST Notice that in the last couple of verses of Psalm 23, David is continuing to directly address His Shepherd in this verse like he did at the end of verse 4. However, notice the transition in verses 5&6: Now the example of a Shepherd and His sheep is no longer being used. No, in verses 5&6, he is using the analogy of a person being invited into someone else’s home and being shown great hospitality and honor. So, these last two verses of the 23rd Psalm show us another part of God’s nature. Not only is He that Good Shepherd who takes care of His sheep; He is that Honorable Host who crowns us with His lovingkindness and tender-mercies. Yes, He prepares this table before us and makes all things good and ready! Upon entering, He honors us by anointing our head with oil! He fills our cup up to overflowing! Then our response is, “Surely, my host’s goodness and mercy follow me all the days of my life! And I will live in His house forever!” Amen! This is living the good life, my friends! Now let’s look at the beginning of verse 5: David says in Psalm 23:5, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies…” Now again, it’s important to realize that this is not referring to the sweet by & by; no, it’s referring to the rotten here & now! Sure, there will be a great marriage supper of Lamb, but what David is referring to is the spread the Lord has prepared for us now in this life. How do I know this? Well, look at this verse … David includes the phrase – “in the presence of my enemies.” How many of you know that when we die and go to heaven, that we are not going to be in the presence of our enemies; we are going to be in the presence of God! No, our enemies are present now, here on the earth. So this is where the Lord has prepared a table before us! Amen? EATING AT THE KING’S TABLE Now as I meditated on this truth about eating at the Lord’s table, I couldn’t help but think of that story in the book of Second Samuel that is a beautiful type and shadow of what we have in Christ - the story of a man named Mephibosheth … Notice in Second Samuel 4:4 that we have a brief description of Jonathan’s young son. And when the news came from Jezreel that both his father and grandfather were killed, his nurse took him up and fled in haste. We are told that this is when he fell and became lame. Now as we are going to see through this story of David and Mephibosheth, these things are a type and shadow of our relationship with Christ. So, I want to bring to your attention the lesson we can learn from this: First of all, notice his name – Mephibosheth. Now back in their day, names had much more meaning than they do in our current society. His name meant “dispeller of shame.” Now do you suppose this boy’s name might have had an impact on his life? I guarantee you it did. It would be like one of us having our parents call us shameful our entire youth. I don’t care who you are, that will impact your soul. But guess what else it will do – it can impact your life too. You see, a lot of the things people go through in life can be directly attributed to their identity. And I think that might very well have been the case with Mephibosheth. His identity was that of shame and then in his infancy, he was dropped by his nurse and became lame. I wonder how many people have “lame” lives today because of their “lame” identity. Well, if that’s you, YOU are the very one that the Lord is inviting to His party! Yes, you are the one that the Lord is seeking out to bring to His table to dine with Him forever! Amen! Now back to the Second Samuel 4:4 – Why did the nurse flee with Mephibosheth after hearing the news of both Saul and Jonathan being killed? It was because it was customary then for one, when taking the throne, to kill all surviving descendants who might ever try to reclaim their family’s throne. Therefore, this nurse assumed that David was like the rest of the kings. But she obviously didn’t know David, did she? She was completely unaware that he was different from others. Yes, David was kind. He was noble. He was gracious. But she didn’t know Him to be this way. Do you reckon that there are many of God’s children out there today who are, likewise, unaware of how good, gracious, and kind our God is? It is sad, but a good portion of God’s church do not truly know their God’s true nature. Just as this woman assumed David was like any other man, likewise Christ’s bride assumes their God is like any other god (i.e. quick to judge, harsh, condemning, critical, etc.) So, this misconception of David caused her to do what? To take Mephibosheth up and flee from David’s presence! Likewise, this misconception of God’s true nature has led many Christians when they have missed it and fallen short of His glory to run from Him rather than to Him. But notice that this response of fear was what caused Jonathan’s nurse to run from David and what caused this accident that left Mephibosheth lame. The same happens to us, my friends. When we run from God in fear, guilt, condemnation, etc., this is when we open ourselves up to falling even further into more permanent spiritual conditions (i.e. spiritual lameness). WHO IS YOUR GOD? You see, we attract what we believe. Much of the body of Christ does not realize how our belief system impacts the fruit we receive in our life. And this is particularly true with how we see our God. I am convinced that there is so much more that God desires to do in our lives than we allow Him to. Yes, just as the children of Israel were guilty of limiting God’s will for them in their journey from Egypt to the Promised Land, we limit God through our wrong thinking and wrong believing. We have a powerful proverb that teaches us a similar lesson and illustrates to us what Mephibosheth’s nurse did: Proverbs 28:1 says, “The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion!” Of course, this first part of Proverbs 28:1 means that those who actually are wicked will flee, but did you know that the same holds true for those who see themselves as “wicked”? Yes, if one sees themselves as a sinner & wicked in the eyes of the Lord, then they will do the same – flee when no one pursues. You see, we are not wicked anymore. If you are a born again, child of God, your nature has been changed and you are not a sinner any longer. Sure, you can still sin after you have been saved, and likely you will. But that does not change your nature. However, notice it is the wicked who flees when no one pursues. And this is exactly what sin consciousness will do in our lives: When we see ourselves as “wicked”—that is, when we are conscious of all of our faults, weaknesses, mistakes and shortcomings— we will flee when no pursues. That means that we will run from God when He is not out to get us. This happened in the Garden after the first sin of man, and it is still happening today when God’s children sin. We sin, and instead of running to God (like we should), we run from Him thinking He is pursuing us to punish us. But the truth is that God is pursuing you when you sin, but not to punish you; He is pursuing you to restore, redeem, and reconcile you! So, the wicked—or the one who thinks he or she is wicked—will flee when no one pursues. This describes far too many Christians. They are running from the righteousness of God because they have an incorrect view of God and of themselves. But, again, God is not pursuing to punish; He is pursuing to pour out His protection and provision. Do you see the perverted thinking much of the church has adopted? We think we are being pursued to be punished, condemned, etc.! We think God is out to get us. No, church, God is for us, so who can be against us! This is what we should believe! But notice the second half of this verse: “But the righteous are bold as a lion.” Now just like it was with the “wicked” in the first part of the verse, this can describe those who actually are “righteous” in regard to their actions, but it can also describe those who see themselves as the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. You see, this is the truth we need to displace that lie with! The devil just walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, yet we see him as the big, bad lion. But we are the righteousness of God in Christ, and we need to see ourselves as that big, bad lion! Why? Because we are in the Lion of Judah! We are the ones who are hid in the King of the Jungle! Therefore, we should be the bold, confident ones! We should be the ones that are walking about boldly like lions, seeking which works of darkness that we can devour, not the reverse! Hallelujah! Friends, understanding our righteous position in Christ will produce boldness and confidence! Having our state of justification revealed to us will produce the full assurance of faith in our hearts! Hallelujah! We are to be playing the part of the lion, not the devil! We are to be the ones on the hunt; not him! We are the ones with the authority! We are the ones with the position! We are the ones with the name above all names! We ARE the righteousness of God in Christ! So, stop fleeing like the wicked and start pursuing like the righteous! Be bold and be confident! God is on your side! CONTINUE EATING AT THE KING’S TABLE Now let’s go back over to the Book of Second Samuel and look at 2 Samuel chapter 9. In this chapter, we get to see what happened with Mephibosheth later in his life: Chapter nine begins with David saying, “Is there still anyone who is left of the house of Saul, that I may show him kindness for Jonathan’s sake?” (verse one) Notice, here in verse one, that David said that he was going to show this kindness for Jonathan’s sake. Here, we see a beautiful type and shadow of how God shows us the same “covenant faithfulness” for Jesus’ sake. Amen! In other words, all the goodness, grace and mercy of God that was shown to us was not given to us because of who we are, but because of the Father God’s and the Son of God’s relationship. Amen! Then notice in verse three that David said that his desire was not just to show any old kindness, but “the kindness of God.” You see, there is a big difference between “our kindness” and “God’s kindness.” Our love is oftentimes conditional; His love is unconditional. Our love is oftentimes merited; His love is unmerited. Our love oftentimes fails; His love never fails! Thanks be to God! Then, in verse seven, I want you to notice several of the same characteristics of the good life of Psalm 23 that are found here:
However, David went on to promise Mephibosheth that he would eat bread at his table continually. The word “continually” comes from the Hebrew word tamid (pronounced “tah-meed”) which means “constantly, always, evermore” but the root word describes continually from an eternal standpoint. So, when you look at this from the perspective of us eating at the Lord’s table, we are invited to eat from this table today in the presence of our enemies, but we will continue to partake of it all the way to the marriage supper of the Lamb and forevermore. That’s a lot of food, amen? Then notice in verse eight, Mephibosheth’s response to this good news: He said, “What is your servant, that you should look upon such a dead dog as I?” So, what we see here is this man had a serious identity problem. To refer to oneself as a “dead dog” means that they see themselves as having no value. This could have been because of what happened to his father’s house, but it also likely had to do with his lameness. You see, sometimes the things that have happened to us in life can warp our sense of value. But what we should be encouraged by here is that it did not change the king’s perspective of him. You see, we tend to think of ourselves as having little to no value and are unworthy, but to God, we are extremely precious and have been made worthy through our “Jonathan”- our Good, Heavenly Father. Finally, in verse thirteen, we are told, “for he ate continually at the king’s table.” This is the fourth time in this chapter that Mephibosheth eating at David’s table is mentioned. Biblically, the number “four” describes “totality.” Therefore, this table has been “totally” prepared for us! It is a done deal! All things have been made ready and complete! Now it is just up to us to come partake! Amen. Notice that this beautiful story ends with the phrase, “And he was lame in both his feet.” Now the awesome thing about this whole story of kindness and mercy is that when Mephibosheth sat at David’s table, his lameness was covered. It was hidden. When eating at the table of the Lord there is no sign or indication of our weakness. We are on equal “footing” with Him. Amen! So this is our inheritance in Christ Jesus – to eat at the King of king’s table continually! However, there are just a few things that keep most of God’s children from partaking of this party … One is certainly the unworthiness of feeling like we don’t deserve His grace. So in our hearts, we reject the goodness of God. But here’s another big reason … ACCEPTING THE INVITATION AND NOT LEAVING THE PARTY! In Luke 14:15-24, Jesus used an example to describe how the Lord invites us to His table for a meal and all that were invited began to give excuses, one by one, as to why they could not attend. This angered the Lord and compelled Him to begin inviting those who were less noble - the poor, the maimed, the lame, etc. (Notice here the reference to the “lame.” This will become important later). What’s the lesson here? The Lord has prepared this table before us and has invited each of us to come partake, but we must accept the invitation - not having anything or anyone else be more important than attending His supper. So, just because the Lord has prepared a table does not automatically mean everyone invited will partake of it - not because God is holding back, but because those He invites generally don’t make showing up to that dinner a priority in their lives. Let’s change that! Let’s make eating at the Lord’s table a priority! God is not looking for the able, but for the available. He can and will enable us to do whatever He calls us to. Just as it was said to the Church of Laodicea in Revelation 3:20 - the Lord is standing at the door of our hearts knocking, desiring for us to open the door, invite Him in, and dine with Him. And this was written to a church, saints! So, evidently even born-again Christians are capable of not experiencing all that the Lord desires for them. And again, what we see here is that all that God has for us does not just include us eating at the Lord’s table; it includes eating “in the presence of our enemies.” Now David was certainly a man who experienced this truth in his life, amen? The Lord honored him time and time again during his time in King Saul’s presence. Yes, even though Saul was driven by iniquity and constantly persecuted David, the Lord continued to bless David and delivered him from Saul’s hands. This shows us that our God delights in defending us from our adversaries. But the key to experiencing this is found in doing the same honorable things that David did in the midst of his persecution. He continued to honor the king. He did not take things into his own hands. He let the Lord justify and deliver him. Even when he seemed to have every right, he did not touch the Lord’s anointed. Now we are all the Lord’s anointed now. Yes, if you are a part of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, you are an anointed king and priest. Therefore, even when one of your brothers and sisters in Christ (who are also loved by God as much as you are) do things that hurt you, you are to respond like David did, letting the Lord defend you. You and I are still to do good to them. We are to pray for them. We are to bless them. Bless and do not curse, knowing this that you were called to inherit a blessing! (First Peter 3:9) But what so many Christians do is this: when their brother or sister does something to them, they fight back. They retaliate. They take matters into their own hands. However, in doing so, they get up from the Lord’s table. And what they need to understand is - even if they are successful at avenging themselves, they are missing the meal. Do you know how many of God’s children are missing out on the party at God’s table because they decided to let their enemies spoil their fun? And don’t you know that the devil plants people and circumstances in our paths to distract us from staying on the path with God? Church, when people—even God’s anointed ones—irritate us, we don’t need to miss the meal God has prepared for us because of someone else. We cannot control how others act, but we can “sho’ nuff” control how we react. Don’t leave the table for someone who decided not to come to the party! Amen? REAPING KINDNESS & MERCY So, in conclusion, if we continue to read in the Book of Second Samuel, we come to David’s gross sin with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah. Under the old covenant, when people were judged much quicker and far more severe than King David was for his sin with Bathsheba and Uriah, what was it about David that caused him to reap unusual kindness and mercy from God? Our quick answer might be, "Well, God favored David." But I believe there were tendencies and characteristics in David that caused David to obtain this unusual favor. In other words, and more specifically, there were things that David sowed that caused him to reap like he did. If you consider the chapters preceding David's big sin in the Book of Second Samuel (which occurred in chapters 11-12), you will see that he was sowing kindness and mercy into people like Mephibosheth and even Hanun (See Second Samuel chapter 10). So, do you think it is any coincidence that David, the man after God's own heart, reaped unusual mercy right after he was sowing unusual mercy? I think not! Be merciful, my friends! Show God’s kindness to those around you! Forgive your enemies and even bless them. This is one sure fire way to partake of all that the Lord has prepared for us at His table. Amen! REVIEW
“Praise the Lord” is a phrase you’ve likely heard many times, but what I aim to do in this series is for it to mean more to you than it ever has before. Yes, I want it to not just be something that we say, but to be something we do to a greater degree than we ever have before. Let’s look over again at the last Psalm we have recorded – Psalm 150 – where the Book of Psalms comes to a dramatic climax. Again, this psalm is a beautiful summary of the common theme we see in the first 149 psalms, and that is the title of this series, “Praise the Lord!” This Psalm reads – “Praise the Lord! Praise God in His sanctuary; Praise Him in His mighty firmament! Praise Him for His mighty acts; Praise Him according to His excellent greatness! Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet; Praise Him with the lute and harp! Praise Him with the timbrel and dance; Praise Him with stringed instruments and flutes! Praise Him with loud cymbals; Praise Him with clashing cymbals! Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord!” We saw how the first & last phrase of this Psalm, “Praise the Lord”, comes from the Hebrew word that you’ve certainly heard before – the word “Hallelujah!” Hallelujah contains the Hebrew word halal, which simply means “praise”, and “jah” which is one of the Hebrew names of God, Yahweh or Jehovah. So now you know that this word we utter a lot in praise simply means “Praise God” or “Praise the Lord!” But what we started noticing about this phrase/word last week is that it is a call to action. No, it’s not just there for informational purposes; it’s there telling God’s people what to do. So if I read in the Bible “Praise the Lord!”, what should my response be? It should be to praise the Lord, right? Yes, if the Scriptures say, “Hallelujah”, then I should stop what I’m doing and praise the Lord right then! Amen? So I’d like us to do something fun throughout this series: Every time you hear the phrase “Praise the Lord!” I want the congregation to shout, “Praise the Lord!” And every time you hear the word “Hallelujah!” I want the congregation to shout, “Hallelujah!” Let’s practice right now – Me: Praise the Lord! (The congregation: Praise the Lord!) Me: Hallelujah! (The congregation: Hallelujah!) You see, church, praising God is not just something we are to observe; it’s what we are called to do! I understand we have those in the church today who are specifically gifted to lead worship, sing, or play instruments in a praise service, but I made the point last week that I think it’s interesting that the New Testament doesn’t specifically identify this as a gift or office in the Body of Christ. I don’t believe this is because we shouldn’t have a praise & worship team, but rather because we are ALL called to this office! Yes, everyone is called to be a praiser, not just a select few. So that’s what we began talking about last week – how praising God is our calling in Christ Jesus! I remember having a conversation with someone before I was born-again, where we were discussing what the purpose of mankind is. We were pondering those universal questions- Why am I here? What is my purpose? Of course, being lost, I was not able to answer these questions, but when I had my encounter with Jesus in 2000, I knew immediately the core-purpose of every single person who has ever lived on the earth – It is to know God! Yes, the primary purpose for every single person who ever has or ever will be created is to have a personal relationship with their Creator, and the predominant activity in that relationship is to praise and worship Him as His creation! But we saw how this is not only God’s primary purpose for mankind. It is also the foundational purpose for all His creation. In the Psalms, many references are made to different created things such as the sun, moon, stars, mountains, animals, etc. declaring God’s praise (See Psalm 69:34, 145:10, 148, and Psalm 150:6). Didn’t Jesus say that even the rocks would cry out (See Luke 19:40)? So all of creation here on the earth is praising its Creator! But we also learned that this is exactly what is going on in heaven as we speak. Yes, if you study the Scriptures that give us a sneak peak into what is going in heaven, you’ll find that continual praise & worship of God is the main activity of heaven’s residents. So if it’s happening with all of His creation in heaven, and it’s happening with His entire creation on the earth, then I believe it is easy to conclude that the praise & worship of God is the primary purpose for everything and everyone God has ever created. So I made the point last week that if this is true, wouldn’t it behoove us, the crown of His creation, to join in? Yes, wouldn’t it be a good idea to begin fulfilling our divine purpose sooner rather than later? You see, there is coming a day soon and very soon when we are going to slip out of these tents that we call bodies and be ushered into the presence of God where, as we’ve seen, singing His praises will be our habitual tendency. Therefore, we ought to begin to do it now when we can do it by faith and please Him all the more. Amen? So we learned that praise is not only our purpose, it is our calling too! You know, when we meet someone new, we might ask them “how are you doing?” but that usually leads us to another question that we are much more interested in learning the answer to – “What do you do?” Yes, we are very interested in finding out what people do for a living. Well, I believe we need to see ourselves as what we were all created to be in Christ Jesus – Praisers! This is what the Bible teaches us: First Peter 2:9 says, “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” This is who we are, saints! We are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and His own special people! But what we are called to do as these things is to proclaim the praises of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light. So this is to be our spiritual vocation! Isaiah 43:21 forecasted this by saying, “This people I have formed for Myself; They shall declare My praise.” And here is one of the main points we learned: Just as sometimes that question is not just “What do you do?” It’s “What do you do for a living?” And what that obviously means is, what is your job/occupation that you earn your income from and live off of. Well, this is something that’s important to understand about being a praiser: not only is it what your spiritual vocation is, but it’s where your spiritual income comes from. In other words, praising the Lord isn’t just something we do to benefit the Lord. No, it is loaded with benefits for the one who “does their job.” Amen! So we looked at the 103rd Psalm that shows us both our response to having this responsibility and occupation and also the benefits of doing our job well. Now Psalm 103 is one of my personal favorite psalms – namely because we see our benefit package in Him. We learned that after saying “and forget not all His benefits” in verse 2, David begins to show what those benefits of our spiritual vocation are. Verse 3 says, “Who forgives all your iniquities, Who heals all your diseases.” Now by far, the most important benefit is this first one – the forgiveness of all our iniquities! No, not just some of them; all of them! I see this as the salary portion of praise’s employment package! It’s certainly the greatest and most important part of our job as praisers. But like it is with most people in this world’s workforce, it seems like most Christians are only concerned with their salary. Yes, it’s evident that most believers only know about the forgiveness of their sins. In other words, that’s the only part of their benefit package that they consider. It’s the big one. No doubt about that. But it’s not all that we have in our benefit package. One benefit that the body of Christ does not esteem like it needs to is the next one – our medical/health insurance. You know, if you’ve ever had to pay for your own health insurance out of pocket, then you probably know just how invaluable having health insurance included in your job’s benefit package is. It’s expensive! And oh, how expensive can physical issues be. Well, as we are promised in Psalm 103:3 among many other places, we have been given free health insurance! He heals ALL our diseases by the stripes of Jesus, being our Jehovah Rapha! On top of that, some types of medical insurance cover prescription drugs too! And that’s covered under Jehovah Rapha’s insurance program as well: We are told in Proverbs 4:20-22 that God’s Word is “medicine” to all our flesh. So not only are we promised divine healing, but we are promised divine health because we have been given an unfailing medicine that will heal “all our flesh.” Amen! Saints, our health insurance—the stripes of Jesus—have already paid for our prescription. Amen! And in God’s kingdom, there is no co-pay. There is no deductible that needs to be met. It’s already been paid for 100% by our Great Physician! But what else do some businesses offer as part of their benefit package? Well, with some jobs we might get “life insurance.” Well, Psalm 103:3 gives us another benefit of our covenant with the Lord: It says, “Who redeems your life from destruction.” So guess what else we have as a benefit? Life insurance! We have been given the benefit of the God kind of life – which unlike life insurance in the world, can be experienced now! The Bible calls it eternal life, resurrection life, and abundant life! This is the life of God and it’s a part of our benefit package in Him! Amen! But then notice what verse 3 goes on to say and then verse 4 – “… Who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies, Who satisfies your mouth with good things, So that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” Hmmm … So we see here the word “crowns” and then how He satisfies our “mouth” with good things. What benefit does that make you think of? Dental insurance! Lol! I wonder how aware the Body of Christ is that we have the benefits of God crowning us with lovingkindness and tender mercies and also satisfying our mouths with good things so that even our youth is renewed. These are just a few more things that the Lord desires for us to taste and see! So I think you get the point. There are a ton of benefits that the Lord has given us as we walk in our calling of declaring His praises! I’d encourage you to continue looking at the 103rd Psalm as it contains many more awesome benefits of our employment in the “Father’s business.” But we saw how, unlike our jobs, these benefits are not just things we can partake of annually, quarterly, monthly, or weekly. No, these benefits are promises that we can experience DAILY – for as Psalm 68:19 says, “Blessed be the Lord, Who daily loads us with benefits, The God of our salvation!” But let me give you just one more very important benefit of God’s kingdom that we can also experience in our jobs on this earth – retirement planning benefits! I know a lot of us have taken advantage of things such as 401(k)s, etc. at our jobs which help better prepare us for retirement, but there is no better retirement package than what we have in the kingdom of God. Our future is so bright, you have to squint to look at it. Saints, as much as God desires to bless us in this life, our retirement package is loaded! And I can guarantee you that the more you and I live our lives to praise the Lord through thick & thin, the more we are seeing being contributed to that retirement package. Amen! BEING A GOOD EMPLOYEE So now that we’ve talked about how praise is our occupation in the kingdom of God and how doing our job well holds a myriad of benefits, let’s begin looking at what it means to do our job well. Yes, let’s learn how we can do a good job for our Father’s business that we are called to and employed for. You see, when it comes to our jobs on this earth, there is a difference between being a good employee versus being a bad employee. And when I say “bad employee” I’m referring to those who aren’t necessarily bad enough to lose their job, but just aren’t the employees who do their job in excellence, work hard, and are dependable. The good ones are the kind of employees an employer is looking for, and I can assure you, they are not growing on trees in this world we live in. For example, there are employees who just show up to work. Yes, they don’t call in sick much and they are dependable in terms of being physically present and manning a position. But that’s not what makes an excellent employee. A worker who is esteemed in a workplace is the one who not only shows up, but performs their job function well – meaning, they work hard, doing exactly what their boss expects out of them, and even go above and beyond those job duties. So how does this relate to spiritual things? Well, it can mean that just because I faithfully show up at church every week and even come to extra things that are going on, that doesn’t automatically mean that by being present I’m pleasing the Lord Jesus, my Boss. No, I please Him by doing my job well while I’m here – which would be loving the people present, having ears to hear the message God has given the speaker, and certainly me engaging the Lord during our times of praise & worship. Now regarding the praise service, that won’t be simply looking around and seeing what everyone else is doing. It won’t be me just standing there and watching what those like Bryan & Cameron are doing on the stage. No, it will be me participating! That might be me closing my eyes, raising my hands, lifting my voice, etc. It is me engaging the Lord by looking unto Him and lifting up my voice in song. This is how I don’t just show up to work, but I show up to work to work. This also goes for how I praise Him in my everyday life: You know, just like some Christians think they are doing enough simply by attending church, there are also a lot of them who think that by living a good life & not doing bad things that they are doing their Christian duty. Well, as good as that is, our duty to praise God goes beyond our church services. You see, these praise services are not the only time that you and I are called to engage in praising the Lord. In fact, you don’t even need music playing to praise the Lord. It is something we can and should do all the time. Didn’t King David say in Psalm 34:1 that he was going to bless the Lord at all times and His praise would continually be in His mouth? So this sounds like more than just when praise music is going on around us. This is at all times and continually! So my occupation in the kingdom is more than just me going to church and living a moral life; it is me living a life of praise where I am giving Him glory “at all times” in my everyday life, and also giving Him all my heart during the praise services we have at church. God wants us to do our job well at all times – whether it be at home or at our church home. So let’s begin talking a little bit about what it means to doing our job of praise well – because I, for one, want my Employer to look at my life and say, “Job Well Done!” Let’s look at some of the verses in the New Testament where being a good “employee” is talked about, and by looking at these instructions to “servants,” learn how this applies to our occupation of praise … BONDSERVANTS? You see, the apostle Paul liked to deal with very practical issues like the relationship between a husband & a wife, how both a parent & a child should behave towards one another, etc. And beginning in Colossians 3:22, he gives instructions to one of the more prevalent situations in the early First Century church – the relationship of the “bondservant” with their “masters.” Yes, in this verse, he begins addressing the “slaves” who were a part of the Colossian church. Now this might seem strange to hear that there were Christians who were still slaves in their church, but we need to understand the cultural differences between now and then. You see, while slavery is not a part of our society today (and that’s certainly a good thing), in Paul’s day, slaves made up over half of the population of the Roman Empire. In other words, it was a very normal part of society back then. So, what this means is that those who were considered the property of others made up the vast majority of the workforce back then. So my point is that this was an accepted part of society in the Roman world. So how does all of this relate to us? While none of us are slaves today, I believe the way we ought to relate to these commands to “bondservants” is as words to the “employee” or the “volunteer servant.” Yes, the instructions for Christian slaves can be related today to Christian employees. Therefore, as we read the following exhortations, read them in this light—as words to the Christian worker, whether that be as a paid employee in the secular marketplace or simply as a servant in any other capacity. All of the following commands should be applied to any of us who serve others in any capacity. So let’s look at this verse and glean, not just how we should serve in our jobs or in any other thing we might volunteer in, but how I can serve the Lord in praise … OBEY IN ALL THINGS So in Colossians 3:22 the apostle Paul said, “Bondservants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but in sincerity of heart, fearing God.” The first thing that the apostle Paul tells these “servants” is to “obey in all things your masters according to the flesh.” Now while Paul does say to obey our “masters” (i.e. bosses, supervisors, etc.) “in all things,” we need to balance this statement out with other truths in the Bible. Specifically, we can see from other passages that “all things” does not include breaking God’s commandments and violating His precepts and statutes. We see this in the story of Daniel and three Hebrew boys: They did not obey the king’s commandment when they were told to not pray and to bow down before an idol. However, when it came to something like their dietary laws, they honorably requested that they might abstain from those foods. In other words, they did submit to their authority when it came to just about everything, but refused to violate things that were clearly against God’s commandments. And also, by throwing the phrase “according to the flesh” in there, Paul was making sure that these servants understood that while they might have earthly masters, that is all they are—masters “according to the flesh.” In other words, our true Master is “according to the spirit” and His name is Jesus (which he gets into in this passage). So when we look at this from the perspective of our job of praising God, obeying in all things our Master according to the spirit means “all things.” In other words, everything He tells us to do is right and appropriate. Therefore, there is no room for questioning what the Lord tells me to do. So when it comes to this subject of praising God, it’s important that I fully obey the Lord in it – which includes not only when I do it, but also how I do it. In other words, if it’s for Him, I need to do it His way and not my own. Let me give all of you employees out there a good piece of advice – When your boss tells you to do something, it’s wise to simply do it his or her way. For example, if they tell you to do something in a certain way or at a certain time, don’t do it your own way or when you feel it’s the best time to do it. Being a good employee means following the instructions of your superiors even if you feel there is a better way to do it. Now that doesn’t mean that you cannot respectfully ask your supervisor if they are okay with you doing it another way, but just blatantly disregarding instructions because, after all you know better, is not best. So the way this applies to praising God is that you and I need to search the Scriptures to find out how the Lord would like us praising Him. In other words, we ought to study to see what are the specific instructions He gives us to praising Him in the Bible and then do it the way He teaches us. I say this because how many Christians do it their way? I mean, if they do it at all, how many just do it like they feel it needs to be done and never consider looking at how God describes true praise in the Scriptures? That’s kind of arrogant when you look at it that way, isn’t it? And the truth is, church, that God has shown us how He likes to be praised in the Bible and so one thing we are going to do in the weeks ahead is look at some of these things so that we can learn how to work for Him the way He desires us to. Amen? EYESERVICE & MAN-PLEASERS Now the next thing that Paul said to these “servants” in Colossians 3:22 was that they needed to obey their masters “not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers.” What he was obviously saying here was “But don’t simply obey your supervisor only when he’s watching you. Do your job for him or her just as hard when they aren’t watching—for if you only work hard when their eyes are on you, then you are only seeking to please man and not God.” But the truth is when it comes to our service of praise unto the Lord it is definitely intended to be for HIS “eyes” and a “service” unto Him. Yes, our praise of the Lord is to be a pleaser of the Lord. However, I believe a good takeaway from this is that we need to avoid the being “men-pleasers” part and how we don’t want our praise to be done with “eye-service” to the ones around us. In other words, we are not to be concerned with how we look or how we sound to anyone else in the room. I’ve just seen cases where people keep from singing out loud because they are worried about others around them hearing them. In other words, they are self-conscious of their singing ability and hold back because they don’t want others to know how bad they think they sing. Church, that should never be a deterrent from any of us singing out loud in church. No one in here should be judging other’s vocal abilities in here anyway. It’s all unto the Lord, not unto others. And if that is something you are really insecure about, leave the pew where you are sitting and go to a part of the church where you feel more comfortable singing out loud. Again, we want to be God-pleasers! And one of the things He has told us to do is sing, shout, dance, etc. Don’t let flesh & blood keep your mouth shut! Now on the flipside of this, there are also those who have NO problem singing, lifting their voice, jumping, and dancing in front of others. And the way I believe this applies to this specific group of people is to also be sure we are not doing it to be seen of man. This has not been much of an issue here @ HPC in recent time, but I have been in the churches where some “praisers” like the attention they get. So there is a lot of singing where people like to show off their voices, some dancing that seems to be more for those in the room than for the Lord, and some other demonstrative forms of praise that are certainly motivated by being “men-pleasers.” And this is the truth of the matter—if we only put our best foot forward when others are watching us, then we are proving that we are only interested in pleasing man rather than pleasing God. A person of praise will glorify Him all of the time—when the boss is around and when he is not—because they believe they are really serving God and not those around them. SINCERITY, FEAR, AND TREMBLING Then Paul counters the doing things with eyeservice with the phrase – “but in sincerity of heart.” The word “sincerity” here is defined by Thayer’s as “the virtue of one who is free from pretense and dissimulation.” In other words, this describes one who is genuinely, sincerely, and honestly serving and is void of any self-seeking agenda. This is what God desires from all of us, saints – To be a people who walk in the truth and sincerely serve our authority figures from the heart. It is easy to go through the motions and serve because we either are afraid of the consequences or because we are seeking a reward, but the Lord has called us to whole-heartedly serve sincerely. So when it comes to serving the Lord through praise, it’s important that we do it in “sincerity of heart”—that is, it’s genuine, heartfelt, and sincere. This reminds me a little of what Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:23-24 where Jesus said the hour was coming where God was seeking those who would worship Him in spirit and in truth. The truth part might be described as “sincerity of heart.” Then Paul includes “fearing God”: In his letter to the Ephesians, he said it a little differently. He said, “with fear and trembling” (See Ephesians 6:5). This phrase does not mean that we are to be afraid and terrified of our authorities. It just simply means that we are to obey them “carefully, reverently, zealously, and diligently.” For example, if you were personally instructed by some dignitary to perform a specific task, how would you perform your service? I suppose you would perform it carefully, reverently, zealously, and diligently because of who it was that gave you the duty. Well, that is the same mentality we should have when serving our “masters according to the flesh.” Everything we do for our authorities should be done in excellence and for the glory of God! Likewise, when you and I praise God, there needs to be this same attitude where its not just this casual drawing near unto Him, but something that we handle with care. Like, for instance, you and I were asked to introduce some elected official. If your audience were some people of clout and importance, I can guarantee you that you will handle that introduction with some “fear and trembling.” Well, any time we are entertaining the King of kings and Lord of lords, we ought to handle those times with care and revere the One we are praising. AND WHATEVER YOU DO Then in verse 23, the apostle Paul said, “And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men.” The phrase “And whatever you do” can be applied to “whatever”, which would certainly include whether we lift our voice, dance, raise your hands, etc. in praise. So whatever we do in life including praise, we need to do it in the following manner … The first thing he said, “do it heartily”- The word translated “do” here is a word describing “work or labor” and the word “heartily” comes from the words ek psuche, which means “out of the soul.” So, this phrase literally describes one working out of the soul as opposed to out of mere pretense and outward conformity. In other words, the Lord desires for all of us to serve with all that is within us—that is, for it to come out of the heart and not just external obedience. So what the Lord is looking for in us when we praise Him is that we do it “heartily” – that is, out of the soul. I know some of us have been trained in church to not to praise & worship God from the soul but from the spirit, but I don’t believe that’s what the Lord would say to us. Yes, praising & worshipping Him in spirit is the highest & best form of it, but this does not mean that God does not want us doing any of this from the soul either. Yes, He wants your personality involved in praising Him. Let those emotions out! Let your whole heart fully be released when you praise Him! He wants all of YOU to praise Him from the inside out. Amen! The next thing he said was that whatever we do, do it “as to the Lord and not to men.” And here is the foundation & motivation of both our servanthood and our praise of God: We are not simply serving another human being; we are serving the Lord when we serve others. Oh, that we would have this mentality throughout all our life on this earth—that the things we do and say are all “as unto the Lord and not to men.” I guarantee you that this would change the way many of us lived our lives, including our praise lives! THE INHERITANCE OF PRAISE So this is both how you and I can serve on this earth and serve the Lord via praise. If we praise God this way, I believe that the Lord would say, “That’s a job well done!” And as we know about the Lord, there is no job done well that won’t be rewarded by Him. And that’s what we see in the next verse … Colossians 3:24 then gives us an awesome promise of what serving the Lord in this way will lead to when Paul said, “knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ.” In the Book of Ephesians, where Paul said a lot of similar things about the master/servant relationship, he described this reward part a little differently: He said in Ephesians 6:8, “knowing that whatever good anyone does, he will receive the same from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free.” Regardless of which verse you are looking at and the specifics of the rewards, it is important to see that it is from the Lord that we will be rewarded for doing what is right. When it comes to working for others, too often we look to man for our raise, promotion, words of affirmation, etc. We ought to avoid that and look only unto the Lord for those rewards. He is the One who exalts one and brings down another! He is the giver of all favor! So, avoid the temptation of making man your source and begin to look unto the Lord as the One who will provide you with all of the favor, honor and reward that you need. Amen? And what an awesome promise this is that we can expect when we do good to others! We will (not might or hopefully) … we will receive the same from the Lord for whatever good we do! And I can promise you one thing: when the Lord returns the favor, it will be pressed down, shaken together, and running over! In other words, you will reap from the Lord in a much greater measure than you sowed it into others! So what about when we praise the Lord? If we do our job of praising Him well, is there a reward in that? You can bet your bottom dollar there is! Just like in your worldly job, you can receive raises, promotions, benefits, etc. from the Lord when you do your job of praising Him well. Just as that common Christian cliché says, “You cannot out-give God!” there is also truth in this – You cannot out-praise God! Yes, the more you glorify His name, the greater your name can become! The more you lift Him up in praise, the more He can give you a “raise.” Great are the benefits of the employee of praise, church! INTRODUCTION
Praise the Lord! This is a phrase you’ve likely heard many times, whether it be in church or in your Bible. It is indeed a very popular phrase in our “Christianese” language. But what I want is for this phrase to mean more to you than it ever has before. That’s the purpose of this teaching – for our church to come to be a body of believers who truly know how to praise God and who live our lives to “Praise the Lord.” Let’s look over at the last Psalm we have recorded – Psalm 150 – where the Book of Psalms comes to a dramatic climax. Yes, this psalm is a beautiful summary of the common theme we see in the first 149 psalms. This Psalm reads – “Praise the Lord! Praise God in His sanctuary; Praise Him in His mighty firmament! Praise Him for His mighty acts; Praise Him according to His excellent greatness! Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet; Praise Him with the lute and harp! Praise Him with the timbrel and dance; Praise Him with stringed instruments and flutes! Praise Him with loud cymbals; Praise Him with clashing cymbals! Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord!” Notice how the first & last phrase that we see in this Psalm is “Praise the Lord!” This phrase comes from the Hebrew word that you’ve certainly heard before – the word “Hallelujah!” Hallelujah contains the Hebrew word halal, which simply means “praise”, and “jah” which is one of the Hebrew names of God, Yahweh or Jehovah. So now you know what Hallelujah means, don’t you? It simply means “Praise God” or “Praise the Lord!” But what I want you to notice about this phrase/word is that it is a call to action. No, it’s not just there for informational purposes. It’s there telling God’s people what to do. So if I read in the Bible “Praise the Lord!”, what should my response be? It should be to praise the Lord, right? Yes, if the Scriptures say, “Hallelujah”, then I should stop what I’m doing and praise the Lord right then! Amen? So I’d like us to do something fun throughout this series: Every time you hear the phrase “Praise the Lord!” I want the congregation to shout, “Praise the Lord!” And every time you hear the word “Hallelujah!” I want the congregation to shout, “Hallelujah!” Let’s practice right now – Me: Praise the Lord! (The congregation: Praise the Lord!) Me: Hallelujah! (The congregation: Hallelujah!) You see, church, praising God is not just something we are to observe; it’s what we are called to do! I understand we have those in the church today who are specifically gifted to lead worship, sing, or play instruments in a praise service, but I think it’s interesting that the New Testament doesn’t specifically identify this as a gift or office in the Body of Christ. I don’t believe this is because we shouldn’t have a praise & worship team, but rather because we are ALL called to this office! Now you and I maybe should not be on the stage with a microphone. Like I’ve heard it said before – Everyone can sing. Not everyone should record, but everyone can sing. But everyone is called to be a praiser, not just a select few. And that’s what I would like us to begin talking about this week – how praising God is our calling in Christ Jesus! PURPOSED TO PRAISE I remember having a conversation with someone before I was born-again, where we were discussing what the purpose of mankind is. We were pondering those universal questions- Why am I here? What is my purpose? Of course, being lost, I was not able to answer these questions, but when I had my encounter with Jesus in 2000, I knew immediately the core-purpose of every single person who has ever lived on the earth – It is to know God! Yes, the primary purpose for every single person who ever has or ever will be created is to have a personal relationship with their Creator, and the predominant activity in that relationship is to praise and worship Him as His creation! But, you see, this is not only God’s primary purpose for mankind. It is also the foundational purpose for all His creation. In the Psalms, many references are made to different created things such as the sun, moon, stars, mountains, animals, etc. declaring God’s praise (See Psalm 69:34, 145:10, 148, and Psalm 150:6). Didn’t Jesus say that even the rocks would cry out (See Luke 19:40)? So all of creation here on the earth is praising its Creator! But did you know that this is also exactly what is going on in heaven as we speak? Yes, if you study the Scriptures that give us a sneak peak into what is going on in heaven, you’ll find that continual praise & worship of God is the main activity of heaven’s residents. So if it’s happening with all of His creation in heaven, and it’s happening with His entire creation on the earth, then I believe it is easy to conclude that the praise & worship of God is the primary purpose for everything and everyone God has ever created. So if this is true (and it most definitely is), wouldn’t it behoove us, the crown of His creation, to join in? Yes, wouldn’t it be a good idea to begin fulfilling our divine purpose sooner rather than later? You see, there is coming a day soon and very soon when we are going to slip out of these tents that we call bodies and be ushered into the presence of God where, as we’ve seen, singing His praises will be our habitual tendency. Therefore, we ought to begin to do it now when we can do it by faith and please Him all the more. Amen? WHAT DO YOU DO? But like I’ve already said, praise is not only our purpose, it is our calling too!?! In other words, praising God is not just something we do; it’s who we are. Let me explain … You know, when we meet someone new, we might ask them “how are you doing?” but that usually leads us to another question that we are much more interested in learning the answer to – “What do you do?” Yes, we are very interested in finding out what people do for a living. So what do you do for a living? Most of our immediate responses would be – “I’m a banker, a cashier, a housewife, a pilot, a lawyer, etc. etc. etc.” But I think we need to see ourselves as more than what our physical/natural occupation is. I believe we need to see ourselves as what we were all created to be in Christ Jesus – Praisers! Did you know that’s what the Bible teaches us? First Peter 2:9 says, “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” Now I know that a lot of people read this verse like it was being written to Israel because all of these things were how the Lord referred to them, but I want you to notice what Peter went on to say in verse 10. He said, “who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.” So his audience here was a people who once were not a people. That doesn’t sound like the Jewish community to me – for they had been the people of God for hundreds & hundreds of years to this point. No, this is obviously describing Gentile believers because, during their lifetime, they were definitely not a people, but now had become the people of God through the blood of Jesus’ Cross. Amen? So First Peter 2:9 is talking to you & I. We are those who were once not God’s people. We are those who once had not obtained mercy. But now, we are a part of God’s people, having received mercy! Praise the Lord! This is who we are, saints! We are a chosen generation! We are a royal priesthood! We are a holy nation! And we are His own special people! But what do we do? What is it that we do because we have been made all of these things through the mercy of God? Well, notice the next part of First Peter 2:9: It says, “…that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” The word “proclaim” here is only used this one time in the New Testament and comes from a word that was a combination of the word “out of” and “angel or messenger.” So it describes a messenger like an angel and what comes out of that messenger. Let’s consider angels for a minute: If you had an angel before you and asked him – “What do you do?” – what do you think he would say? He would probably respond with – “I am a servant of the Most High God! I go where He tells me to go! I do what He tells me to do! I say what He tells me to say!” You see, angels were oftentimes, what? They were God’s messengers! Yes, they are God’s representatives that come to tell someone the word of the Lord! So this is what came “out of” them. But what else do you think God’s angels would say that they do? I guarantee you that one thing you’d hear them say is that they praise & worship God! Yes, one of the most important jobs & privileges that angels have is to PRAISE THE LORD! Well, it’s the same with us! We too are called to “proclaim” the same thing – Peter described it as “the praises of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light!” So this is to be our spiritual vocation! Yes, it is our occupation as His chosen generation, His royal priesthood, His holy nation, and His special people! Our job is to declare the praises of Him! Amen! Isaiah 43:21 forecasted this by saying, “This people I have formed for Myself; They shall declare My praise.” So I guess when someone asks you what you do for a living, you might say, “I’m an appraiser” because that’s what you are – “a praiser.” You know, there’s a reason they are called “appraisers.” That’s because they are someone whose job is to assess or estimate the value of something. Isn’t that what “a praiser” is doing as well? By praising God, we are showing how much we value God. FOR A LIVING Now sometimes that question is not just “What do you do?” It’s “What do you do for a living?” And what that obviously means is what is your job/occupation that you earn your income from and live off of. Well, this is something that’s important to understand about being a praiser: not only is it what your spiritual vocation is, but it’s where your spiritual income comes from. In other words, praising the Lord isn’t just something we do to benefit the Lord. No, it is loaded with benefits for the one who “does their job.” Amen! Let’s look at a psalm that shows us both our response to having this responsibility and occupation and also the benefits of doing our job well – the 103rd Psalm. Now Psalm 103 is one of my personal favorite psalms – namely because we see our benefit package in Him. Psalm 103:1 starts off by saying, “Bless the Lord, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name.” So, as it has likely been with all of us when it comes to our jobs, we don’t always feel like getting up and going to work. Sometimes our flesh would just love to call in, roll over, and go back to sleep. Well, it’s like that with the vocation of praise too! There are going to be countless times where it’s the right time to praise Him, but like it is when our alarms go off in the morning to get up and go to work, we must grab ourselves by the ear and rise up & praise Him! Amen? Well, this is exactly what David was doing here: He was giving Himself a little pep talk, talking to his soul, and telling himself what time it is! It’s time to bless the Lord! Now why would one have to do this? It’s because their soul is going to not want to bless him at times. These times are usually when things are tough, when life is throwing you lemons, or simply when your emotions are down. This is when a child of God has to do something like David did here – start talking to your soul. Let me give you a good example of this from the New Testament: Many of us are familiar with trials that the apostle Paul went through and how he was imprisoned on multiple occasions. Well, in the Book of Philippians, we have the backdrop of one of these extremely difficult circumstances. He told this church how his imprisonment had actually turned out for the furtherance of the Gospel (See Philippians 1:12). He talked about how, as bad as this situation he was in was, that one of the hardest things was how he was hearing about people on the outside preaching Christ for spite, “supposing to add affliction to his chains.” So let’s put this into perspective: Suppose you were a successful businessman, and you were arrested and put into a jail even though you were innocent. And this imprisonment was one of the closest things to hell you had ever experienced. Then you learned that there were people on the outside who were trying to steal your business and you knew that they were doing it just to hurt you. That would be a pretty bad day, don’t you think? Well, that’s pretty much what Paul was going through. People were preaching Christ just to spite him. He knew that there were people who were trying to inflict even more suffering on him by taking his “business.” But I want you to notice what Paul said in Philippians 1:18 – “What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached; and in this I rejoice, yes, and will rejoice.” Wow, I just love that! What a remarkable attitude Paul possessed! Instead of getting hurt and offended by the wrong motives of others, the apostle Paul’s only concern was that Christ was being preached, and that caused him to rejoice. But notice the terminology he used here – “…and in this I rejoice, yes, and will rejoice!” The force of this statement just resounds with passion and conviction, does it not? It is as if he was saying, “I will rejoice in this and, yes, I will most definitely continue to rejoice in it!” But why such a bold statement? What is the cause for such an emphatic proclamation? To me, it is quite simple—the apostle Paul was giving himself a little pep talk like David did in Psalm 103. I am sure Paul was dealing with the same temptations in his heart to be discouraged and offended like any normal human being would be regarding these things. I am certain that he had to take those “woe is me” thoughts captive. But here in this verse I believe Paul was making this declaration, not just for their information, but to inform his own soul that it was “rejoicing time.” Amen! Yes, he was telling himself— “Paul, you will rejoice in this! Oh yeah, you are going to rejoice about it!” Saints, this is an extremely effective and biblical way to keep those negative emotions in check. That’s right—sometimes we just need to talk to our soul and let it know who is in charge. Again, as King David said in his 103rd Psalm: “Bless the Lord O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name!” This opening verse of this psalm was not just poetry; David was actually talking to his own soul. Yes, he was telling himself that everything within him was going to join together in giving praise to God. Bless the Lord, forevermore! So, what the apostle Paul was doing here to counter the offense and discouragement that he was likely being tempted with was telling those unruly emotions that he was not going to yield to them. In fact, he was telling his soul exactly what it was going to yield to—praise. He was telling his mind, will, and emotions – “You are going to praise the Lord!” In short, he was telling his soul what it was going to do rather than let his soul dictate whether he was going to be happy or not. Yes, Paul chose to both look at the positive side of things and take up the reins of his heart. In so doing, he was choosing joy. Amen? Now back to the 103rd Psalm … David goes on to say in verse 2 – “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits.” So now, not only was David just telling his soul to praise the Lord, he tells it to not forget all of his benefits. Now don’t let the wording here confuse you. This does not mean that we can forget some of them, but to make sure we do not forget all of them (as I interpreted this statement when I was child). No, it means not to forget any of the benefits that we have as His covenant people. But I want you to also see how what King David said shows us how to not forget any of them. There is a major solution that he gives us in these first two verses to help us not forget any of His benefits. Notice how David uses the phrase- “blessing the Lord”- three times in these two verses. This is a significant part of remembering His benefits…What does “blessing” the Lord mean? The Webster’s Dictionary defines the word “bless” (the way it is used in Psalm 103:1&2) as “to praise, glorify, or magnify.” So, in the context of Psalm 103:1&2, “bless” is basically a synonym for “praise.” So what does “blessing” (or, praising) the Lord have to do with us not forgetting all of His benefits? Well, when you praise the Lord, what are you doing? You are proclaiming the goodness and greatness of God through declaring who He is and what He has done. So, in essence, you are recalling all of His benefits when you bless Him, right? You see, a great benefit of glorifying and magnifying the Lord through praise is that it helps us to not forget His benefits. In other words, it causes us to constantly recount all that He has done for us and be less likely to forget them. And guess what that does? It will cause you and I to experience them more! I wonder how many people miss out on certain “benefits” that they have in this life simply because they stay ignorant of them. I’m sure that many of us have missed out on certain benefits of jobs we’ve had or other things we’ve been part of simply because we weren’t mindful of them. Well, being God’s child and a part of His kingdom, we have many different benefits that we are meant to take advantage of. So if you and I are employed to praise the Lord, then what are those benefits? Well, Psalm 103 goes to describe a bunch of them … Verse 3 says, “Who forgives all your iniquities, Who heals all your diseases.” By far, the most important benefit is this first one – the forgiveness of all our iniquities! No, not just some of them; all of them! I see this as the salary portion of praise’s employment package! It’s certainly the greatest and most important part of our job as praisers. But like it is with most people in this world’s workforce, it seems like most Christians are only concerned with their salary. Yes, it’s evident that most believers only know about the forgiveness of their sins. In other words, that’s the only part of their benefit package that they consider. It’s the big one. No doubt about that. But it’s not all that we have in our benefit package. One benefit that the body of Christ does not esteem like it needs to is the next one – our medical/health insurance. You know, if you’ve ever had to pay for your own health insurance out of pocket, then you probably know just how invaluable having health insurance included in your job’s benefit package is. It’s expensive! And oh, how expensive can physical issues be. Well, as we are promised in Psalm 103:3 among many other places, we have been given free health insurance! He heals ALL our diseases by the stripes of Jesus, being our Jehovah Rapha! On top of that, some types of medical insurance cover prescription drugs too! And that’s covered under Jehovah Rapha’s insurance program as well: We are told in Proverbs 4:20-22 that God’s Word is “medicine” to all our flesh. So not only are we promised divine healing, but we are promised divine health because we have been given an unfailing medicine that will heal “all our flesh.” Amen! Saints, our health insurance—the stripes of Jesus—have already paid for our prescription. Amen! And in God’s kingdom, there is no co-pay. There is no deductible that needs to be met. It’s already been paid for 100% by our Great Physician! But what else do some businesses offer as part of their benefit package? Well, with some jobs we might get “life insurance.” Well, Psalm 103:3 gives us another benefit of our covenant with the Lord: It says, “Who redeems your life from destruction.” So guess what else we have as a benefit? Life insurance! We have been given the benefit of the God kind of life – which unlike life insurance in the world, can be experienced now! The Bible calls it eternal life, resurrection life, and abundant life! This is the life of God and it’s a part of our benefit package in Him! Amen! But then notice what verse 3 goes on to say and then verse 4 – “… Who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies, Who satisfies your mouth with good things, So that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” Hmmm … So we see here the word “crowns” and then how He satisfies our “mouth” with good things. What benefit does that make you think of? Dental insurance! Lol! I wonder how aware the Body of Christ is that we have the benefits of God crowning us with lovingkindness and tender mercies and also satisfying our mouths with good things so that even our youth is renewed. These are just a few more things that the Lord desires for us to taste and see! So I think you get the point. There are a ton of benefits that the Lord has given us as we walk in our calling of declaring His praises! I’d encourage you to continue looking at the 103rd Psalm as it contains many more awesome benefits of our employment in the “Father’s business.” But unlike our jobs, these benefits are not just things we can partake of annually, quarterly, monthly, or weekly. No, these benefits are promises that we can experience DAILY – for as Psalm 68:19 says, “Blessed be the Lord, Who daily loads us with benefits, The God of our salvation!” But let me give you just one more very important benefit of God’s kingdom that we can also experience in our jobs on this earth – retirement planning benefits! I know a lot of us have taken advantage of things such as 401(k)s, etc. at our jobs which help better prepare us for retirement, but there is no better retirement package than what we have in the kingdom of God. Our future is so bright, you have to squint to look at it. Saints, as much as God desires to bless us in this life, our retirement package is loaded! And I can guarantee you that the more you and I live our lives to praise the Lord through thick & thin, the more we are seeing being contributed to that retirement package. Amen! REVIEW
Well, I believe today we will be concluding our series entitled “Imitators of Love” where we have learned more about Love Himself. We started off talking about how the high call of every believer in a nutshell is to imitate our Heavenly Father as His dear children. This is what the Bible calls “godliness.” So, in order to be godly by imitating God in our everyday life, we first have to know who and what we are imitating. So it is imperative that if you and I are going to replicate the Lord’s nature in our lives, then we need to learn what His nature is. And I can assure you, church, He is love. So everything we learn about love in the Bible is what we are learning about the Lord. The Lord is love! And there is a lot to learn about love, amen? In fact, this is part 15 of this series, which I know is a lot, but it’s important that we build this new image of God’s nature not just in our heads but in our hearts. So what we are doing is taking these “legos of love” and building something amazing! We’ve specifically been using the pieces found in First Corinthians 13:4-8, which gives us one of the most concise descriptions of love and, therefore, since God is love, it can be read like so – “GOD suffers long, and GOD is kind. GOD does not envy; GOD does not parade HIMSELF, HE is not puffed up; HE does not behave rudely, HE does not seek HIS own, HE is not provoked, HE thinks no evil; HE does not rejoice in iniquity, but HE rejoices in the truth; HE bears all things, HE believes all things, HE hopes all things, HE endures all things. GOD never fails …” Most recently, we have looked at verse 7, with what seems to be Paul just quickly giving us a few more characteristics of love on his way to wrapping up his point. In it, he says, “(Love) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” We learned that love “bearing” all things literally describes love as covering, concealing, or hiding something—thus protecting them. In fact, we learned how the root word for this that Paul used here in First Corinthians 13:7, was the word for the roof of a house. Therefore, love covers all! We then looked at what Paul says at the end of verse 7 of how love “endures all things” which describes how love has staying under power – meaning love will put up with and tolerate a lot more in others than our flesh would like to. So love endures all! Last week, we looked at the other two characteristics of love in this verse that says, “love believes all things, hopes all things.” The phrase “love believes all things” describes believing the best in everyone. In other words, love is not cynical by nature. No, it’s not pessimistic, but it trusts by default. Therefore, love tends towards giving people the benefit of the doubt. However, this does not mean that love is gullible and will accept just anything as the truth. What it does mean, however, is that while love might certainly be aware of the truth, it chooses to magnify something else instead. In other words, while love is not blind (contrary to what the world likes to say), it does focus on the positives in the other person more than their negatives. But I like the Living Bible’s translation because it says that love “will always believe in him (the person they are loving).” The New Living Translation puts it this way – Love “never loses faith (in others)” This obviously describes how love will believe in people, and never quit on them. To me, this is more of the idea that is being expressed here – believing in another person, not simply believing everything they tell you. Then we looked at what it means that love “hopes all things” and found that the New Testament term hope describes a confident expectation of something good in the future. So when it comes to this description of love, we can see that love has more of an expectation of something good tied to it. Therefore, if I am loving someone else, then I will have a similar hope for them – that is, I will hope, wish, desire, and expect blessings to befall them. I will hope these good things will happen to them like I would that they happen to me. Yes, if I love someone, I will desire that they are blessed, I’ll wish God’s best for them, and I’ll be optimistic that they will receive what He wants for them. But if I “hope all” for them, then that means that I will have a confident expectation of those good things happening in their life. And we learned that God certainly does believe in us and hope for us! You see, sometimes we think God is done with us because of the mistakes that we’ve made. We think we’ve nullified His plan for our lives because we’ve turned from His plan too many times. But when we consider Israel, we must conclude that God will never quit on us—especially when our covenant is written not in the blood of bulls and goats, but in the precious blood of Jesus Christ! Amen! Praise God, church, God will never, ever, quit on us! If He began a good work, He will see it through! He is faithful even when we are faithless, and He was, is, and evermore shall be the God of hope! Amen! LOVE NEVER DIES But like I said, I believe we are rounding up our look at God’s amazing love this week. And we are doing this by looking at the last characteristic of love given to us in First Corinthians chapter 13 when the apostle Paul begins verse 8 by saying, “love never fails.” Now this is yet another time when understanding the original language and looking at other translations becomes important. The reason is because when see the word “fails” here, our mind might go towards “failing” in the sense of failing to succeed at something like we fail a test. But that could lead one to believe that Paul was saying that “love never loses” or “love always succeeds.” And while it is certainly true that love is the way to victory and is how to be successful in this life and in the kingdom of God, that’s not exactly what “fails” means here. When we study this word “fails,” we can clearly see how it more describes something ending, ceasing, dying, etc.—kind of like when the Bible refers to a flower failing. Therefore, when we are told here that love never fails, the idea is more of love never dying or love never ending. And you don’t even need to know how to look up words to understand this because his point is even more clear as you go on to read what Paul said in the rest of this verse, where he says, “But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away.” So it’s like the translators wanted to use various synonyms for “fail” by saying that these other things like prophecies, tongues, and knowledge will “cease” and “vanish away.” So we can conclude that love will NEVER fail, cease, or vanish away. In other words, it will never end. It’s for this reason that I like the following translations: The New Living Translation says, “But love will last forever” and the Message Bible says, “Love never dies.” So this description of love never ending shows us some important things about how love works in our lives – some of which are contrary to the way folks refer to love. In fact, the Greek word that is used to define “fails” literally means to “fall out”—which is interesting because what is something that the world likes to say about love? It likes to describe one “falling in” and “falling out” of love. But what did we just learn? It’s that the literal translation of this phrase is that “love never falls out.” Therefore, according to the Scriptures, love is never something that we fall in & out of. This is important to understand because how many times have we heard of someone who started off falling head over heels in love with someone and then, after some time, they say those “feelings” that they had for them have changed and that they have “fallen out” of love with them. This is not the love of God, church. No, if we are being honest, what is happening is that person who says this, is falling in and out of “feelings.” But the truth is love is not a feeling. For example, what do people like to say when they “fall out of love?” They say, “I just don’t feel for you the same way I used to feel about you.” This, again, indicates that to them, love is a feeling or an emotion. No! The truth is that when someone says they have fallen out of love with someone, really what they are saying is that they have “fallen out of feelings.” It is actually impossible to “fall out of” the true love of God. Why? Because love is an act of your will and is not an emotion or a feeling! No, real love never ENDS because it’s a spiritual virtue and while the way we feel can certainly change, spiritual realities never change! Therefore, because God never changes, His love is the same yesterday, today, and forevermore! GOD’S LOVE NEVER FAILS Now as we’ve been doing throughout this series, let’s delve into His love as we round up our study. So if love never fails, then that means God never fails – which teaches us that God never ends and, therefore, His love never ends. In fact, this is what that very popular “praise phrase” that we see throughout the Old Testament is saying – You know, the one that says, “For the Lord is good and His mercy endures forever.” You see, the phrase “His mercy endures forever” describes that hesed kind of covenant love (which we will get into here in a moment). But the word “endures” was added by the translators. Therefore, this phrase literally reads as so – His steadfast, covenant love is forever – which is essentially saying the same thing as First Corinthians 13:8 – that His love never ends. So what does this mean that God’s love never ends, ceases, or dies? It simply means that we can never see the end of His love. He doesn’t quit on His people. He keeps on loving us no matter how far out there we get or how long we are out there. His love is forever, and it knows no end. Church, this is evidently an important truth for us to understand about God’s love because of how much we see it highlighted throughout the Scriptures. Let me give you a couple more places where we see it mentioned in different ways … One is found in Jeremiah 31:3, where the Lord said to His people through the Prophet Jeremiah –“The Lord has appeared of old to me, saying: ‘Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore, with lovingkindness I have drawn you.’” This was again another time where God’s people had been disciplined for forsaking God’s living waters. Yet, even in their failure, the Lord said, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” And everlasting love sounds to me like a love that never fails, amen? Can you hear it today? Can you hear the Lord saying to you this same thing, church? “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” This is what the Spirit is saying to His church right now! In another example from the ministry of Jeremiah, we’ve seen what the Lord told His people in Lamentations 3:22. This was a verse we looked at last week, but I want you to notice something about this passage of Scripture: “Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not.” Now the Lord’s “mercies” is describing that covenant, faithful love of God. So it is through that love that God’s people are not consumed – meaning that it was because of God’s unending love that they had not been totally destroyed. In other words, even though they had messed up and gotten themselves into this situation, through the Lord’s faithful love, He had not let them be utterly destroyed. And why was that? Well, he went on to say exactly why – “because His compassions fail not.” Now compassion is certainly a fruit of love and here we see how this love of God “fails not”—meaning, it never ends like First Corinthians 13:8 declares. So through the countless times that we see His steadfast love & mercy being described as being forever, it is crystal clear that God’s amazing love never fails. COVENANT LOVE But as promised, I want us now to look at this Old Testament word that was used to describe God’s love in many of these verses, because I believe it will teach us a lot about this aspect of love never dying. The Hebrew word that is used in these verses to describe God’s lovingkindness, mercy, & faithfulness is the word hesed. In Exodus 34:6-7, this is how God revealed Himself to Moses when He gave him the Ten Commandments on the two tablets of stone. In this story, we are told – “Now the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.” Now when it says in verse 5 that he proclaimed to Moses the name of the Lord, it is important to understand that he was not just declaring a term or title. To us, proclaiming a name might mean simply saying, “Bill, Joe, or Mary,” but in their day, the name of a person was their character, nature, and personality. So what God was proclaiming here was who He was. That’s important when considering what He said next as He passed before Moses … In verse 6, the Lord said concerning Himself – “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth …” So this is who God chose to reveal Himself as to His servant, Moses – As merciful, gracious, longsuffering, and then notice this … as “abounding in goodness and truth.” The word that is used for “goodness” here is the word hesed. So God described Himself as being filled with and overflowing in this virtue. So let’s look at what hesed is … This word is oftentimes translated as “lovingkindness and mercy” and it describes “unfailing, faithful, and steadfast love.” One translation calls it “loyal love” because the core idea of this term communicates loyalty & faithfulness within a relationship. It is for this reason that hesed is closely related to God’s covenant with His people, Israel. Therefore, as it relates to the concept of love, hesed expresses God’s faithfulness to His people. Now while we are not as in tune with the concept of covenant in our society today, I believe that something that we are certainly familiar with can help us understand this concept of hesed – the marriage covenant. You see, while marriages do not mean nearly as much to our modern-day society as they used to, the Scriptures teach us that a marriage is a covenant, not simply a contract. In other words, a marriage means much more to the Lord than it does to most people. Contracts can have a time limit on them, but marriages are meant to be permanent. Therefore, the concepts of loyalty, commitment, and faithfulness are, in the eyes of the Lord, a big part of a marriage. Now this is oh so important when it comes to this part of God’s nature – hesed. You see, I see hesed being perfectly illustrated by a marriage where both partners see their union as a covenant, and because of this, they place a premium on being faithful & loyal towards each other while also being steadfast in their love for one another. And this is certainly consistent with what we see in the Scriptures, because how many times do we see our relationship with the Lord being compared to a marriage? In the Old Testament, we see how God saw Himself as Israel’s husband. Let me show you a couple of examples of this: Isaiah 54:5 says, “For your Maker is your husband, the LORD of hosts is His name;” Jeremiah 31:31-32 also says, "Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD.” And while we have these verses that clearly say God was Israel’s husband, there are a ton of verses that come from that same perspective. However, they emphasize more of Israel’s failure to be a good wife to Him. Yes, there are countless verses throughout the Prophets in particular, that describe the “harlotry” of Israel even though they were married to the Lord. In other words, these verses describe how they were unfaithful to Him by turning to other gods and simply not loving Him with all their hearts. He often called this “playing the harlot.” HOSEA & GOMER One of our greatest examples of this is found in the Book of Hosea where the Lord sought to illustrate to His chosen people both their unfaithfulness and His heart to pursue them through His hesed. Now the story of Hosea is a unique one, but one with profound truths about God’s faithfulness. In short, the nation of Israel was in the middle of one of those times where their unfaithfulness to God was on full display. Yes, they were turning to other natural means of defending themselves which included other nations & their gods. To the Lord, this was the same as adultery. So what the Lord told His prophet to do was to go take for himself a prostitute named Gomer to be his wife – for (as Hosea 1:2 says) “the land has committed great harlotry by departing from the Lord.” So this marriage to the harlot was meant to illustrate to God’s people how they were like the harlot in His covenant with them. Like we’ve seen, God’s covenant with His people on Sinai was like a marriage covenant. The Lord wanted His people’s heart – for them to love Him with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength and to certainly remain faithful to Him and Him alone. So whenever His people would turn to other gods, He saw it as them committing spiritual adultery against Him. So during this marriage with Gomer, she and Hosea had three children – all of which were meant to illustrate the fruit of His bride’s unfaithfulness. Yet after even this, Gomer left Hosea to be with another man. However, the Lord told Hosea to take back Gomer who, by the laws of the times, should have been stoned to death. And not only was he to take her back, but he was also to buy her back – showing us the power of redemption. You see, the man whom she ran to, as she embraced her adultery whole heartedly, required payment to release her back to her husband. The law allowed for Hosea to punish Gomer harshly, but instead, he received her back into his home and paid the man she went with to “redeem” her (See Hosea 3:2). Hosea 2:19-20 puts it beautifully: In it, the Lord says, “I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and justice, in lovingkindness and mercy; I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord.” This pursuit of Israel by the Lord amidst her unfaithfulness is such a beautiful picture of the Lord’s faithfulness to His church today. It is so easy to see how the Lord might be quick to judge us or terminate our relationship with Him because of how far we can fall from His glory, but the lesson of God’s undying love for us is what is on full display in the Book of Hosea. THE SUBJECT OF MARRIAGE & DIVORCE Have you ever wondered why the Lord dealt so strongly with the subject of marriage and divorce? Why does He put such an importance on the sanctity of marriage? I believe it is for the same reason as we are looking at today – that in the Lord’s love for us, He will never divorce us! This is His attitude towards His covenant with us! Now in describing this, let me say this lest anyone receives any condemnation that is not intended: I (and the Lord) understand that a lot of us have had some difficult prior marriages. In some of these, we had abusive spouses. In others, we had unfaithful spouses. In even others, we ourselves were not walking with the Lord the way we might be today and simply didn’t know what we know now. No matter the situation, DO NOT let the enemy or your own heart condemn you over the past. Just allow the revelation of God’s love to impact your heart and see how this relates to your covenant with Him. We see Scripture after Scripture declaring how great is the faithfulness of our God, how He will never leave us nor forsake us, how He is the friend that sticks closer than a brother, and how even when our mother and father forsake us, He will stand by us. Time and time again, the Scriptures reinforce how the Lord is faithful, even when we are faithless. And faithfulness is best illustrated in the marriage covenant. If a husband is faithful, then that means that He will never leave His bride’s side for another. If he is faithful, then he will never lie to her. If he is faithful, he will never violate her trust by being joined to another. And this is the core reason why God is opposed to divorce. It is because it is completely opposite to how He treats us. He never stops loving us! He will never put us away! Nothing can pluck us out of His hand, and nothing can separate us from His love! Nothing! Just like the song we love to sing… Great is His faithfulness! This declaration was made in the Book of Lamentations where the nation of Israel was in a bad place, having forsaken their Lord and His ways. But, again, He is faithful even when we are faithless. So when it comes to the covenant relationship between Hosea & Gomer, their marriage is a love story, but not the fairy tale kind. Love will always end with “a happily ever after” because it never ends. Amen! REVIEW
Well, we are on the home stretch of our series entitled “Imitators of Love” where we are endeavoring to learn more about our loving God. You see, we’ve learned that the high calling of every Christian is to imitate God as His dear children (See Ephesians 5:1). And since God is love (First John 4:8), we are essentially called to imitate love itself. So what we’ve been doing is looking at verses where we are taught about the characteristics of love with the understanding that these must be the characteristics of God that we are called to imitate. Therefore, we have been coming to know Him more through looking at these verses that teach us how to love one another. We’ve specifically been looking at First Corinthians 13:4-8, which gives us one of the most concise descriptions of love and, therefore, since God is love, it can be read like so – “GOD suffers long, and GOD is kind. GOD does not envy; GOD does not parade HIMSELF, HE is not puffed up; HE does not behave rudely, HE does not seek HIS own, HE is not provoked, HE thinks no evil; HE does not rejoice in iniquity, but HE rejoices in the truth; HE bears all things, HE believes all things, HE hopes all things, HE endures all things. GOD never fails …” Most recently, we started looking at verse 7, with what seems to be Paul just quickly giving us a few more characteristics of love on his way to wrapping up his point. In it, he says, “(Love) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Last week, we looked at the phrases that say how love “bears all things” & “endures all things.” We learned that love “bearing” all things literally describes love as covering, concealing, or hiding something—thus protecting them. In fact, we learned how the root word for this, that Paul used here in First Corinthians 13:7, was the word for the roof of a house. Therefore, the idea of both covering & protecting is what is being indicated. Now this requires some explanation because in some ways, hiding or covering something might not be love at all. For example, if I am concealing truth in certain situations, I might be doing the exact opposite of what love demands because truth is not to be hidden. So I have to determine whether love would dictate whether or not speaking the truth in a situation is appropriate. Now I know there is a large contingent of people who believe that speaking the truth is always appropriate, but that’s not necessarily true either. There are times where love will zip its lips, be slow to speak, etc., and not broadcast something even though it is 100% sure that it’s true. We learned that the way the way we know when it is appropriate to speak the truth is found in Ephesians 4:15 when Paul taught us how we are to speak the truth in love. So how does this show us when we are to speak the truth? It’s when it can be done in love. In other words, ask yourself the question when you have the thought to speak something you know is true – Who am I loving by saying this, and how am I loving them? Asking this question can keep us from sharing things that aren’t what wisdom would have us share at the moment. We also learned that one characteristic of love is that it will cover sin. In quoting from the Book of Proverbs, First Peter 4:8 says, “And above all things have fervent love for one another, for ‘love will cover a multitude of sins.’” So true, fervent love for one another is not going to expose sin; it’s going to cover it. And what are those things? The apostle Peter says, “a multitude of sins.” No, not just some sin, but a “multitude” of them. That means that it doesn’t matter how many times they have committed the same sin or how many times they have even sinned against us, love will cover their multitude of sins. We looked at one of the greatest Biblical examples that illustrates this, which is found in Genesis 9:20-27—the story of Noah being uncovered in His tent and how Ham was a “ham” by exposing his nakedness. So we learned from this how God covers the multitude of our sins and is our great protector. In fact, while I’m not a big fan of the King James’ choice of words in First Corinthians 13:7, as we’ve seen, the way we think of the word “bears” is a little different than what the word he used indicates, this word does reflect part of what this word means. You see, like a mama “bear”, God’s heart is to protect His cubs. Yes, His great love for us leads him to defend & protect. Amen! We then looked at what Paul says at the end of verse 7 of how love “endures all things.” Now this one sounds a little more like what love “bears all things” seemed to mean, and I made the point that this time, I believe the translators got it right. You see, the word the apostle Paul used here was the Greek word hupomeno, and this word was a staple in the New Testament. In fact, in the early New Testament church, this virtue was treasured and highly valued by Christians. It’s the virtue most often translated “patience” in the New Testament. However, while patience is an “okay” translation, endurance is a much better one because the word literally means to “remain under” which denotes perseverance and endurance. So because of this, some have called this virtue, “staying under” power. So, for instance, you have a lot of pressure put on you, yet you don’t let that difficult thing move you, but you endure it by resolving to “stay under” it. Therefore, I see endurance as more of the picture being painted by this word rather than patience. And one of the reasons I think this is important to understand is because, when it comes to love, there’s a little difference between being patient with people and enduring them. How many times have we quit on a person in our lives because we simply didn’t feel we could take any more? So, like with the definition of hupomeno, we were unwilling to “stay under” the things that they did and just the way they were. Some of us have quit jobs because of a boss who was difficult to endure. Some of us have left churches because of parishioners who were difficult to get along with. Even some of us have left spouses because they were simply intolerable. Now some of those situations might certainly have been acceptable to move on from, but I think that in a lot of cases, we might not have abided by this attribute of love that “endures all things.” The fact of whether or not we are guilty of this from decisions made in the past is not the point. The point is, however, that from this day forward we ask the Lord to direct us into when it is time to endure in love or move on from the situation. I’ve just learned in many situations how a lot of times when I was ready to throw my towel in on a person that by simply enduring through the tough seasons, we were able to make it through them and see a lot of fruit as a result. Therefore, those feelings & emotions that we experience when we are at odds with a person are not to be trusted. They will even try to trick us into thinking God is leading us to do this or that, which usually is in line with what our flesh would want in the situation. But the fact is, feelings are fickle, and emotions are not to be trusted. Just ask the Holy Spirit within you, “What would love do here?” But our point from this was this is exactly what the Lord has done with every one of us! Did you know that Love Himself has had to endure plenty of things with us? Yes, the Lord has endured at least as much with you as He has with that person you have a hard time enduring. So if I live in that reality instead of being puffed up to think that I am better than those who irritate me, I’ll live in the sober reality that I need as much mercy as they do and will have an easier time tolerating their shortcomings. It’s tight but it’s right. So yes, since God is love, He certainly endures all things with you and I. He does not quit on us when we “act a fool.” He doesn’t terminate His relationship with us when we annoy Him. No, He endures our inadequacies. He puts up with our flaws. He tolerates our mistakes. All because He loves us so! Oh, how He loves us! Yes, His love “endures” forever! EVERYTHING? Now this week, I want us to cover the other two things Paul mentioned in First Corinthians 7 – “… (Love) believes all things, hopes all things …” As I made the point of last week, the word “things” was added by the translators. So this actually reads – “(Love) believes all, hopes all.” This is important because like I said, the phrase “all things” can leave the impression that we are to believe & hope in EVERYTHING, and that’s just not true. Let me explain … I believe it’s rather obvious that God does not expect us to believe and trust in “everything” that we hear from and about others. If I did that, I would believe every rumor, all the gossip, and every lie that people speak about other people. In fact, God spent a good portion of the New Testament warning us that some of the things we hear are false and are to not be believed. First John 4:1 says, “My dear friends, don’t believe everything you hear. Carefully weigh and examine what people tell you. Not everyone who talks about God comes from God. There are a lot of lying preachers loose in the world” (The Message Bible). Not only are we to not blindly believe everything we hear, but we also cannot put our “hope” in people either. No, we cannot “expect” (Lit. definition of “hope”) people to do the right thing because human beings are flawed, and we are always capable of letting others down. Now we can look for it and desire it, but according to the literal definition of hope, we cannot have a confident expectation in man. Now we can place high expectations on Him, but expecting things from others is a recipe for disappointment. So it is not that a Christian who is walking in love has stripped himself of all wisdom and discernment – that he or she has forgotten how to distinguish between black from white. Instead, this verse is descriptive of Paul’s view of love, and the main point is that God’s love believes in and hopes for the best – a point we will get into momentarily. So, yes, it’s important to understand that love is what is being described here. So the subject matter is how love behaves towards the objects of its love. Therefore, this verse is not just a blanket statement that we are to believe everything we hear and hope in everyone we come across. This much is obvious. However, when it comes to how we are loving others, faith in people and hope for them are things that love will always do. So let’s begin looking at these two phrases and discover a couple more of love’s attributes. Let’s start with “believes all things.” BELIEVES ALL This phrase “believes all” has different shades of meaning. Let’s look at a few other translations: After translating this phrase “believes all things,” the Amplified Bible adds “looking for the best in each one.” Along these lines, the ISV says, “believes the best in all.” So from this perspective, “believing all” is to believe the best in all. In other words, love is not cynical by nature. No, it’s not pessimistic, but it trusts by default. Therefore, love tends towards giving people the benefit of the doubt. However, this does not mean that love is gullible and will accept just anything as the truth. What it does mean, however, is that while love might certainly be aware of the truth, it chooses to magnify something else instead. In other words, while love is not blind (contrary to what the world likes to say), it does focus on the positives in the other person more than their negatives. You see, the idiom "love is blind" implies that people do not see the faults of the people that they love. Well, while that certainly can be the tendency, the truth is that love is not ignorant. No, all this means is that love will tend towards overshadowing any negative traits or actions. So the notion is that love will make one overlook or ignore the loved one's flaws, mistakes, or undesirable behaviors. Therefore, the phrase "love is blind" means that when people are in love, they are often oblivious to or tolerant of their loved one's imperfections. So the truth in this is that love chooses to overlook the wrong and focus on the good. Love chooses to pay attention to someone's strengths, rather than their weaknesses. It is for this reason that I like the Living Bible’s translation. It says, “you will always believe in him (the person you are loving).” The New Living Translation puts it this way – Love “never loses faith (in others)” This obviously describes how love will believe in people, and never quit on them. To me, this is more of the idea that is being expressed here – believing in another person, not simply believing everything they tell you. Which leads us to the next description of love – how it “hopes all.” HOPES ALL While the last phrase dealt more with having faith in people, this one deals with the subject of faith’s partner, hope. Now this particular word is one that requires a deeper look – because our idea of hope is a little different than the Lord’s. This Greek word for “hope” is defined in my study bible as- “hope, not in a sense of an optimistic outlook or wishful thinking without any foundation, but in a sense of confident expectation based on solid certainty.” So based on this definition, Bible hope is not the way we use it in the world today. It’s not “wishful thinking” or having an “optimistic outlook.” No, hope is more certain than that. Bible hope has more of a foundation underneath it than that! When the New Testament speaks of hope, it speaks of having a confident expectation which is based on solid certainty. I like to use the example that, for instance, someone has been promised by another individual that they would come pick them up at the airport. Well, if you asked that person who was flying- “Do you have someone picking you up at the airport?” and they responded with- “I hope my friend is” what would you think? You would be thinking that they are not sure. You would think that they doubt whether or not their friend will show up, right? Yes, what you would hear them saying is that they sure would like for that to happen, or they had the desire for their friend to pick them up but weren’t sure if they would come through for them. However, if we are “hoping” the way the New Testament speaks of hope, we are certain that it is going to happen, and we are expecting it as a result. Amen! That’s a far cry from what we are saying when we say, “We hope something will happen.” If we are speaking elpis (New Testament “hope”), we are saying, “Oh yeah, I absolutely expect it to happen! I’m certain of it!” So what does this mean to say that love “hopes all”? Well, when you look at hope as it is used in the New Testament, this “expectation” is usually tied to some future blessing like Heaven, the Second Coming of Jesus, the Resurrection, etc. So when it comes to this description of love, we can see that love has more of an expectation of something good tied to it. Therefore, if I am loving someone else, then I will have a similar hope for them – that is, I will hope, wish, desire, and expect blessings to befall them. I will hope these good things will happen to them like I would that they happen to me. Yes, everything I hope for from God for myself, I will hope from God for the ones I love – which includes them reaching the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. In other words, I will expect them to reach their God-given potential. Yes, if I love someone, I will desire that they are blessed, I’ll wish God’s best for them, and I’ll be optimistic that they will receive what He wants for them. But if I “hope all” for them, then that means that I will have a confident expectation of something good happening in their life. DOES GOD BELIEVE & HOPE? Now as we talk about how love will believe in people and how it’s hope is that they will reach their God-given potential, the question begs to be answered – Does God do this? Does God believe in all and hope for all? Sure, He does because if He is love (which He is) and this is what love does (which it does), then God believes & hopes all! No question! I think it is interesting that one might acknowledge that God expects faith out of His people and commands us to hope in Him, yet they don’t think that He practices the same towards them. I understand that is natural to just believe that faith & hope are solely to be aimed at Him since He is the object of our faith & hope, but I can assure you, God practices what He preaches. Yes, He doesn’t give us a standard that He will not live by Himself. So if He is pleased when His children believe in Him and what He has said (See Hebrews 11:6), then wouldn’t it also please Him to believe is us? Well, the fact is, God’s faith in His creation and His hope in His people is all throughout the Bible if you have eyes to see it. So let’s look at some Scriptural examples that shows how God doesn’t lose faith in me, how He believes the best in you, and how His hope in us never wanes. Let’s start in the Beginning, where we see an example that this was even the case with His original creation: We see in this first couple of chapters of this Book called the Bible that God began by creating this world and all that is in and around it. So, this planet was a good work that He began, in that, after He created it, He said that it was “very good.” But we all know what happened— Adam, who was given authority over this planet, allowed the serpent in and sinned, letting sin reign instead of him. This caused the curse to enter the world, which created a ripple effect to where everything in this physical world is dying. Yes, the sin has brought the curse and death in and, in the natural, our future looks bleak. But the gospel is this: God showed us that the good work He began in the beginning, He will finish in the end. You see, just as the first two chapters of the Bible open up by declaring God creating His original creation, the last two chapters of the same Bible conclude with how God will provide the new creation at the end of time. Isn’t that interesting? So, it as if the entire Bible is surrounded with God’s purpose and plan for His creation—for it begins with God’s original creation and ends with His new creation. Therefore, everything in between is the process of God restoring what the First Adam lost in the fall. And the consummation is the new heavens and the new earth, when Christ will return and reign here from the New Jerusalem. So, we can see that, with everything from this physical world we live in, to our very own lives, God began a good work and has promised to complete that good work when Christ returns. And what this teaches us is that all that is contained between these four chapters (Genesis 1-2 & Revelation 21-22) in no way indicates that God will not finish what He started. What I mean is this, that all of the bumps along the road where mankind would fail and where Satan would try and stop God’s plan seemed to indicate that God is not taking us to the other side. But throughout the Old Testament, we see God never losing faith in His chosen people… It started with God calling a man named Abram out of the pagan world he lived in and promising to make a great nation from him. He believed so much in this man that He changed His name to reflect what He saw in Him, calling him “Abraham” the father of many nations. So, through a process of events, we get the Twelve Tribes of Jacob, and a nation was birthed – Israel. And they were far from perfect. Even though there were certainly good times in their kingdom where good kings reigned such as David, Solomon, Asa, Josiah, Jehoshaphat, etc., there were also bad times when there were bad kings on the throne. And how many times in the Old Testament did Israel fail God? It can be somewhat discouraging to read how many times they made mistakes and turned from the Living God. Well, we need not make the mistake of thinking that we are better than they were. For one, how do we know how we would have responded if we were in the same situation? Secondly, we already do make similar mistakes. It’s just not as obvious because our lives are not chronicled like Israel’s was. Yet, even though we clearly see their continual failure, their failure was never final. No, God gave them second, third, fourth, etc., etc., etc. chances. Why? Because love never says die. In fact, even though they made their mistakes, which led to them experiencing loss and captivity, this did not mean that God was finished with them. In fact, we see through the Prophet Jeremiah, that even in midst of their failures, God’s faithfulness abounded. Some of our most popular & familiar verses paint a beautiful picture of His faith & hope … In Lamentations chapter 3, we see how the Prophet Jeremiah had almost given up hope because of their circumstances. But then his hope was restored again, when He remembered the mercies of God. This is that familiar section of verses when he said, “This I recall to my mind, Therefore I have hope. Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘Therefore I hope in Him!’” (Lamentations 3:21-24). So what Jeremiah was doing was recalling how it was through the Lord’s mercies that they were not completely consumed and, because of God’s great faithfulness, we should be instilled with hope. How about Jeremiah 29:11, where in the midst of Israel’s failures, they had been carried away captive by Nebuchadnezzar & Babylon? This certainly seemed like a bleak & hopeless situation. Yet the Lord had Jeremiah write them a letter for Him, and contained in that letter is that very popular verse that says, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” So by saying, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you …”, it is as if God was saying, “You guys think you know what I’m thinking of you. You act like you know what my plans are. But you have no idea. I, on the other hand, know the thoughts I’m thinking towards you and know the plans I have for you, and they are …” You see, the Lord’s thoughts are usually higher than our thoughts. In other words, we think on this lower level of the earth where we are ready to quit on people at the drop of a dime. Therefore, we think God is thinking like we think. It’s just natural to think like that. Ya think? But no, we see here that even though they had made their own bed – having gotten themselves into this predicament by turning to other gods and then not heeding the original words of Jeremiah – that God’s plan was NOT for them to sleep in it. No! His heart was “thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give them a FUTURE and a HOPE.” Amen! So do you suppose this way of thinking has changed with God regarding you? Do you think that perhaps that you are too far gone by your own poor choices? Well, if so, then the Lord is saying to you today – “I know the thoughts I think towards you. Yeah, you might think this is how I’m thinking, but I can assure you my plan is one of HOPE.” You see, God always believes in His people, and He always has hope. He never says die. He abounds in hope, and He wants His people to abound in hope as well. This reminds me of a New Testament verse where God is called the God of Hope. Yes, Romans 15:13 says, “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” So that means that God has hope to give because He has hope to give. In other words, all true hope comes from Him as He is the God of Hope. Thus the reason we see love described as “hopes all things”—because God is love and He hopes all things. Now let’s look at a few New Testament verses that describe God’s faith & hope in the work that He started in us … Philippians 1:6 says, “being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.” Notice that this is something we can all be confident in—that if God started something, He will finish it. It’s not something we have to wonder about. It is without question. If God began it, He will complete what He started. We can absolutely put our faith and trust in this! And the reason we can be confident in this is because we see it throughout the Scriptures: Time and time again, we see in God’s Word that the things God starts, He either completed them already or He plans to finish them. Now regarding Philippians 1:6, let’s look at what the apostle Paul said we can be confident in: He said that the good work God began in them, He will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. In the case of the Church of Philippi, it was God who started the good work in them. This church was not started because these Philippians willed it. Nor did it begin because the apostle Paul wanted it to happen. The good work that began in the Church of Philippi was because of God. Now I understand that this needs to be clarified because, sure, both the apostle Paul had to be willing to go and preach to them and they had to be willing to hear and believe him, but what we must also understand is that even though our wills are involved in anything God desires to do in our lives, all the grace for these things to happen comes from God and, therefore, all the glory goes to Him as well. Yes, God began this good work in the Philippians by both equipping, anointing, and calling Paul to preach the gospel to them and by gracing the Philippians to hear and receive the gospel. Sure, it could be viewed that if Paul would not have been willing to go to Macedonia, this church never would have been established. But that’s assuming God would not have sent someone else. Sure, we can choose not to go where God sends us and do what He sends us to do, but God is going to accomplish His purposes. And even when it comes to Paul being willing to go, it was all God’s grace that enabled him to be effective in the first place. So, my point is that this good work that began in the Philippians had begun because of God. It truly was He, and Him alone, who had begun this good work. Well, just as He Himself began it, He Himself will complete it: Notice the verbiage in the second half of Philippians 1:6 when Paul says, “…He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.” This is essentially saying that the same One who began the good work in the Philippians will be the One who completes that good work in them. In other words, God Himself will finish the good work He began. Now how did He begin this good work in us? It was by His grace and through our faith, right? It is crystal clear that we are saved by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8). So, if this is how we were saved (which the Greek word for “saved” is also translated “made physically well or whole”), then this is how we live the saved life, right? Colossians 2:6 teaches us this: It says, “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.” So, how did you receive Him? By grace! So how are you supposed to walk in Him (speaking of our everyday conduct)? The obvious answer is by grace! God sanctified our spirit completely by grace when we received Him and now, He is wanting to sanctify our soul by grace while we are living in this body. Let’s now look over at First Thessalonians 5:23-24. Paul says in this epistle in verse 23, “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless…” Notice that Paul put the pronoun “Himself” after mentioning God. Why did he include that pronoun? I believe it was because Paul was attempting to clarify that God was going to be the one doing the sanctifying without any help from us. God was going to do it HIMSELF! He is not going to even let us help Him! Why? Because He wants all the glory! God is going to make sure that our whole spirit, soul, and body is going to be preserved blameless! Notice what verse 24 goes on to say – “He who call you is faithful, who also will do it!” God is faithful to complete the good work that He began in us! He absolutely will do it! My point is that their mistakes did not nullify God’s plan and purpose for them. Sure, it led to some delays, but those delays were in no way to be considered denials—for God remains faithful even when we are faithless (See Second Timothy 2:13). He has promised that in the end, He will restore His original covenant people, and there will be a revival in Israel. You see, sometimes we think God is done with us because of the mistakes that we’ve made. We think we’ve nullified His plan for our lives because we’ve turned from His plan too many times. But when we consider Israel, we must conclude that God will never quit on us—especially when our covenant is written not in the blood of bulls and goats, but in the precious blood of Jesus Christ! Amen! Praise God, church, God will never, ever, quit on us! If He began a good work, He will see it through! He is faithful even when we are faithless, and He was, is, and evermore shall be the God of hope! Amen! REVIEW
Today, we begin part 13 of our series on being “Imitators of Love” where we are learning more about the nature & characteristics of God by looking at the nature & characteristics of love. What we have been camping on most recently is that great love chapter, First Corinthians chapter 13, and looking at Paul’s description of both love and God, who is love. In light of this, First Corinthians 13:4-8 describes Him like so – “GOD suffers long, and GOD is kind. GOD does not envy; GOD does not parade HIMSELF, HE is not puffed up; HE does not behave rudely, HE does not seek HIS own, HE is not provoked, HE thinks no evil; HE does not rejoice in iniquity, but HE rejoices in the truth; HE bears all things, HE believes all things, HE hopes all things, HE endures all things. GOD never fails …” Most recently, we looked at verse 6 that teaches us what love does and does not rejoice in. Now we learned that to “rejoice” simply means to be glad, cheerful, or to get excited about something. So if the apostle Paul is talking about love’s characteristics, then there are obviously certain things that love will and will not become glad or excited about. Yes, it will rejoice with those who rejoice by getting happy when good things happen to them, and at the same time, it will certainly not rejoice when bad things happen to them. So what we learned from this is that love for others will essentially do the same thing as love for one’s self – it will get happy when good things happen to others like people get happy when good things happen to themselves. We saw, specifically, what Paul said that love does not rejoice in is “injustice or unrighteousness,” which means that love certainly does not get joy out of seeing others being done wrong. Which showed us a lot about the heart of God and how His pet peeve is when His people do not practice justice & righteousness. But our greatest takeaway from this is how God practiced this towards us, and how we were the widows that He provided for by actually marrying us and how we were the orphans that He cared for by adopting us into His family! So God absolutely rejoices in justice! But Paul also stated specifically that love DOES rejoice in truth. So we looked over at Third John and saw the heart of God through the apostle John when he said in Third John 1-4, “The Elder, To the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth: Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers. For I rejoiced greatly when brethren came and testified of the truth that is in you, just as you walk in the truth. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.” In this opening greeting, we noted the constant echo of the terms “love, joy, and truth” in these opening four verses of Third John. So this is God’s heart! He loves to see His children walking in the truth, which includes when His kids are prospering on all fronts, when they are healthy, and when they are growing up spiritually. He gets no joy out of us walking in injustice & unrighteousness – meaning, He never takes pleasure when we are not experiencing Third John 2. No, in His love, God wishes His best on us, and He rejoices when His best is experienced. Amen. ALL THINGS Now in verse 7, we have what seems to be Paul just quickly giving us a few more characteristics of love on his way to wrapping up his point. In it, he says, “(Love) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” So what’s the common denominator found in this verse? It’s the repeated phrase – “all things.” Now in the original language, we don’t find the word “things.” It was added by the translators to help us understand better what was being communicated. However, I don’t believe adding this word exactly does that here. No, the phrase “all things” can leave the impression that we are to bear, believe, hope, and endure EVERYTHING, and that’s just not true. For example, its obvious that God does not expect us to believe all things that we hear when he spent a good portion of the New Testament warning us that some of the things we hear are false and are to not be believed. Also, it’s also very clear that we are not to endure everything also because in doing so, we might be putting up with and tolerating things that the Lord certainly doesn’t want us enduring, namely the kingdom of darkness and its works. No, it’s important to understand that love is what is being described here. So the subject matter is how love behaves towards the objects of its love. Therefore, this verse is not just a blanket statement that we are to put up with everything or to believe everything we hear. This much is obvious. However, when it comes to how we are loving others, these are things that love will always do. So let’s start this week breaking down the four terms we have in this verse – this week by covering “bears & endures”, and next week by covering “believes & hopes.” BEARS OR COVERS? When Paul starts off by saying, “(Love) bears all things”, what he was literally saying was that love “covers & conceals.” It describes protecting someone by covering, concealing, or hiding them. In fact, the root word for this one that Paul used in First Corinthians 13:7 was the word for the roof of a house. Therefore, the idea of both covering & protecting is what is being indicated. So this is what love does? It covers. It hides. It shelters. Therefore, it keeps and protects. Like a roof of a building is designed to do this for us physically. Now this requires some explanation because in some ways, hiding or covering something might not be love at all. For example, if I am concealing truth in certain situations, I might be doing the exact opposite of what love demands because truth is not to be hidden. So I have to determine whether love would dictate whether or not speaking the truth in a situation is appropriate. Now I know there is a large contingent of people who believe that speaking the truth is always appropriate, but that’s not necessarily true either. There are times where love will zip its lips, be slow to speak, etc. and not broadcast something even though it is 100% sure that it’s true. The way you know when it is appropriate to speak the truth is found in Ephesians 4:15 when Paul taught us how we are to speak the truth in love. So how does this show us when we are to speak the truth? It’s when it can be done in love. In other words, ask yourself the question when you have the thought to speak something you know is true – Who am I loving by saying this, and how am I loving them? Asking this question can keep us from sharing things that aren’t what wisdom would have us share at the moment. You see, one characteristic of love is that it will cover sin. In quoting from the Book of Proverbs, First Peter 4:8 says, “And above all things have fervent love for one another, for ‘love will cover a multitude of sins.’” So love does cover. It will conceal. It will hide some things. That means that true, fervent love for one another is not going to expose sin; it’s going to cover it. And what are those things? The apostle Peter says, “a multitude of sins.” No, not just some sin, but a “multitude” of them. That means that it doesn’t matter how many times they have committed the same sin or how many times they have even sinned against us, love will cover their multitude of sins. Regarding this latter point, this reminds of what Jesus told His disciples in Matthew chapter 18 when Peter asked the Lord how many times they must forgive their offending brother, “up to seven times?” Well, the Lord’s response of “up to seventy times seven” sounds a lot like love forgiving a “multitude” of sins because seventy times seven is certainly a multitude of offenses. One of the greatest Biblical examples I can think of that illustrates this is found the story of Noah: You know, after the flood, the Bible teaches us something about Noah and his sons. Genesis 9:20-27 says, “And Noah began to be a farmer, and he planted a vineyard. Then he drank of the wine and was drunk, and became uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and went backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father’s nakedness. So Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done to him. Then he said: ‘Cursed be Canaan; A servant of servants he shall be to his brethren.’ And he said: ‘Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, and may Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth, and may he dwell in the tents of Shem; and may Canaan be his servant.’” Now I want you to notice what this illustrates – Noah made a mistake and was “uncovered” as a result. So when his youngest son, Ham, discovered his nakedness, what did he do? He went and told his brothers. No, he didn’t attempt to cover the multitude of his father’s sin, but he exposed him even further. But the other two sons, Shem and Japheth, when they heard it, went into his tent backwards with a garment to cover him with. Yes, the Bible says that their faces were turned away and they did not see their father’s nakedness. This is symbolic of how nobility and honor will not focus on other’s shortcomings & mistakes but will choose to cover their sin. Amen! And notice what the result of this situation was: When Noah woke up and learned what had happened, he both blessed Shem and Japheth and cursed the son of Ham, Canaan. Isn’t that interesting that Noah did not curse Ham, but the fruit of his body, Canaan? That teaches me that people who don’t abide by this principle of love that covers can see the fruit of their life cursed as a result. In other words, the fallout of not covering the multitude of other’s sins can be us experiencing an uphill battle when it comes to the fruit we want to produce for the Lord. I say this to simply say that it is in our best interest to cover other’s sins & mistakes and not go around broadcasting them to other people. I mean, how could this be love anyway? No, we wouldn’t want others doing that to us, right? No, we would hope that others wouldn’t go around exposing our flaws to others. And why? Because we love ourselves. So this is a call to do to others what we would have them do to us. Amen? STAYING UNDER POWER Now let’s move on to the other phrase in this verse that I wanted to “cover” (no pun intended) … Then Paul says at the end of verse 7 that love “endures all things.” Now this one sounds a little more like what love “bears all things” seemed to mean, and this time, I believe the translators got it right. You see, the word the apostle Paul used here was the Greek word hupomeno, and this word was a staple in the New Testament. In fact, in the early New Testament church, this virtue was treasured and highly valued by Christians. You’ve read about it – it’s the virtue most often translated “patience” in the New Testament. However, while patience is an “okay” translation, endurance is a much better one because the word literally means to “remain under” which denotes perseverance and endurance. So because of this, some have called this virtue, “staying under power.” So, like say you have a lot of pressure put on you, yet you don’t let that difficult thing move you, but you endure it by resolving to “stay under” it. Therefore, I see endurance as more of the picture being painted by this word rather than patience. And one of the reasons I think this is important to understand is because, when it comes to love, there’s a little difference between being patient with people and enduring them. You see, how many times have we quit on a person in our lives because we simply didn’t feel we could take any more. So, like with the definition of hupomeno, we were unwilling to “stay under” the things that they did and just the way they were. Some of us have quit jobs because of a boss who was difficult to endure. Some of us have left churches because of parishioners who were difficult to get along with. Even some of us have left spouses because they were simply intolerable. Now some of those situations might certainly have been acceptable to move on from, but I think that in a lot of cases, we might not have abided by this attribute of love that “endures all things.” The fact of whether or not we are guilty of this from decisions made in the past is not the point. The point is, however, that from this day forward we ask the Lord to direct us into when it is time to endure in love or move on from the situation. I’ve just learned in many situations how a lot of times when I was ready to throw my towel in on a person that by simply enduring through the tough seasons, we were able to make it through them and see a lot of fruit as a result. Therefore, those feelings & emotions that we experience when we are at odds with a person are not to be trusted. They will even try to trick us into thinking God is leading us to do this or that, which usually is in line with what our flesh would want in the situation. But the fact is, feelings are fickle, and emotions are not to be trusted. Just ask the Holy Spirit within you, “What would love do here?” Just know this – We live in a world full of different people. How many of you know that people are people, and very few of them are like you? This is because, at birth, we were wired by God a certain way and also because we’ve been molded by life’s circumstances. Therefore, since we are all different, it can be a little difficult handling other folk’s personalities. Well, that’s where this attribute of love comes in. Love “endures” all those people that our flesh has a hard time tolerating. But don’t mistake this as us simply putting up with or tolerating other people. While that might be what we need to do at times, the key is found in coming to know & understand those who irritate us. In other words, enduring people is better than being intolerant, but the best way is to actually love them, which enables you to endure them. For example, it’s kind of how most of us “endure” the irritating things our own flesh & blood might do more than we put up with a stranger who does the same thing. Why do we do that? It’s because we actually love our family members, and strangers, not so much. But the truth is that the more you come to get to know the one you are having to “endure,” the more you can stir up the right kind of thinking to go from just tolerating them to actually loving them. Yes, I believe our understanding of others can equip us with the necessary compassion, sympathy, and empathy to, in love, endure all the things they do that offend us. Why? Because we are not just seeing the way they are now or what they are currently doing to us; we see why they are the way they are, and why they might be doing the things they are to us. This has helped me tremendously. COVERS ALL & ENDURES FOREVER But do you know what else helps us both endure others and cover their sins? It’s the truth that Love Himself has had to endure plenty of things with us too and also cover a multitude of our sins! I know none of us probably thinks that there is much to be endured with us – with others, certainly; but with us, maybe. No, get ready for another truth bomb here: The Lord has endured as much with you as He has with that person you have a hard time enduring. So if I live in that reality instead of being puffed up to think that I am better than those who irritate me, I’ll live in the sober reality that I need as much mercy as they do and will have an easier time tolerating their shortcomings. Likewise, if I live in the awareness of how much the Lord has had to cover in my life, then I will be more apt to cover other’s sins, right? It’s tight but it’s right. Yes, like we’ve been learning throughout this series, if these are things that love does, then they are something God does. Yes, GOD covers a multitude of our sins and GOD endures forever! Let’s first look at how God covers all … Aren’t you thankful for this – that God doesn’t air out all of our dirty laundry before people and how He doesn’t remind us of our failures & shortcomings? He really doesn’t. One of our best examples of this are the very Scriptures that He inspired … Have you ever noticed as you read the Bible how God does not magnify the mistakes of His elect. Sure, He states truth & facts of the shortcomings of them, but the spirit behind it is different. It’s not what stands out. Like for example, we see in the story of Abraham the fact that he lied to save his own neck when asked if Sarah was his wife. How many of you know that if a preacher did that today, it would have been on the cover of charisma magazine!?! How about David with how he committed adultery with another man’s wife and then had him murdered!?! That certainly would not have gotten that man of God any more speaking engagements, right? Then how about Peter? Sure, we see the weaknesses in this man, but what is it that we walk away seeing Peter as? The ROCK! I could go through a lot of examples of this, but God, in the Scriptures, lauds His people more than He uncovers them. And that’s what we are to do as well – magnify their strengths and good works more than we uncover and expose their weaknesses and the bad things they do. Why? Because that’s what love does! So for anyone who might have thought that God was bringing up your past and constantly reminding you of all the bad things you’ve done, that’s NOT Him. No, if love covers a multitude of sins, then that’s what God does too. Therefore, the condemnation & guilt that folks constantly carry around with them is not coming from God. No, He separates our sin from us as far as the east is from the west. He said our sins & lawless deeds He will remember no more. So if He has separated us from our sin and He is choosing to not remember them anymore, why on earth would He be the One reminding you of them? He ain’t! No, the reason we “hear” about our sin on the inside of us is because of one of two things – either it’s the devil feeding us lies and doing what He does best, condemn, or it’s our own heart condemning us (See First John 3:20). You see, some of the things we hear, feel, etc. are the product of what we believe in our heart. Like, for example, some of us have been trained by the world or religion that we ought to feel bad when we do something wrong, among other things. So when we miss it, our heart communicates things to us that are along the lines of our previous programming. Then other things are straight from the pit of hell, through outside demonic sources. I’m not sure a lot of people realize this, but the devil will oftentimes speak things into our minds that can be misconstrued as our own thoughts. And one of his most favorite weapons of His warfare is condemnation. So those thoughts that come into our minds that remind us of our mistakes, which lead to guilt, are possibly from the devil. But my point is this – they are NOT from God. That’s not to say that God never deals with the issue of sin and won’t convict us, but there’s a big difference between conviction & condemnation, and we best learn the difference. And why? Because God covers a multitude of sins and certainly doesn’t uncover us! But why does He do this? Yes, it’s because He loves us, but more specifically, it’s because He seeks to protect us! You see, one thing that is clear throughout the Scriptures is God’s desire to protect us. There are tons of Scriptures that clearly illustrate this, and even entire Psalms devoted to it (i.e. Psalm 91). But I don’t know if we always consider why God’s heart is to protect us; it’s because He loves us and that’s just what love does! And while I’m not a big fan of the King James’ choice of words in First Corinthians 13:7, as we’ve seen, the way we think of the word “bears” is a little different than what the word he used indicates, this word does reflect part of what this word means. You see, like a mama “bear”, God’s heart is to protect His cubs. Yes, His great love for us leads him to defend & protect. Amen! But yes, since God is love, He certainly covers & protects, but He also endures all things with you and I. He does not quit on us when we act a fool. He doesn’t terminate His relationship with us when we annoy Him. No, He endures our inadequacies. He puts up with our flaws. He tolerates our mistakes. All because He loves us so! Oh, how He loves us! What is the single most used “praise phrase” in the Bible? What is the statement we see repeated time and time again throughout the Scriptures where His people are praising Him? It is this – “For the Lord is good, for His mercy endures forever.” How many times is this in the Bible? A whole bunch! But I want you to notice what is contained in the “phrase of praise” – His mercy (which is the covenant love of the Lord) and how that steadfast love endures forever! That sounds a little to me like “love endures all things,” doesn’t it to you? So in this true statement of praise – the Lord inspired His people to magnify two major parts of His nature – His goodness and His endurance. So even though love “enduring” all things might be close to the last characteristic of love that Paul mentions in First Corinthians 13, it is one of the first things that we see God praised for in the Scriptures! Amen! REVIEW
So after a couple of weeks off, I want us to pick back up this week on the series we have been doing for several months now on being “Imitators of Love.” In this series of teachings, we are learning more about our God, but not in the traditional manner of studying Scriptures that talk about His nature. No, we are looking at the verses that teach us how we ought to be loving one another with the understanding that these instructions/commandments must be the same way that God loves us. In other words, we are learning about the nature & characteristics of God by looking at the nature & characteristics of love. So, the specific passage of Scripture that we have been camping on is what I consider to be the best section of verses that teach us about the characteristics of love – the great love chapter, First Corinthians chapter 13. First Corinthians 13:4-8 teaches us the nature of love – what it is and what it is not. But since we understand that God is love, we learned how we can substitute the term “God” for “love” here and learn what God’s nature is. So let’s do that now— “GOD suffers long and GOD is kind. GOD does not envy; GOD does not parade HIMSELF, HE is not puffed up; HE does not behave rudely, HE does not seek HIS own, HE is not provoked, HE thinks no evil; HE does not rejoice in iniquity, but HE rejoices in the truth; HE bears all things, HE believes all things, HE hopes all things, HE endures all things. GOD never fails …” Most recently, we looked at the end of verse 5, where we are told that love thinks no evil. So as we’ve all heard of that old proverb principle in the world that says – “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil”, the Bible speaks of another element to this – “Think No Evil.” We asked the question – how is this even possible? How is one able to “think NO evil”? Because for example, we read in the Bible more than once that Jesus rebuked the religious leaders for their “evil” ways, describing them with words like “liars, hypocrites,” and even “children of the devil." Well, that sounds like Jesus was certainly “thinking” some “evil” of these guys, right? So how do we reconcile examples like this with the law of love that says we are not to even think evil of others much less call them out on their evil? Yes, how can we as Christians keep from thinking evil of others, especially when it is the Bible itself that talks about how evil exists in mankind? That seems contradictory. On top of that, I don’t think it is the Lord’s intention that we go around pretending that evil doesn't exist either. No, we saw how this is where it is important that we understand how to look up the words the writer used in the original language, and also how to utilize other translations. In doing so, we can come to understand what was truly being conveyed here instead of letting whatever terminology our Bible uses determine our interpretation of it. We saw how this phrase would better be translated “(love) does not keep a record or account of evil & wrongs”, and this is actually how most translations translate this phrase. So this is a very helpful piece of information for our love walk: You see, if I ever say or think something to the effect of – “You do this all the time!” or “This is the 3rd time you did that” – then I am not operating in love because why? Love isn’t counting. No, it’s not adding up and recounting all the times someone has done something. But we learned that this is also how God is towards us! He doesn’t keep a record of our faults! He doesn’t recall our mistakes! In fact, He is not even considering how many times you and I have missed it. We have a lot of other Scriptures that substantiate this about God, and we went through some of them. Verses like:
So it is written in the mouth of multiple witnesses that I am one of the blessed whose sins are covered—of which the Lord will remember no more. He chooses not to remember my sins and blots out my transgressions for His name’s sake. Praise the Lord! Church, this is how God thinks no evil and reveals to us what He thinks of you and I. Yes, His thoughts for us that outnumber the grains of sand on the seashore are good thoughts, not evil ones. This is how love thinks, counting the good, true, and lovely things of the ones it loves. God thinks no evil; only good. This is what Jeremiah 29:11 conveys to us. And we also learned how these precious thoughts He thinks of us are not hidden from us. No, we can know them! In fact, He desires for us to know them. That’s why He said (after that oft quoted verse that His thoughts and ways are higher than our thoughts and ways and they are past finding out) that He pours these “high” things from the heavens like rain & snow. Amen! That means He wants you and I to know those lofty thoughts, and He went on to say how they are known by His Word. Therefore, if you and I are going to come to know what God is thinking, then we need to study to show ourselves approved. Yes, we need to behold His written Word and let the thoughts of God become, in us, the mind of Christ. So the fact is, God does want us to know His thoughts and ways, and they are certainly aimed towards us. Yes, as the Lord told us to set our minds on things above, He sets His mind on us below. That’s right – We are His focus! Therefore, as Psalm 139:17-18 says, “How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand …” Let that truth penetrate your heart today. And all of this is because the Lord loves us! Just as when we fall in love, one characteristic of that love is our minds become filled with that other person. We think about them all the time when we are at the height of that love. And why are we thinking so much of that person? It is because they are in our heart! Saints, God actually holds us in His heart! He does not just tolerate us or make Himself “have to” think good things about us. No, He thinks good thoughts about us because we hold a special place in His heart! In other words, we are important to Him because you do not rent space in your heart to people or things that are not important to you. No, what is in your heart is what is valuable to you! Therefore, we must be extremely valuable to the Lord if His heart and mind are so inclined towards us! Amen! LOVE REJOICES So now let’s move into First Corinthians 13:6 where Paul goes on to describe not only what love doesn’t do, but also what it does do. In this verse, he said, “(Love) does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth.” First of all, I want you to notice how Paul is essentially describing both what love will rejoice in and what it will not rejoice in. Therefore, rejoicing is the point of this verse. Now to “rejoice” simply means to be glad, cheerful, or to get excited about something. So if the apostle Paul is talking about love’s characteristics, then there are obviously certain things that love will and will not become glad or excited about. But did you even know that love rejoices? It sure does! It will get happy about some things while it certainly won’t get joy out of certain other things happening. Now the fact is, most people certainly get happy when good things happen to them. Yes, that’s what the majority rejoices in. But what does love do? It will rejoice when good things happen to others, and it certainly doesn’t rejoice when bad things happen to them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, the Bible says (Romans 12:15). And what this is instructing us to do is to actually get as happy & glad as the other person is. Yes, these are not two different words that Paul used, so rejoicing with those who rejoice describes personally getting as excited as the other person does. And why? All because you love them! So what we can learn from this is that love for others will essentially do the same thing as love for one’s self – it will get happy when good things happen to others like people get happy when good things happen to themselves. WHAT LOVE DOES NOT REJOICE IN But I want you to notice how Paul describes what love does not rejoice in first. And he says that it’s in “iniquity.” This is actually a poor translation because the word Paul used was used more to describe “injustice or unrighteousness.” Therefore, specifically what Paul had in mind here was that love did not get excited when it sees injustice or unrighteousness occurring. Now this has different shades of meanings, but one obvious truth we can find in it is that we are not to rejoice when justice isn’t being done. In other words, we shouldn’t get happy when we see a person not being done “right.” How could that be love anyways? How could love actually get joy out of seeing someone else being done wrong? Well, perhaps one might root for someone who has been wronged to get revenge. More likely, one might desire to see someone they have offense in their heart towards fall flat on their face. I have seen it even get to the level where a person who has hate in their heart towards someone else gets joy out of some terrible thing that happens to that person because simply put, they are just bitter. So this can obviously occur on different levels, but the point is, love will not rejoice over someone else’s misfortunes. Now the fact is, this word “justice” is part of the problem. I say this because what a lot of people are looking for is people to get what they feel is coming to them. Yes, they even get joy out of making sure this “justice” is done. But that is not what Paul was saying that love rejoices in. No, it’s not about our enemies getting what they deserve or about those who have harmed others getting their due. It’s more about how love WILL NOT rejoice in the injustice & unrighteousness, not how love WILL rejoice when justice is being done. The reason I bring this up is because far too many people who have bitterness & unforgiveness in their heart want their offenders to pay for their mistakes. Yes, they are glad when that person gets what is coming to them. That’s not actually what love will do. Love will not derive joy from someone else getting punished. And if we do get happy when someone else has bad things happen to them, then we might need to deal with some issues that haven’t been resolved yet. Along these lines, I like something I read recently: This expositor recalled the experience Jacob had with the Angel of the Lord. You know, the one where Jacob wrestled with Him all night and obviously lost. Well, because Jacob was wounded in his thigh, Moses made a law that the children of Israel would not eat of the sinew in that area of the thigh. What does this teach us, you ask? Simply this – we are not to feast on the failures and shortcomings of others. I like that! Like one translation says, “Love doesn’t revel when others grovel,” This is the principle we are learning here. No, a big truth that we need to get from this is that love roots for the underdog. It isn’t a crowd follower or one that gangs up on the one that everyone is picking on. No, love looks for what is right and justice. It will stand in the gap. It will go against the flow. It will look for that one lost sheep and move heaven & hell to find them. This is what love does. LOVE DID JUSTICE Now how does all of this apply to God? Well, God obviously does not rejoice in injustice either. If you don’t know this, you need to read your Bible. Time and time again in the Scriptures we see one of the Lord’s pet peeves being injustice. Through His prophets, He is constantly correcting His chosen people in this area – of taking care of the widows and the orphans, how the poor were to be defended, and how injustices of any kind should not be tolerated. One of my favorite examples of this is Micah 6:8 where the prophet said, “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” Injustice and unrighteousness were obviously sore spots of Love Himself. In fact, even in the New Testament, we are told in James 1:27 that pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, which is one of the main things we see throughout the prophets of old. So as we have seen, if God commands us to do something then we can rest assure that He is already fulfilling those things Himself. So, in the case of caring for widows and orphans, who are the orphans and widows that He is already caring for? The answer is simple – We are! We were the widows that He provided for! We were the orphans that He has cared for! You see, there are two kinds of human relationships that the Word of God likens our relationship with God to under the New Covenant: Those two are a husband and wife and a father and child. So the truth is – God went above and beyond the duty that He gave us. Not only did He provide for us when we were widows, He actually married us so that He could meet our every need forever. Not only did He care for us when we were fatherless in Satan’s orphanage, He actually adopted us and made us His very own children. You see, in His great love and abundant mercy, God did more than just help us in our hopeless state. He cut a covenant with us through the blood of Jesus—making us His bride and His children. He not only rescued us from the kingdom of darkness, but He translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son! What an awesome and loving God we serve! So as the Lord laid out in Micah 6:8, He requires His people to “do justice” and to certainly not rejoice in injustice – all because He, in His joy towards justice & righteousness, extended them towards us freely by His grace! Amen! WHAT LOVE DOES REJOICE IN But what did Paul go on to say that love DOES rejoice in – It rejoices in truth. And again, that doesn’t necessarily describe when the truth comes out about a person who has done something wrong. No, love finds joy when it sees the objects of its love walking in the truth, not when it uncovers the lie. So while it’s very clear that God is not happy with injustice, what it is that brings Him joy is TRUTH! Yes, He rejoices in truth! Yes, what God gets excited about is when truth is practiced and experienced. Yes, He loves it when He sees others walking in the truth! We see a beautiful example of this in the beginning of the Epistle called Third John. In Third John 1-4, the apostle John says, “The Elder, To the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth: Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers. For I rejoiced greatly when brethren came and testified of the truth that is in you, just as you walk in the truth. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.” Now I want you to notice the constant echo of the terms “love, joy, and truth” in these opening four verses of Third John. This speaks the same thing as the verse we are covering in First Corinthians 13:6. But what people oftentimes make the mistake of is reading God’s Word of Truth through carnal glasses. In other words, with this Book, we know that the apostle John was the one who physically penned this Book of the Bible. But what we need to also realize is that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and that these holy men of God were moved by the Holy Spirit to author these Books of the Bible (Second Timothy 3:16 & Second Peter 1:21). Therefore, Third John is not just a Book authored by the apostle John; it is a Holy Spirit inspired Book ultimately inspired by the Holy Spirit. In other words, the Holy Spirit is its true author. Not only that, but another error people make is that when they read that it was addressed to a specific man named Gaius, they lose sight of the fact that everything in these pages (or in this case, page, because its such a short Book) are being written to us as well. Some have commented on this verse, saying that the truth contained in it was simply the apostle John’s desire for Gaius, to whom this short letter was written. Therefore, they say that this verse does not express the will of the Lord for all believers for all time, but this is simply incorrect. For who are we to determine what parts of the Bible are intended only for the original recipients of the letters and what parts are applicable to us? If this were so, how would we know if what was written to the Romans were just promises applicable to the believers in Rome? Or how would we know if what was written to the Ephesians was just meant for the select church in Ephesus? How then would we know what parts of the Holy Scriptures were written to us? The truth is that all of the Bible was written for our admonition and instruction! All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, being God-breathed so that we can know and understand God’s will for all of our lives. He is no respecter of persons! Therefore, what He moved the apostle John to say to Gaius is what God wills for all of His children along with Gaius to receive and embrace. So, Third John is God speaking to us! So when we read in verses 3-4 how John evidently rejoiced greatly when brethren came and testified of the truth that was in this Gaius, that this was God’s heart as well. And oh, doesn’t this reflect the characteristic of love that we’ve been looking at today? Yes, this is the Holy Spirit’s heart of love in that He too rejoices when we walk in the truth. In fact, as we see in verse 4, the Lord has no greater joy than to hear that His children walk in truth. Now walking in the truth certainly has a bunch of meanings: For one, it is walking in Jesus, because He is the Truth. Second, it is walking in the Word of God, because His Word is truth. And thirdly, it is walking in the Spirit, because the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Truth. So yes, God rejoices when we, His children, walk in His Son, His Word, and in His Spirit, but this is not all that makes God happy. Third John 2 contains some truths that show us the truth about everything God wants us to walk in … Again, Third John 2 says, “Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers.” So like we’ve seen, this is not just a verse that expresses John’s desire for Gaius; it shows us God’s will for all people for all time! So what is God’s desire for you and I? What does He rejoice when we walk in it? Well, let’s look deeper into this verse … First of all, notice that God refers to you as His “Beloved”… This means that He is addressing those who (pardon the poor English) “be-loved!” In other words, since this verse is God speaking directly to us, by calling us His “beloved”, He is letting us know that we are greatly loved by Him. You see, this simple truth, if understood correctly, should help us to embrace the truths contained in the rest of this verse that our Heavenly Father wants us to prosper in every area of our lives and live in perfect health. Why? Because how many of you parents out there who truly love your children want anything less than the best for them? No, you want them to prosper in every area of their life and you certainly don’t want them sick and suffering! Any parent that wills for their children to be sick and to suffer should be locked up with the key thrown away! Why? Because if any natural parent did the things to their children that God has been accused of doing to His, that parent would be incriminated in just about every culture or nation on the earth today. So how can we believe God is any different—especially when His love for us far outweighs any love that we have for our children? No, you “be-loved” and because God loves you so much, He wants you to succeed and prosper on all levels! Thank you, Father! And the fact that He “wants” this is reflected in this verse: Notice what the Lord starts off by saying to His beloved … He says, “I pray that you may prosper in all things.” Now the word “pray” here describes “wishing & desiring.” So this shows us what God actually wants & wills for us, His children. Again, we can certainly relate to this, right? Yes, we all wish & desire for our children to walk in prosperity & health, right? Absolutely! But are all our children walking in this? Not all of them – illustrating to us how just because God desires for this to be the case for all of us, doesn’t mean its automatically going to happen. No, like it is with our children, they must choose this lifestyle. They have to make the right decisions, which would have all started by listening to their parents at a young age and taking our advice, right? So I make this point because it answers that question that might come up that if God desires this for us, then why is it not happening for everyone. Well, the answer to that is the same as to why all of our children might not be walking in all of the things we want for them – because freewill is involved. WALKING IN THE TRUTH OF PROSPERITY So notice what the first thing is that we are told that God desires – prosperity in all things. What an awesome truth! God’s will is that we prosper in all things! Not just in some things; God wants us to prosper in everything! This leaves nothing uncovered! The word “prosper” literally means to be successful, to thrive, and to flourish. So, God wants us to be successful, to thrive, and to flourish in every area of our lives! Praise the Lord, our success, growth, and prosperity is God’s will, and He wants us to prosper in every aspect of our life. Did you know God wants you to be successful in your career? He is not just concerned with what we consider to be the “spiritual things.” He wants you to be successful and to prosper in your business, and this happens as you seek first the kingdom of God in your secular job (i.e. as you practice godly principles and make your career’s aim to glorify God and be a blessing to others). He wants you to prosper in your vocation! Did you know that God wants you to thrive in the arena of relationships? He wants you to have such a wonderful relationship with your spouse or significant other that you are in awe of the goodness and graciousness of God! He wants you to have such wonderful friends that add to you and that you can truly trust! He wants you to prosper in all of your relationships! Did you know that God wants you to flourish in your finances? He does not want you struggling to make ends meet and living paycheck to paycheck! He wants you to have more than enough so that you can fulfill the blessing of Abraham that is on your life, which is being blessed, so that you can be a blessing! He wants you to prosper monetarily! You see, being able to be a blessing to others is one of the main reasons God wants you to prosper in every area of your life. Sure, He wants you to be blessed simply because He loves you and wants the best for you, but He also wants you to thrive in every area so that you will not constantly be trying to fulfill yourself and can correctly put your focus on the needs of others. If you have needs that are unmet, that takes time and attention away from meeting the needs of others. God wants our cup to overflow so that we can share with others! Thanks be unto God! WALKING IN THE TRUTH OF HEALTH Then notice what else the Holy Spirit told us that God desires for us in this verse: Not only does God want us to prosper in every area of our lives, but He also wants us to “be in health.” This verse alone should dispel the popular Christian doctrine that sometimes God sends sickness into our lives to teach us something. No, God’s will is that we are healthy, not sick. To live in sickness, disease, and infirmity is no more God’s will for our lives than for us to live in sin, transgression, and iniquity! And this is exactly what you see in Jesus’ ministry, which was a perfect reflection of God’s will (See John 14:7&9 and Hebrews 1:3)! Acts 10:38 says that Jesus went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil! Why did He go about only doing good and healing everyone who responded to Him in faith? It was because this was (and always will be) God’s will! But as great as healing is, I want you to notice that Third John 2 does not say that God wants us to prosper in all things and be “healed”; it says that God wills that we be in “health”! In other words, this verse tells us that God not only wills that we experience healing, but that we experience divine health. For example, God’s perfect will is for our bodies to be so charged with His resurrection power that when germs or viruses touch our bodies, they die immediately. His perfect plan for our lives is that everything from our eyesight, hearing, and overall health is strong and living well above the norm. And this not only includes wholeness in our physical bodies but also health in our mind and emotions. The prophet Isaiah said that the chastisement needful to obtain our peace was laid upon Him. The Apostle Paul said that the Holy Spirit has been given to us so that we can have a “sound mind.” This describes a soul that is whole and not weak and sick. Jesus purchased not only wholeness in our bodies, but also wholeness in our mind, will, and emotions! He wants us sharp and strong in our soul too. Thank you, Jesus! WALKING IN THE TRUTH OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH So, God evidently has a greater vision for our lives than we do for ourselves. He wants us to be successful, to thrive, and to flourish in every area of life—which includes prospering financially, relationally, and vocationally! Not only that, but He also wants us to be whole and strong in every area of our bodies as well—which includes being healthy physically, healthy mentally, and healthy emotionally! Someone then might say, “Trey, if this is truly God’s will for everyone’s life, then why do we see so little of it fulfilled in our lives?” That is a good question; I’m glad you asked … As we’ve already learned, our free-will is the big reason, but I want to offer you one more reason that we find in this very verse. Third John 2 ends by saying that God wants you to prosper in all things and be in health “just as your soul prospers.” Now the two words “just as” are extremely important because they show us how God’s will of prosperity and health is going to come to pass in our lives… These two words literally mean “according to”, or better yet “in proportion to.” So, what the Holy Spirit was saying was that our prosperity and our health is “in proportion” to our soul prospering. In other words, our prosperity outwardly is in proportion to our prosperity inwardly! This is the truth God wants His children walking in, saints! And it’s the truth that He rejoices in—when His kids are prospering on all fronts, when they are healthy, and when they are growing up spiritually. He gets no joy out of us walking in injustice & unrighteousness – meaning, He never takes pleasure when we are not experiencing Third John 2. No, in His love, God wishes His best on us, and He rejoices when His best is experienced. Amen. IMITATORS OF LOVE
PART 11 – THINK NO EVIL REVIEW So this week, I want to pick back up on our current study entitled “Imitators of Love” where we are learning about God’s loving nature. We have based this on the apostle Paul’s instructions of imitating God as dear children from Ephesians 5:1, where we see the high calling of every believer—to be like God. But what we are doing is looking at verses that teach us how we ought to be loving one another with the understanding that these instructions/commandments must be the same way that God loves us. So, several weeks ago, we started looking at what I consider to be the best section of Scriptures that teaches us about the characteristics of love – the great love chapter, First Corinthians chapter 13. And we started doing this with the understanding that since God is love, all of these things the apostle Paul teaches us that love does, describe to us God’s loving characteristics. First Corinthians 13:4-8 teaches us how “love suffers long and is kind. (how) love does not envy; (how) love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; (how it) does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; (how it) does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; (yes, how love) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” So we have been going through this list of the characteristics of love each week and what we have learned so far is …
LOVE THINKS NO EVIL Now, let’s move on to the next thing we see the apostle Paul address about love. At the end of verse 5, He says that love “thinks no evil.” Now a good question would be – how is this even possible? How is one able to “think NO evil”? For example, we read in the Bible more than once that Jesus rebuked the religious leaders for their “evil” ways, describing them with words like “liars, hypocrites,” and even “children of the devil." Well, that sounds like Jesus was certainly “thinking” some “evil” of these guys, right? So how do we reconcile examples like this with the law of love that says we are not to even think evil of others much less call them out on their evil? Yes, how can we as Christians keep from thinking evil of others, especially when it is the Bible itself that talks about how evil exists in mankind? That seems contradictory. On top of that, I don’t think it is the Lord’s intention that we go around pretending that evil doesn't exist either. No, this is where it is important that we understand how to look up the words the writer used in the original language, and also how to utilize other translations. In doing so, we can come to understand what was truly being conveyed here instead of letting whatever terminology our Bible uses determine our interpretation of it. But before I get into what this phrase literally means, let’s consider a couple of things about the New King James Version’s translation of it: You see, the fact that we are told that there is a certain way that love “thinks” is important—because, of course, dealing with our thought life and what is going on in our heart is something that is vital for our love walk. So we’ve all heard of that old proverb principle in the world that says – “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil.” Well, the Bible speaks of another element to this – “Think No Evil.” The reason being is because, as you are about to see, if love thinks no evil, then it’s going to be extremely difficult if not impossible for it to see, hear, or speak evil. The Bible teaches us in Proverbs 23:7 that as a man thinks in his heart so is he. So, if I’m thinking evil in my heart, then the Bible says that is what I will be. Plus, as the Lord Jesus taught us in His Sermon on the Mount, God views the things we allow in our hearts as being as bad as the actual transgression itself. Therefore, what is important is not just our outward behavior; it’s also what we are “thinking” in our heart. So “thinking” “evil” of others is certainly not something that love will do, because true love is genuine and not just interested in behaving in a loving way while having a heart full of evil thoughts. Amen? Now if you know me, you know that one thing that I wholeheartedly ascribe to is dealing with our thought life. Statements like – “Where the mind goes the man will follow” and “The Battle is in the Mind” have been phrases I’ve uttered many times, and the reason is because I believe that this is what the Bible clearly teaches. Yes, I believe if we can control our thought life and only think on things that God says we are to think on, there is no devil in hell that can defeat us. Amen? So when it comes to this statement that love thinks no evil, it makes sense because, if I can, first of all, control what I’m thinking in my mind, then I can control what gets into my heart. And if I can control what I’m thinking in my heart, then I can control my behavior. Did you know that you cannot be tempted by what you don’t first think on? In Hebrews 11:15 we are taught this when we are told— “And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return.” What this verse is saying is that if one does call to mind something, then that’s when they have opportunity to go there. So what if they never thought about it? Well, by this verse, we understand that they won’t have the opportunity to do so. Thus, we have the truth that we cannot be tempted by what we don’t call to mind or think on. Amen. So, if my mind is how I am tempted to do evil, then my mind must also be how I choose to love. Let’s look at a verse where we see this played out. It’s found in Mark 12:30 where Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment of them all was, and of course we know His response. He said, “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment.” So Jesus said that what God wants from us is our love, but He was more specific than that. He wanted us to love Him with all of four things: 1.Heart: 2.Soul: 3.Mind: 4.Strength: But I think it’s interesting how Jesus equated “the mind” with everything else He mentioned. The mind is very important to God because He knows that it’s the battleground. So my point is that if God wants us to love Him with all of our mind, then I’d say that one of the ways we do that is by loving others with all my mind. In other words, when I love others through thinking loving thoughts of them, then that’s a way I can fulfill this, the Greatest Commandment, for whatever I do to the least of these, I’ve done it unto Him. Amen? KNOWING GOD’S THOUGHTS So I obviously believe that dealing with our thought life is imperative, but do you know what I think we don’t talk enough about? It’s God’s thought life. What does He think on? What is His mind full of? I believe these are also important questions to answer. And why? It’s because if we come to understand how God thinks and what His mind is full of then we will know how we too ought to be thinking. Now there is a large contingent of Christians out there who think this is impossible. Yes, they think we cannot know what God is thinking because, after all, His thoughts are above our thoughts, right? Well, let’s look at the verse where this line of thinking comes from because I believe we can learn a little something about what the Lord was saying there … Sure, the Lord did say in Isaiah 55:8-9, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” But what we need to understand is that the Lord was not saying that to His people because He didn’t want them to know His ways and thoughts. He had just said to let the wicked man forsake His ways and the unrighteous man his thoughts (See verse 7), so when He goes on to say in the next couple of verses what He did, it’s clear that the ones whose God’s thoughts are higher than are those who were choosing wickedness & unrighteousness. Therefore, it’s not necessarily true to say that God’s thoughts and ways are too high for everyone. No, for us who choose His ways and thoughts above our own, there is access to them. We know this because of what Isaiah went on to say immediately following this— He then said, “For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:10-11) Notice how the Lord immediately describes how the natural things of rain & snow (that come from higher up in the heavens) come down to water the earth and give us the things we need. This, to me, illustrates how His higher thoughts & higher ways are not meant to be kept in the heavens above us. No, they are intended to be poured out on us for our benefit; not kept from us because we are beneath them. Amen? And I just love how verse 11 goes on to describe how the Lord has chosen to pour out His ways & thoughts on mankind – It’s through His Word. This encompasses everything from His written Word to His prophetic Word. But the main point we need to see here is that God’s thoughts & ways are not things we cannot know. No! God desires to pour out His mind on us, and He has done this through His Word. God’s thoughts are contained & can be known through His Word! Amen! So we CAN know what God is thinking. Yes, we can come to understand His mind. In fact, the apostle Paul, when quoting from Isaiah, said, “Who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?” But then he went on to say, “But we have the mind of Christ.” (See First Corinthians 2:16). He had just said earlier in this chapter that “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” (See First Corinthians 2:9). But then in verse 10, he says, “But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit.” So church, under this new and better covenant, we can certainly know the mind of the Lord through His Spirit. The Holy Spirit living within us is the key to comprehending God’s thoughts—for He is the mind of Christ that we have. WHAT GOD THINKS ON So how does the Holy Spirit show us God’s thoughts? What does His Word reveal to us about what God is thinking on? Well, when I consider this truth that God thinks on us, I’m immediately drawn to one of our most loved verses, Jeremiah 29:11. In this beloved verse of so many, we have God’s heart concerning the plans He has for us. It says, “For I know the thoughts I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” First of all, I want you to notice that God is actually thinking about you and I … Did you know this – that the Lord actually thinks about us? Glory to God! We tend to spend more time talking about our own thought life and how we are to keep our minds set on Him, but did you know that God practices what He preaches? For example, He told us to set our minds on things above, right? (See Colossians 3:2) Well, He also does this, but He sets His mind on things below! Praise the Lord! Psalm 139:17-18 says, “How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand …” Wow! Now that is a lot of thoughts! And when David wrote this, he was referring to just the thoughts that God thinks of him personally! Glory to Jesus! And did you know that since God is no respecter of persons, His thoughts are just that precious and innumerable about you too? Now most Christians do not have a problem believing that God is constantly considering them; what they do have a hard time believing, however, is that those thoughts are good and positive thoughts. But again, what does Jeremiah 29:11 say that He thinks about us? “For I know the thoughts I think toward you… thoughts of good and not of evil, of peace, to give you a future and a hope.” My brothers and sisters, God is not thinking evil about you! He is focusing on the good in you! And why? Because He loves you a whole lot more than you can possibly imagine! You see, this fact that we are constantly on His mind reemphasizes to us a very important truth, and that is that He loves us … The Lord makes it clear in this oft quoted verse that the thoughts He is thinking towards us are good thoughts, not evil. They are thoughts of peace. In other words, He is not angry and focusing on all the bad things we do. If He were, He would be violating the very instructions He gave us in Philippians 4:8 when He, through the apostle Paul, told us to only think on positive things. No, saints, God is thinking only good of you. He is a wonderful Heavenly Father that treasures you in His heart and only desires the best for you. Let that truth penetrate your heart today. You know, when we fall in love, one characteristic of that love is our minds become filled with that other person. We think about them all the time when we are at the height of that love. And why are we thinking so much of that person? It is because they are in our heart! Saints, God actually holds us in His heart! He does not just tolerate us or make Himself “have to” think good things about us. No, He thinks good thoughts about us because we hold a special place in His heart! In other words, we are important to Him because you do not rent space in your heart to people or things that are not important to you. No, what is in your heart is what is valuable to you! Therefore, we must be extremely valuable to the Lord if His heart and mind are so inclined towards us! Amen! LOVE KEEPS NO ACCOUNT OF WRONGS But back to this phrase “(love) thinks no evil.” While it’s obvious that the Lord does not think evil of us, as I said earlier, this phrase is a little misleading. Certainly the idea of the mind plays a part in this, but actually this word “thinks” is a poor translation. It comes from the Greek word logizomai which means to credit, count, or consider. It was an accounting term that could be translated “to calculate.” So this phrase would be better translated “(love) does not keep a record or account of evil & wrongs” and this is actually how most translations translate this phrase. So this is a very helpful piece of information for our love walk: You see, if I ever say or think something to the effect of – “You do this all the time!” or “This is the 3rd time you did that” – then I am not in love because why? Love isn’t counting. No, it’s not adding up and recounting all the times someone has done something. But, as we learn from this that I am walking in love if I am not keeping count of others’ faults, this is also how God is towards us! He doesn’t keep a record of our faults! He doesn’t recall our mistakes! In fact, He is not even considering how many times you and I have missed it. We have a lot of other Scriptures that substantiate this about God. Allow me to remind you of some of them. In fact, let me remind you of these verses by showing you how you and I should be reminding the enemy of these truths when he comes against our minds with his lies. So the next time the enemy comes to you, trying to get you to “count & consider” your sins, do this. Say, “Mr. devil, since you are trying to get me to consider all of the bad things I have done, I want to take you to ‘accounting’ class and have you ‘add up’ the following:
Is that enough? So it is written in the mouth of multiple witnesses that I am one of the blessed whose lawless deeds are forgiven, whose sins are covered—of which the Lord will remember no more. He chooses not to remember my sins and blots out my transgressions for His name’s sake.” Church, this is what God thinks of you and I. His thoughts for us that outnumber the grains of sand on the seashore are good thoughts, not evil ones. This is how love thinks, counting the good, true, and lovely things of the ones it loves. God thinks no evil; only good. |
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