“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?” (Psalm 22:1).

PSALM 22 IS A PROPHECY OF THE MESSIAH’S SUFFERING. The familiar words of v.1 were spoken by Jesus while He was in the throes of death, as recorded in Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34. Among those expecting a personal Messiah, many would have been horrified at the very thought of the Messiah being killed — but that is exactly what David, as a prophet (2 Samuel 23:1,2), had predicted. Psalm 22 ends on a note of triumph (vv.21b-31), indicating that the Messiah’s death would not be the end of the story, but it is v.1 that Matthew and Mark single out. Their quotation of Jesus’ cry of agony on the cross showed God allowing Him to suffer, exactly as David had said in Psalm 22 that the Messiah would suffer.

When Jesus began to tell His disciples what was going to happen to Him, they did not comprehend it (Luke 9:43-45; 18:31-34). After it happened, however, Jesus explained that His suffering had to take place. “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled . . . that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:44-47). The Messiah’s death was not an unexpected interruption of God’s plan. It was the most important part of the plan, foretold in the Scriptures long before.

We will look at some of the details of Psalm 22 in tomorrow’s reading, but for now, I ask you simply to get a Bible and read the Psalm. It is the gruesome, heartbreaking picture of an innocent person being tortured to death. Death by crucifixion was intended to be torture, and Jesus was certainly not the only man to be put to death in this way by the Roman government, but as you read Psalm 22, just contemplate what it means that the Son of God was subjected to a death like this — and that even the particulars of it were foreseen ten centuries before it took place.

“Psalm 22 makes it clear that Messiah was first to come and die for the sins of the world. It is a picture of the crucifixion, years before crucifixion was a method of capital punishment. The parallels between this Psalm, written nearly 1,000 years before Jesus, and the Gospel account are uncanny” (Mitch Glaser).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“Conscience is the impulse to do right because it is right, regardless of personal ends” (Margaret C. Graham).

NOT A DAY GOES BY THAT OUR CONSCIENCE DOESN’T TEST US. Some of the tests are big while others are little, but the question is always the same: “Will we do what our conscience tells us is right, or will we do something else, perhaps something less difficult or more pleasant?” These tests, however insignificant they may seem, are important for two reasons: they demonstrate what kind of character we presently have, and they move our character further down one path or the other: either the path of goodness or that of evil. Every time we say yes or no to our conscience, we add a little more evidence to the record that will someday be our legacy.

Joy. If you’ve never experienced the joy that comes from saying yes to your conscience, you really ought to try it. “A good conscience is a continual Christmas” (Benjamin Franklin). I’ve lived in the world long enough to have enjoyed many of its pleasures, but I’ve yet to find one that compares to the good feeling of going to bed at night knowing you’ve done what your conscience said was right.

Stability. There is no way to tell what any of us will have to deal with before our lives are over. If we haven’t already done so, some of us may experience significant and unexpected hardship, and we may think we can’t find anything steady to hang on to. But a clear conscience is an amazingly stable thing, despite the twists and turns of life in this vale of tears. “There is one thing alone that stands the brunt of life throughout its course, a quiet conscience” (Euripides).

We admire those who, in the great hours of historical crisis, have taken a heroic stand on the basis of conscience. Most of us, however, will never stand in the spotlight of history, and even if we did, our moment there might not be the most accurate measure of our character. A truer indication of that would be whether we listen to our conscience in the quiet, personal moments — those times when God alone knows what we’ve chosen. Faced with such private decisions (which, in the real world, can be extremely complex), we should never do anything less than what is right — just because it’s right.

“I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand. I can do no other, so help me God. Amen” (Martin Luther).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

When I remember You on my bed,
I meditate on You in the night watches.
(Psalm 63:6)

THINKING ABOUT RELIGION IS NOT EXACTLY THE SAME THING AS THINKING ABOUT GOD. The subject of religion often ends up being as much about ourselves and “our relationship to God” as about God Himself. We find ourselves pondering our attitude, our obedience, our feelings, our needs, our difficulties. At some point, however, should we not take time out and think about God Himself? Surely we must. We must contemplate His nature, His attributes, His will. We must meditate on our beloved God, allowing Him to be the sole object of our thought.

It is an interesting aspect of our religious life that we often spend so much time in polemics that we have little time left over to grow strong in the truth after we’ve defended it. C. S. Lewis, who was no small apologist himself, once said, “A man can’t always be defending the truth; there must be a time to feed on it.” It’s not that debates about religion are wrong. Given the truth-is-whatever-you-think temper of our times, we need more debate, rather than less (Jude 3,4). But the truth is not to be defended merely because we enjoy the clash of ideas in the intellectual arena. The point of the whole enterprise is to clear away mistaken ideas about God — so that God can be truthfully thought of and adored for what He is! If we never get around to actually meditating on God, then we’re not much better off than those Paul spoke of who “knew God,” but failed to “glorify Him as God” (Romans 1:21).

There is a passage in Malachi which seems to indicate that God has a special place in His heart for those who love to think of Him: “Then those who feared the Lord spoke to one another, and the Lord listened and heard them; so a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the Lord and who meditate on His name” (Malachi 3:16). We greatly benefit when we think about God. But the greatest good of all is that our minds are lifted out of our little concerns and caught up in the wonder of Someone who existed long before we ever had the need to think of Him.

“There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity” (Charles Haddon Spurgeon).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterwards it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11).

IT IS SOMETIMES THROUGH HARDSHIP THAT GOD GETS OUR ATTENTION AND PREPARES US TO LEARN FROM HIM. Not everyone has to experience hardship in order to become receptive to God, but many of us do. Many of us have to be “trained” by God’s chastening. And while this is not “joyful for the present,” it later “yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness,” as the Hebrew writer said.

Often it is our attitudes that need adjusting before God’s word can have much influence on us. If we’re accustomed to thinking in worldly terms, we’re simply not open to God’s perspective. We have to learn the hard way that we’ve not been taking enough of reality into consideration. Our minds have to be pried open by trials and tribulations, and sometimes we’re not receptive even then.

One of our most hindering attitudes is the insistence that we already know what we need to know. We’re not teachable because we see no need to be taught. Rather than be taught, we’d rather be the ones doing the teaching, and we expend the biggest portion of our energy trying to get the world around us to adjust itself to our thinking. We have no time to listen, as busy as we are.

And so, through the Psalmist, God says to us: “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). We won’t have the proper reverence for God until we’ve gotten still, and stillness in God’s school may not be something we’re willing to accept. We may have to be forced to be still by the “preschool” of pain and suffering.

But if we have trouble being still enough to hear God, we also have trouble being quiet. Rather than shutting our mouths and listening, we talk and talk and talk: informing God what we’d like to have done, explaining to Him the uniqueness of our situation, and sometimes even calling into question His management of the universe. Is it any wonder we can’t hear the truth? Is it any wonder God has to confine us to a corner and clamp His loving hand over our mouths, until we stop squirming and listen?

“When God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted desires, a broken friendship, or a new friendship — when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He begins to teach us” (Oswald Chambers).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men — extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess'” (Luke 18:11,12).

JUST AS AGITATION GETS IN THE WAY OF CAREFULNESS, PRIDE GETS IN THE WAY OF WORSHIP. Nothing in the spiritual life is more important than awe and utter respect before God, and so if pride hinders us from being reverent, it’s a deadly danger to our souls.

What is pride, really? It can be thought of in two directions: toward God and toward other people. Toward God, pride is a sense of independence, and toward other people, it’s a sense of superiority. In both cases, pride is a sinful sense of self-satisfaction. Pride sees itself as doing a pretty good job of standing on its own two feet before God; it believes it has the inside track as far as God is concerned, so that God will make special allowance for any mistakes that might be made. And in regard to other people, pride pats itself on the back (secretly, of course, and always with admirable “humility”) that it sees things from a more mature vantage point than some others, especially its rivals and its enemies.

If this is what pride is, then, it should be obvious that it’s a great hindrance to worship. Indeed, one way of looking at pride is to see it as the opposite of worship. The spirit of worship is the spirit of selfless wonder at the majesty of God — the smallness of self in God’s presence. And for sinful beings like us, it’s also the spirit of brokenness and repentance. Our hearts may be proud or they may be worshipful, but they can’t be both. And if they’re not worshipful, we’re lost. It doesn’t matter how many hardships we think we’ve overcome. Without real reverence, we’re lost.

There is no living person who does not need to be constantly vigilant concerning pride. It’s the source of all other sin, and it can creep into our hearts in so many disguises that, too often, it gets in the door and seizes the throne room of our hearts before we know what’s happened. More often than not, it gets past our defenses wearing a cloak of humility. “And the devil did grin, for his darling sin is pride that apes humility” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge).

“Beware of a proud and haughty spirit. This sin puts a great barrier between an individual and God. You will have a hard time being aware of God as long as you are filled with pride. If it gets angels cast out of heaven, it will certainly keep your heart out of heaven” (Richard Baxter).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency” (Theodore Roosevelt).

The word “expediency” is unusual in that it’s often used in two different senses, one negative and the other positive. In addition to their denotation or explicit meaning, many words also have a connotation, a more indirect meaning consisting of a positive or negative aura or atmosphere that surrounds them. “Expediency” has two basic meanings, but these two meanings have two different connotations. One is negative while the other is positive.

The first meaning of “expedient” is “serving to promote one’s interests,” and this meaning does not give us a good feeling. This kind of expediency is the kind that we associate (whether rightly or wrongly) with politicians. Pontius Pilate, for example, apparently decided to go ahead and have Jesus of Nazareth executed because it was politically expedient. But as Theodore Roosevelt argued, “No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency.” With regard to this kind of expediency, William Morley Punshon summed it up like this: “Cowardice asks, Is it safe? Expediency asks, Is it politic? Vanity asks, Is it popular? Conscience asks, Is it right?”

But the second meaning is “appropriate to a particular end or purpose,” and this meaning not only has a positive connotation, but it also contains an idea that’s quite valuable for us to think about. Used this way, the word “expedient” means that which is “fitting, proper, beneficial, or helpful.” And in this sense, we ought to consider the expediency of every action that we consider engaging in. With any decision, the crucial question for an honorable person is not simply “Is this permissible from a legal standpoint?” but more importantly, “Will this help others? Will the outcome be profitable?”

Laws are important, and we can’t do without them. But laws are no more than a minimum standard for us to go by — within the law, we must also be concerned with what is expedient. The fellow who is willing to do “anything the law allows” is not the person you want for a next-door neighbor. But our neighbor shouldn’t have that kind of neighbor either. So we’ve always got to ask, “Is what I’m about to do beneficial? Will it be a blessing to those around me?”

“‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things are helpful. ‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things build up” (First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“‘A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am the Father, where is My honor? And if I am a Master, where is My reverence?’ says the Lord of hosts to you priests who despise My name. Yet you say, ‘In what way have we despised Your name?'” (Malachi 1:6).

EVEN IF WE DO NOT PRACTICE IDOLATRY, WE MAY STILL FAIL TO GIVE GOD THE REVERENCE HE IS DUE. We may fail to take Him seriously. And like those of Malachi’s day, we may not even admit to ourselves that we’ve not given God His rightful honor. Because of our lack of shame, our error is all the more egregious.

The modern view grants little majesty to God and evokes little awe from us. Even in prayer, we speak to God so casually that anyone listening might think we were shooting the breeze with a neighbor across the backyard fence. A. W. Tozer was not wide of the mark when he prefaced his trenchant The Knowledge of the Holy with this comment: “The Church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshiping men . . . The words ‘Be still, and know that I am God,’ mean next to nothing to the self-confident, bustling worshiper [of our day].”

I believe at least two forces play upon us and tempt us to take a casual approach to God. First, science has demystified so many previously awe-inspiring phenomena that we’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to be amazed. We’re jaded. Awe is simply not a feeling we experience much anymore, even with respect to God. But second, our age is one in which informality is the accepted style. In almost every realm of thought and action, the trend is toward ease and comfort. Is it any wonder that we’ve become more relaxed in our attitude toward God?

The fading of reverence for God is one reason our spirituality is so shallow and so weak. How can we be filled with any depth of satisfaction when we minimize the very God who is capable of filling us up? Our malady was well diagnosed by J. B. Phillips’s famous five words: “Your God is too small.” Until we realize that the self-indulgent “worship” that passes for reverence today is an insult to God, it’s not likely that we’ll seek Him as we should.

“If we haven’t learned to be worshipers, it doesn’t really matter how well we do anything else” (Erwin W. Lutzer).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

Free PDF eBook containing all of Year 3

Print PDF of this lesson

Open-mindedness is a good quality. But good qualities do not operate in isolation. They must be applied wisely and balanced with other equally important principles. When it comes to open-mindedness, someone has cleverly said that our minds are like our mouths: we open them in order to close them on something solid. There comes a time when, having open-mindedly sought the truth, we ought to hold on to the truth we have gained. Especially in matters of religion, it is important that we not let settled truths get away from us. We ought to hold on to what we know God has revealed.

In both the Old and the New Testaments, we are warned that we must neither add to nor take away from God’s word (Deut. 4:2; Rev. 22:18,19; etc.). Holding on to what God has revealed, just as He has given it to us, requires both courage and humility. If our courage fails us, we may not do all that God has said. We may fear that some of God’s instructions will bring about undesirable consequences, so we leave off the parts we deem inexpedient or inconvenient. On the other hand, however, if our humility fails us, we may go beyond what God has said, supplementing what we know He has revealed with additional “truths” of our own discovery.

A common plea of those who have done either less or more than God said is that there were “extenuating circumstances.” “I had no choice but to do as I did” is frequently heard, as well as “I was deceived.” The thought that runs through almost every rationalization is that our intent was to do things God’s way eventually, but following a different path was “necessary” in the short run. We “had” to bend the rules to get through the present emergency.

Nevertheless, the firm foundation of what God has once and for all revealed stands in contrast to all the opinions of human wisdom about what is “necessary.” As for our own judgment, we should have a healthy skepticism about how reliable it is. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart,” Solomon said, “and do not lean on your own understanding” (Prov. 3:5). So are we content to hold on to the truths that God has given us? We certainly should be. Throughout the coming week, let’s “buy truth, and do not sell it” (Prov. 23:23).

Monday: Genesis 3:1-7

Key Idea: By deceit, Satan will attempt to break our confidence in what God has said.

Questions for Family Growth: Think carefully: in order to persuade Eve to disobey God, what was the basic lie about God that Satan had to get her to believe? What concern for his brethren did Paul express in 2 Cor. 11:3?

Wisdom for the Day: Proverbs 11:7,8.

Tuesday: 2 Samuel 6:5-7

Key Idea: Disobedience shows a lack of confidence that God’s way will work.

Questions for Family Growth: How might Uzzah have rationalized or explained his disobedience? What was the mistake in his thinking? Do we ever have to disobey God? Consider 1 Cor. 10:13. How are trust and obedience connected?

Wisdom for the Day: Proverbs 11:9.

Wednesday: 1 Samuel 13:8-15; 15:1-23

Key Idea: It takes both courage and humility to obey God’s instructions.

Questions for Family Growth: What principle is taught in Deut. 4:2; Rev. 22:18,19; etc.? Why is taking away from God’s word a failure of courage? Why is adding to God’s word a failure of humility?

Wisdom for the Day: Proverbs 11:10,11.

Thursday: 1 Kings 13:11-19

Key Idea: We should measure alleged new revelations by what we know God has already revealed.

Questions for Family Growth: Why should the young prophet not have believed what the old prophet said? What were the Bereans commended for doing in Ac. 17:11? Is there any way to avoid the hard work of testing for truth?

Wisdom for the Day: Proverbs 11:12.

Friday: 2 Thessalonians 2:15

Key Idea: We ought never to give up truths that have been revealed by God.

Questions for Family Growth: In religion, is the word “tradition” always a bad word? What are the traditions we are told to hold on to and never give up? What does Paul say in Gal. 1:6-9? What mark of maturity is in Eph. 4:14-16?

Wisdom for the Day: Proverbs 11:13.

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and I will punish the men who are complacent, those who say in their hearts, ‘The Lord will not do good, nor will he do ill'” (Zephaniah 1:12).

THROUGH ZEPHANIAH, AS THROUGH THE OTHER HEBREW PROPHETS, GOD PROMISED SURE JUDGMENT UPON THOSE WHO LIVED WITH NO REGARD FOR RIGHT AND WRONG. Then, as now, there were many who had declared independence from God, for all practical purposes. Perhaps still believing in His existence, they saw no need to take Him into daily account. He could be disregarded. “The Lord,” they said, “will not do good, nor will he do ill.”

Might not this “practical atheism,” as I call it, have been partly the result of God’s unseen nature? The people of Jerusalem could not see Him with their eyes, so eventually their minds drifted into a lazy disobedience. “If He expects us to obey Him, why doesn’t He show Himself openly?” is what they might have been saying.

There is no denying that the things our physical senses can experience — right now, in the present moment — seem much more real to us than intangible realities. Even things that can be experienced physically don’t seem as real if they are in the past or the future. What is here and now has such a powerful pull on our minds, it sometimes blots out everything else. We know full well that the here and now is not all there is, but it has such a strong gravitational force that its orbit is very hard to break out of.

Yet God expects us to use the powerful minds He gave us. We are able to deal responsibly with unseen realities, and if we do not, there will come a day of reckoning. The foolish man who “says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1) is not necessarily the philosophical atheist. He may be the man who simply disregards God in his daily affairs. “Out of sight, out of mind,” as we say.

Yet we do not diminish God by disregarding Him. He created us, and it is He “to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:13). He continues to be a benevolent Father whose promises have never failed to be fulfilled when the time was right. So let us not suppose that a mere “never mind” on our part will make Him disappear.

“Were every man on earth to become an atheist, it could not affect God in any way. He is what he is in himself without regard to any other. To believe in him adds nothing to his perfections; to doubt him takes nothing away” (A. W. Tozer).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“But when they believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women” (Acts 8:12).

STUDIED TOGETHER, THE WORDS “KINGDOM” AND “CHURCH” HAVE A GREAT DEAL TO TEACH US. The first emphasizes authority, and so the expression “kingdom of God” has to do with God’s rule or authority as King (1 Timothy 1:17). The second conveys the idea of an assembly of persons “called out” from the world to belong to Him (Matthew 16:18). Perhaps we might say that “kingdom” focuses more on God and His sovereignty, while “church” looks more specifically at the people — those who have answered the call to come back to God, be forgiven, and live under His rule.

As far as the citizens of the kingdom are concerned, one cannot be a member of the Lord’s church and not be a citizen in His kingdom. The reverse is also true. To be in the kingdom is to be in the Lord’s church (with some responsibilities to other “called out” ones). This is an important point because of the popularity of the “spiritual but not religious” concept. Many who speak favorably of the “kingdom of God” would quickly say they have no desire for anything that could be called “church.” However, in the New Testament, those who were members of God’s kingdom were the same people as the members of Christ’s church, and vice versa. They weren’t two different groups; they were the same group.

In regard to kingdom and church, there is another confusion we need to avoid. The Scriptures do not teach that we are in the “church age” now but the “kingdom age” will begin when Christ comes back and establishes a government on the earth. The kingdom age is right now, and so is the church age. In fact, the very thing that defines the church is that God has “transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13). That’s what a Christian is: a loyal subject in God’s kingdom, joyfully accepting all that Jesus taught about how God’s rule should govern our lives. Jesus Christ did not fail. He began His kingdom, as He said He would. We can accept the gospel — and the kingdom — right now.

“As saints and faithful brethren in Christ at Colossae were delivered from the power of darkness and “translated into the kingdom of the Son of His love” (Colossians 1:12-14), so the true people of God today are citizens in Christ’s kingdom and a manifestation that His power is yet very much alive” (Robert F. Turner).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com