Sunday, December 27, 2020

The Faithful Song of Simeon: A Christmas Season Meditation on Luke 2


And when the days of her purification

according to the law of Moses were accomplished,

they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord;

(As it is written in the law of the Lord,

Every male that openeth the womb

shall be called holy to the Lord;)

And to offer a sacrifice according to that

 which is said in the law of the Lord,

A pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.

 

And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem,

whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout,

waiting for the consolation of Israel:

and the Holy Ghost was upon him.

And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost,

that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord's Christ.

 And he came by the Spirit into the temple:

and when the parents brought in the child Jesus,

to do for him after the custom of the law,

Then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said,

 Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,

according to thy word:

For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,

Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;

A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.

 

And Joseph and his mother marveled at those things which were spoken of him.

 And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother,

Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel;

and for a sign which shall be spoken against;

(Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,)

 that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.

 

The story of Simeon and his encounter with Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, is one that echoes down through the centuries in ways easy to overlook.  This Christmas season vignette has so moved the church that the Song of Simeon, in Latin called the Nunc Dimittis, has been sung by Christians in numerous ancient rites of prayer, and at the conclusion of the Lord’s Supper, for centuries.  While the church often orders this reading after Christmas day, it is as fully part of the Christmas story as the Nativity, the Angels’ announcement to the shepherds keeping watch over their fields by night, and the arrival of the Wise Men from the East.

 

Simeon is an old man when we meet him in Luke 2, having spent the many years of his devout life serving in and around the Temple.  In addition to his knowledge of, and faith in, the Scriptures regarding the coming of the Messiah, he was also given a personal revelation that he would not die before seeing the Messiah in the flesh.  We are not told how long before this moment he received this prophecy, or all the ups and downs of his long life before the Spirit moved him to enter the Temple on the day of Mary and Joseph’s presentation of Jesus.  While the ruling class of the Temple, the Sadducees and the Pharisees, are shown as hostile to Jesus roughly 30 years later, we know very little about whether Simeon’s hopeful expectation of the prophesied Messiah was a minority or majority opinion among his peers.  But regardless, we know that Simeon held on in patient faith for the revelation of the One who would come not only to be the consolation of the Jewish people, but also the enlightenment of the entire world.  It was the patient and enduring faith of a long and faithful life, which culminated in the joyous song of thankful departure knowing that the promise was fulfilled.  Simeon’s own eyes had seen the salvation of his people come in the flesh, just as the Word of the Lord had promised, and he could rest in joyous knowledge of God’s saving grace made manifest.

 

This is why the church continues to sing Simeon’s song.  It is a declaration of the fulfillment of God’s promise not only to the Jewish people through whom the Holy Spirit moved the Prophets to testify of the coming of Jesus, but also of the Gospel promise which would give light and life to the whole world.  This Light would break like the dawn in Bethlehem, Nazareth, Galilee, Jerusalem, and all Judea, but its life-giving rays would reach out across the globe to the Samaritans, the Greeks, the Romans, the Africans, the Asians, the Europeans, and to every people on every shore and in every hamlet across the globe.  There would be no remote village or colony, no great empire or Republic, which could be hidden beyond its Light, for the Savior of the World had come to save the whole world.  This Jesus, God with Us, was promised not only to the Jews, but as the gracious gift of salvation, forgiveness, grace, life, and hope to the entire world through the Jews.  This is not a mythic tale told in a local cultural vacuum, a poetic legend without historic grounding in demonstrable fact, but rather the Work and Promise of Almighty God witnessed and recorded down through the ages, ancient and yet present in every age.  This is the story of the Creator of all people who fulfilled His loving promise to be the Savior and Sanctifier of all people, through the Incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ.

 

Simeon’s song speaks to the fire of youth, that a life lived in faith will see its gracious fulfilment, just as it speaks to all the seasons of life where temptation and distraction and fear would lead people to despair of the promises of God.  This song of joyous thanksgiving, shared with us by Simeon at the dusk of his earthly life, rings through our churches and our souls even as we approach our own time of departure, knowing that as God has been faithful to fulfill His Word for the salvation of the world, He has been faithful to us as individuals to save us, as well.  Thus we live in patient faith each day we are given in this world, prepared for that peaceful transition to eternal life in the world to come, content and confident in the gracious salvation which comes to us in Jesus.  This is why Simeon’s song is a Christmas hymn, sung throughout the Christian year in churches across the globe and down through the centuries, echoing the boundless of joy of knowing Jesus is the author and the finisher of our faith, and the pierced Hand from which our life can never be taken:

 

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,

according to thy word:

For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,

Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;

A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.

 

Amen.

 

 

Sunday, December 20, 2020

The Son of the Highest: A Meditation on Luke 1, for the 4th Sunday in Advent


And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God

unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth,

 To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph,

of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary.

 

And the angel came in unto her, and said,

Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee:

 blessed art thou among women.

And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying,

and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be.

 

And the angel said unto her,

Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.

And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb,

and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.

He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest:

and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:

And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever;

and of his kingdom there shall be no end.

 

Then said Mary unto the angel,

How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?

And the angel answered and said unto her,

The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee,

and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee:

 therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee

 shall be called the Son of God.

And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth,

she hath also conceived a son in her old age:

and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.

For with God nothing shall be impossible.

 

And Mary said,

Behold the handmaid of the Lord;

be it unto me according to thy word.

And the angel departed from her.

 

I wonder if in our age, the idea of The Most High has become an alien concept.  For nearly 150 years, our Western culture has been steeping in a soup of Darwinist evolutionary theory, garnished in the academy with Nietzschean materialistic atheism, and medically applied to the masses in soulless Freudian psychology.  This triumvirate of atheistic materialists laid the foundations of modern movements in education, politics, and philosophy which convulsed the world into a century of world wars, culminating in the social upheaval and despair of our current day.  When we look around our world today and see people acting less rational than animals, with no moral compass but temporary pleasure and their own will to power, where the life of the mind is reduced to nonsensical ramblings and bio-chemical reactions, and the beauty of the soul is twisted into avarice and perpetual victimhood, we see the lived out experience of our ill fated attempts at self-deification.  Without reference to The Most High God whose Kingdom and Word shall endure forever, we are left with the paltry heights of man’s fallen corruption, like those who celebrate the heaping up of dung hills while ignoring the majesty of soaring mountain peaks behind them.  With eyes blinded, ears deafened, minds darkened, and hearts hardened against the truth of The Most High, the heights of human achievement become ever deepening caverns into which we fall.

 

And yet, our time is not really so unlike that in which the Archangel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary, announcing glad and holy tidings.  Then as now, the strong sought and seized power, the impious manipulated the material world to their passions, the academics thought up justifications for violence and debauchery, and the hearts of the faithful huddled in this worldly darkness enlightened by the Word of the Lord, awaiting the coming of His Word Made Flesh who would scatter all darkness and usher in a never-ending age of light and life. To blessed Mary this Word of the Lord came, and in her was conceived by the power of God Almighty, the Son of the Highest.  In her womb was the greatest miracle ever to be contemplated, greater even than the creation of the universe itself:  Jesus, fully God according to the indivisible essence of His Father, and fully man according to the sinless humanity He received of His mother, united in one Divine Person through whom mankind would be reconciled to the Most Holy Trinity.  The Incarnation of Jesus is the Advent of the Word of God Made Flesh who dwells among us, full of grace and truth, who is Himself the light and life of the world.  This is the Word which was spoken to create the cosmos, now united to His creation by inseparable bonds in the Person of Jesus Christ, to whom has been given the Eternal Kingdom in which forgiveness, life, and salvation are poured out freely by grace to all who repent and believe in Him.  This is the Light of World which no darkness can overcome, or according to their own fallen powers of reason, even comprehend.  This is Jesus, born of Mary, the Son of the Highest.

 

To be sure, the lure of self important scholars, politicians, and the hedonistic rabble, seated upon the dunghills of their various theories and accomplishments, calling out for applause and obeisance from their dark caverns of misery, remain among us to this day.  There will always be another Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud, or a myriad of their intellectually and spiritually blind disciples calling the world to follow them into ever deeper and darker recesses of human depravity.  But despite them all, the Light of the World still shines forth in the Incarnate Word of God who dwells among us, who has reconciled God and man in His own Person through His life, death, and resurrection.  Like blessed Mary, the Word of the Lord comes to us in the darkness of our world and declares us blessed and highly favored by the wonders of His grace.  To us the angelic choir sings the Gloria in Excelsis, inviting our voices to join theirs as we sing glory to God in the Highest, and on earth, peace, good will toward men. 

 

Hear the Word of the Lord come to you this day, to open your eyes that you may see, unstop your ears that you may hear, uncloud your mind that you may perceive, and unburden your soul that you may believe all that the Son of the Highest has done for you.  And may we all, with the Blessed Virgin Mary, respond in faith that we are the servants of the Lord, and that the saving grace of the Lord’s Gospel be fulfilled in us according to His Eternal Word.  Amen.

Sunday, December 13, 2020

Turn Again Our Captivity: An Advent Meditation on Psalm 126


When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion,

we were like them that dream.

Then was our mouth filled with laughter,

and our tongue with singing:

then said they among the heathen,

The Lord hath done great things for them.

The Lord hath done great things for us;

whereof we are glad.

 

 Turn again our captivity, O Lord,

as the streams in the south.

They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.

He that goeth forth and weepeth,

bearing precious seed,

shall doubtless come again with rejoicing,

bringing his sheaves with him.

 

Our Hebrew forefathers knew a thing or two about captivity and freedom.  There had been over a thousand years between Abraham and the writing of this Psalm, and nearly another thousand would come between it and the time of Jesus.  The Hebrews knew the bitterness of being taken captive, having faithless and traitorous leaders, of being punished for their collective rejection of God’s Law and Gospel to chase after other gods.  They had their captivities set to writing, together with the words of the Prophets, so that they might be a continuous living testimony to the judgment and redemption of the Living God.

 

When Jesus came as God Incarnate to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, to give His life as a ransom for many, substituting His righteousness for our evil and paying our debt of justice before Almighty God through His suffering and death on the cross, the Hebrews had carried the testimonies of God for thousands of years already.  They knew through the revelation of God’s Word that their captivity and oppression among the nations, be it by the Egyptians, the Philistines, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, or the Romans, was a type and shadow of their spiritual captivity to sin, death, hell, and the power of the devil.  When Jesus came to free them of their spiritual captivity, He did not immediately free them from their captivity to foreign tyrants which was a temporal punishment for their sin of rejecting Him.  Instead, Jesus freed their bodies and souls from the tyranny of death and hell, liberating them from enemies who would enslave and torment them forever.  The Hebrew people, together with their Christian brothers and sisters, would know the rising tides of another two thousand years of captivity, persecution, and tyrants, down to our present day.  However, the Word of the Lord remained among them, calling all to faith and repentance, and offering the free gift of forgiveness, grace, and eternal life to all who would follow Jesus, no matter the social or political calamities of various times and places.  The liberation of Jesus’ people by grace through faith in His Vicarious Atonement meant a freedom which earthly tyrants could not conquer, and which spiritual enemies could not take away.  It is a victory written in the shed blood of the Son of God, testified by the Holy Spirit, and received by the Father, so that every name of every repentant sinner written in that Book is saved forever.

 

And so we come to our day, and our place in a land once established in righteousness and liberty, with the ascent of mind and spirit to the eternal principles of God written in the fabric of the created world.  This land, this people, once affirmed that man was created by God with unalienable rights and obligations to one another, reflected in the divine image God has placed upon them.  They set down their convictions in words and documents which framed our nation, making America a land free to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and all men free to follow their conscience in their pursuit of God.  Knowing that our nation would only survive and thrive by Divine Providence, and that such providential grace in the affairs of nations was predicated on the virtue and faith of her people, churches were protected and held sacrosanct against the meddling and perversion of secular leaders, with the unfettered preaching and teaching of God’s Law and Gospel ringing from pulpits, schools, and civic institutions.  As any survey of our history will reveal, calls to faith and repentance were once as common in our churches as they were in our public square, calling our people to return to God that they might live free in both body and soul, now and in eternity.

 

Yet here we sit at the turning of our age.  Churches are attacked both physically and legally in an effort to silence the preaching of Jesus’ Law and Gospel.  Politicians arrogate to themselves the power to regulate the worship of people, and to moderate their preaching to conform to political norms.  Atheists, Anarchists, and Marxists roam the streets, proclaiming godlessness through violence, and seeking to overturn the Constitutional Republic once formed on the conviction that man lives as beneficiary of Divine Providence through faith and virtue, where government is endowed by God only to preserve the rights of man He has given them.  Today, our politicians and leaders sell influence to foreign powers, collude with oligarchic captains of industry, undermine the divine rights of mankind, and pollute the minds of the young with corruption, vanity, and wickedness.  We stand at the precipice of our age, and those with eyes to see and ears to hear know the Eternal Word of the Lord endures forever, that the great abyss of our calamitous judgment yawns before us should the Lord God Almighty withdrawn His hand of Providence from us as punishment for our sins.  We see ourselves once again heading into temporal captivity, a fate we have earned because our people have grown wanton after secular gods with self-centered passions, and our churches have failed to preach and teach faithfully while this generation learned instead to despise the gifts of God.

 

Even so, the Lord Jesus comes into the darkness of our captivity to bring us His Living Word once again.  His Incarnation meets us anew in our sorrow, in our judgment, and in our misery justly earned, to offer us the free gift of His grace and salvation which He earned for us on His Cross.  His calls comes with the power of His Holy Spirit to enliven and enlighten the fallen hearts of men, to give new birth from above by Water and Spirit, that all who repent and believe in Him might live free forever.  This is the Gospel which our people once knew, and which they must learn again, if we will be free from the tyrants of soul and body.  The Lord of Glory has shown from the beginning of time His grace and providence for all those who put their trust in Him, and His judgment upon all those who refuse and repudiate Him.  Hear the Word of the Lord come to you again this day, that you might rise once again in His grace and mercy by faith, living in Jesus’ life, victory, and love, rebuilding brick by brick and soul by soul the families, churches, schools, and civic institutions now teetering upon ruin.  And as that Word enlivens your heart and frees you from your enemies, speak it forth to all those around you, that together living free, we may sing once again with the ancient Hebrews:

 

When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion,

we were like them that dream.

Then was our mouth filled with laughter,

and our tongue with singing:

then said they among the heathen,

The Lord hath done great things for them.

The Lord hath done great things for us;

whereof we are glad.

Amen.

Sunday, November 29, 2020

Turn Us Again, O God: A Meditation on Psalm 80, for the First Sunday in Advent


Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel,

thou that leadest Joseph like a flock;

thou that dwellest between the cherubims, shine forth.

Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh

stir up thy strength, and come and save us.

Turn us again, O God,

and cause thy face to shine;

and we shall be saved.

 

O Lord God of hosts, how long wilt thou be angry

against the prayer of thy people?

Thou feedest them with the bread of tears;

and givest them tears to drink in great measure.

Thou makest us a strife unto our neighbours:

and our enemies laugh among themselves.

Turn us again, O God of hosts,

and cause thy face to shine;

and we shall be saved.

 

Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt:

thou hast cast out the heathen, and planted it.

Thou preparedst room before it,

and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land.

The hills were covered with the shadow of it,

and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars.

She sent out her boughs unto the sea,

and her branches unto the river.

Why hast thou then broken down her hedges,

so that all they which pass by the way do pluck her?

The boar out of the wood doth waste it,

and the wild beast of the field doth devour it.

Return, we beseech thee, O God of hosts:

look down from heaven, and behold, and visit this vine;

And the vineyard which thy right hand hath planted,

and the branch that thou madest strong for thyself.

 It is burned with fire, it is cut down:

they perish at the rebuke of thy countenance.

 

Let thy hand be upon the man of thy right hand,

upon the son of man whom thou madest strong for thyself.

 So will not we go back from thee:

quicken us, and we will call upon thy name.

 Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts,

cause thy face to shine;

and we shall be saved.

 

Many calamities and struggles befell the people of Israel during their long history.  They began as a wondering people, called out by God through His covenant with Abraham somewhere around 2000 BC; after several generations of trial and prosperity, they were called out again from 400 years of Egyptian slavery through God’s covenant with Moses; another 400 years or so of rising and falling before their surrounding enemies during the times of Judges, culminating with the establishment of the monarchy in Saul, David, and Solomon around 1000 BC.  After the meteoric rise of Israel’s fortunes under David and Solomon, the kingdom fell into civil war, and centuries marked by attack and oppression and betrayal.  There were times of repentance, times of hard heartedness, times of enslavement, times of restoration, times of foreign occupation, times of liberating revolt, and by the time of Christ’s Advent, the nation was a vassal of Rome, with political intrigue and corruption in every corner of secular and religious affairs.  In the time of Christ, the nation was split into Sadducees and Pharisees, Zealots who sought to oust Rome from palace and temple, Essenes who camped in the desert to preserve themselves from earthly corruption, and shades of associations in between.  Within a generation after Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension, Israel was destroyed by Rome for insurrection, and scattered across the empire, surviving in small enclaves in cities everywhere, until 1948 when an act of the United Nations re-established them in their ancestral lands.  Today, the nation of Israel is a semi-religious, semi-secular nation state, surrounded by enemies who desire their total annihilation, with few allies beyond the United States.  For 4000 years, the people of Israel have watched their fortunes rise and fall, in various states of faith and repentance before the same God who inspired David to write the Psalm above.

 

I think this is worth reflecting upon, given our own nation’s peculiar founding.  Settled by the religiously and secularly oppressed of Europe, travelers arrived on these shores with an aim toward freedom, and specifically the freedom of conscience before God.  Their religious opinions varied greatly, but the vast majority were Christians, committed in greater and lesser degree to the Word of God given originally to the Jews, and carried on by the Church in their fulfillment through Jesus’ Word given to His Apostles.  To be sure, these settlers where not paragons of purity, but their hearts yearned for freedom to worship God as they understood Him, to follow His Word as they perceived it, to give space to each person to live virtuous and free, and to carve out through their labors a life of their choosing.  Our nation’s Founding Fathers set their cause before God and built our nation upon these principles, knowing that Divine Providence was predicated upon faith and virtue.  The next couple centuries would see this nation rent by foreign and civil wars, industrial revolutions, by growth in land and influence and population, and as a stalwart defense against the rising tides of tyrannical regimes in two world wars.  Today she languishes under the oppression of disease, economic calamity, and the machinations of enemies both outside and within.  Too many of her people have forgotten the Divine Providence which established and preserved her, and have turned to other gods to lead them into oblivion.  Even if we marked our beginnings with the arrival of our early settlers in the 1600’s, our nation’s length of days is less than one tenth that of the people of Israel, yet we can see in our own short history a similar rising and falling of our fortunes with the rising and falling of our faithfulness toward God and our virtue toward one another.

 

And yet today, the Word of the Lord calls to Jew and Christian alike, just as it calls to every nation, tribe, and tongue of men, saying,  Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts, cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved.  Our God knows better than we, though He has left us over 4000 years of recorded history to see His truth for ourselves, that life and prosperity and hope reside only in Him.  He knows that our generations rise and fall with their relationship to Him, because He alone is the Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer of the world.  And as the Psalmist has implored, God has set His almighty hand upon the son of man whom thou madest strong for thyself, the Lord Jesus Christ, who has fulfilled all the Law and the Prophets, and established His Everlasting Gospel for the salvation of every soul and every people who put their trust in Him.

 

If we would see days of peace and restoration, where the divine virtues of faith, hope, and love abound among us and sweeten both our national discourse and community fellowship, strengthening us to withstand the ever rising tides of tyranny and despotism across the globe and in our own land, we must be turned again to the Lord of Hosts.  Our fate as individuals and as a nation lay today, as they have for every people from the foundation of the world, in the pierced hands of our incarnate, crucified, and risen Savior.  In faith may we pray again in faith and repentance, teaching our children so to do, that we may see times of refreshing from the Lord which bless His people in every age:

 

 Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel,

thou that leadest Joseph like a flock;

thou that dwellest between the cherubims, shine forth.

Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh

stir up thy strength, and come and save us.

Turn us again, O God,

and cause thy face to shine;

and we shall be saved.

 

Sunday, November 22, 2020

Judgment is Coming: A Meditation on Matthew 25 for the Last Sunday of the Church Year


When the Son of man shall come in his glory,

 and all the holy angels with him,

then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:

And before him shall be gathered all nations:

and he shall separate them one from another,

as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:

 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand,

but the goats on the left.

 

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand,

Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom

prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat:

I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink:

I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me:

I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

Then shall the righteous answer him, saying,

Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee?

or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in?

or naked, and clothed thee?

Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison,

and came unto thee?

And the King shall answer and say unto them,

Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it

unto one of the least of these my brethren,

ye have done it unto me.

 

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand,

Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire,

prepared for the devil and his angels:

For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat:

I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:

 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not:

sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.

Then shall they also answer him, saying,

Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked,

or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?

Then shall he answer them, saying,

Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not

to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.

And these shall go away into everlasting punishment:

but the righteous into life eternal.

 

It is hard to imagine a more terrifying scene than the one Jesus laid out for His disciples in Matthew 25.  He had been building to this imagery by using various parables to illustrate what the Kingdom of God is like, noting the gracious generosity of the King toward those who put their trust in Him, and the fearful consequences of rejecting the King’s grace only to stand in one’s own sin before the Law of God.  Here at the end of Matthew’s 25th chapter, Jesus helped His disciples to understand that there was no escaping the Judgment which is to come.

 

There’s a scene in one of the later Marvel movies where Dr. Banner as the Hulk is hurtled through space after a cataclysmic encounter, only to land in the middle of a house in New York guarded by the mysterious Dr. Strange.  When everyone gathered around the disheveled Dr. Banner, all he could mutter was, “Thanos is coming…”  This kicked off a long series of heroic struggles by the Avengers against the Mad Titan to prevent a universe-wide apocalypse, and of course, everyone cheered at the end of the saga when the selfless sacrifice of Iron Man defeated the “inevitability” of Thanos.  I find it interesting and illustrative of our time that people fantasize about variations on the Apocalypse, and humanity’s collective ability to stop it.  In many ways, this wouldn’t be alien to Jesus’ listeners, many of whom likely thought that either God wasn’t really going to judge the world; that if He did, it wouldn’t be during their lifetimes, or in their locales; that it wouldn’t really impact the powerful or well connected; that if all else failed, they could run away and hide somewhere; and maybe some of them even harbored our modern hubris that if the strongest of us were to lead the charge, we could even stop God’s judgement.

 

Like so many of our fantasies, Jesus’s Word of Truth dispels our ignorance and our arrogance.  In the end, when Jesus returns, it will be unavoidable and inescapable.  Every soul on the planet, from the dawn of time to the end, will be gathered before the throne of Jesus, and the great separation will be accomplished.  The good will be gathered into eternal life, and the evil will be condemned forever to hell.  Those who have lived by grace through faith in Jesus will enjoy the blessed communion of the Triune God, together with all the saints and angels of every time and place, for the sake of Jesus’ Vicarious Atonement for the sins of the world through His life, death, and resurrection.  Those who have rejected His grace shall stand before the holiness of His perfect Law and be judged accordingly for every thought, word, and deed—everything done and left undone—resulting in their just imprisonment in the fires of hell, to suffer the infernal communion of the devil and his demonic horde forever.  This Judgement is not only inescapable, it is inarguable; those saved by grace are judged righteous for Jesus’ sake, according to His infinite righteousness imputed to His people through faith alone, while those who stand outside of Jesus’ grace and righteousness must be judged alone in their own works against a standard of pure perfection.  There is no in-between, and no argument which assails such judgment.  If all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, then no one stands righteous on his own merits, no matter how other people might relatively judge him.  And if a person stands in the satisfaction of Jesus’ righteousness earned through the Cross of His Passion, there is no argument to overthrow the vindication of the saints for Jesus’ sake.

 

This Judgment is coming, and it is coming soon.  If we were to think we could avoid it by our own death, we continue to deceive ourselves—for as the Apostle teaches us, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.  And so, whether we stand before the Great Judge at the hour of our death, or at the end of time, we will all still stand before Him some day very soon.  In that day there will be no escape, no argument, no resistance—only the justice of Almighty God perfectly applied to all people on the same terms and by the same standards.  There will be no opportunity for the rich to bribe their way out, or the powerful to raise arms against the Almighty; no cleverness of academic theorizing or sophistry of depraved theologians will wipe away one jot or one tittle from the Word of the Living God.  There, in the presence of Him who sees all and knows all, who discerns the secret thoughts of the mind and the private passions of the heart, we shall stand and know as we have always been known by Him.  We shall know then what has always been true, and what the Word of God has been teaching mankind from the beginning, without the dross and deception of fallen minds and corrupted hearts.  Judgment is coming, and it hastens toward us every day, with every breath we breathe, inexorable and unwavering.

 

Yet for the Christian, this Day of Judgment is one that has already occurred.  Two millennia past there came and died upon the hill of Calvary the Only Begotten Son of the Living God, full of grace and truth.  For God so loved this fallen world, that He sent His only Son to be its Savior, taking the sins of every hand, eye, mouth, mind, and heart upon Himself, that the Judgment of God might be poured out on Him rather than us.  And after having taken that Judgment in our place, He rose again the third day and gave the gift of His salvation to all who would turn from their sins and believe in Him.  This Judgment was everything we have earned, and Jesus’ grace is everything we cannot—the forgiveness of our sins, eternal life, and salvation in His most holy name alone.  There stands the Judgment of the Christian, on a hill, long ago and far away, so that no one might fear the coming Day of the Lord.

 

And so the Law and the Gospel come to you on this last day of the Church Year, as we turn once again to prepare our hearts for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ at Christmas.  If that Day of the Lord fills you with fear and trembling, turn to Him who has taken that Judgment already upon Himself, and offers to you the peaceful riches of His unfathomable grace.  For if the Judge who is to sit upon His throne and separate the sheep from the goats is the same Savior who has given His life for the life of the world, there is nothing for the Christian left to answer, but the peaceful and thankful prayer, “Amen—even so, come Lord Jesus.”

 

Sunday, November 15, 2020

Teach Us to Number our Days: A Meditation on Psalm 90


Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.

Before the mountains were brought forth,

or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world,

even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

 

Thou turnest man to destruction;

and sayest, Return, ye children of men.

For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past,

and as a watch in the night.

Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as asleep:

in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.

In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up;

 in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.

For we are consumed by thine anger,

and by thy wrath are we troubled.

Thou hast set our iniquities before thee,

our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.

For all our days are passed away in thy wrath:

we spend our years as a tale that is told.

The days of our years are threescore years and ten;

and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,

yet is their strength labour and sorrow;

for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

Who knoweth the power of thine anger?

 even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.

 

So teach us to number our days,

that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

Return, O Lord, how long?

and let it repent thee concerning thy servants.

O satisfy us early with thy mercy;

that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us,

and the years wherein we have seen evil.

Let thy work appear unto thy servants,

and thy glory unto their children.

And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us:

and establish thou the work of our hands upon us;

yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.

 

The Psalmist, after calling to remembrance the eternality of God, His presence as the everlasting home of His people, the righteous judgment of God upon a sinful humanity, and the fleeting nature of all life in this world, asks of the Lord to teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.  It is a Psalm of both Law and Gospel, which opens and closes with a faithful trust in God’s providence and grace for His people even in the light of present calamity.

 

To number our days in this Hebrew idiom, is to count them, be conscious of them, and remember that our days in this world are limited.  If a normal life span is somewhere between 70 and 80 years (oddly enough it hasn’t changed much since around 1000 BC when David was penning the Psalms for the ancient Israelites, as the last century’s slavish pursuit of science and technology still has the average American lifespan around 78 years) then there are only so many days given to us to use in this present world.  To the very young, 70 or 80 years of life seems like an eternity, but as age presses upon each of us, the awareness of the temporal nature of our present life becomes more and more clear.  A year may seem very long to a 14 year old waiting anxiously to drive at 16, to be independent at 18, or to drink in the pubs at 21, where the appeal of some future opportunity makes the time feel slow to arrive.  And then, somewhere in our 20’s or 30’s, people become aware that they are no longer children, their bodies don’t quite heal as fast as they used to, and even the most fit struggle harder to keep their athletic physique.  By our 40’s and 50’s we’re becoming even more aware of how the choices and blessings of our younger years make inescapable the consequences of years ahead, with more visits to doctors, more concerns about retirement savings, and the looming time of frailty we know will eventually part us from our more arduous labors.  We become increasingly aware, as we watch other friends, family, and associates die before us, that making it to 70 or 80 years of age is a gracious blessing not afforded to all, and the closer we get to those ages, the more we wonder when our days will be finished.  Unlike the anxiousness of youth which makes time seem to crawl through those early years, every year after seems to flow with increasing speed and urgency, no matter how we might want to delay it.

 

Yet of course, our lives are not lived in a vacuum.  We live our lives in the presence of others living theirs, all in the same world the Lord has blessed us to occupy—a world we have caused to be full of trouble and heartache.  Regardless of the plans we may think so solid in our youth, the countless variables of our times and places intersected by the times and places of everyone around us, make our future days truly known only to God.  All lives are marked by some kind of struggle in body, mind, and spirit, as the sinfulness which dwells so deep in our own persons works out in greater and lesser ways in our homes, communities, and nations.  There’s a clamorous rising and falling of people, which in our individuality, reflects forward into all our professional, political, and family associations, making the world a seemingly crazy place where both blessings and judgment surround everyone.  This cacophony stymies the philosopher and the mystic, the scientist and the researcher, the leaders of industries and the craftsmen of trades, because only God can see the threads of history woven into their ultimate tapestry, and only He can guide the loom to weave it.  He alone is the author of life, the judge of sin, and the savior of all who trust in Him.  Yet within the maelstrom which is life in this fallen world, it is easy to forget the goodness of God as our beginning our and end, to set our eyes in despair upon the tumultuous waves, rather than upon Him who has created the sea and the dry land, and every living creature upon or within them.

 

The Psalmist calls the people of God to number their days, not out of fear for the calamity of unpredictable life, but in light of the goodness and graciousness of our God and Savior who gives, restores, sustains, and preserves our life eternally with Him.  As the length of our days impress upon our fallen minds the deadly consequences of our sin, both individually and across the whole human race, the grace of God in Jesus Christ calls us to trust instead upon His goodness, mercy, and love.  We have not created ourselves, and though we can use our will to either good or evil ends through faith or unbelief, we are not the ultimate authors of our own destiny.  Into this span of years, however long they may be for each of us, the Lord of Glory speaks His Everlasting Gospel to every soul, desiring that each may come to faith and repentance, life and salvation in Jesus.  Only in Him are our sins forgiven, our lives restored, and meaning once again infused into the days of our earthly pilgrimage no matter the storms which come.

 

And with this miracle of redemption before our eyes, we learn to see the Wisdom that our lives aren’t really constrained to those 70 or 80 years, after all.  While the world’s tempests and despots rage, while forces ignorant and malignant strive in vainglorious rebellion against heaven and earth, those who know the Wisdom of Jesus’ Gospel see that their lives begin in God and are preserved in God forever.  Thus we number our days not out of fear of judgment, but in the loving knowledge that we are blessed to labor in the Lord’s world for only these brief years, before we are blessed with an eternity of fulfilment and completion in Him, gathered together in the communion of the saints in light perpetual.  It is fear that counts our days afraid to lose them, but the perfect love of God in Jesus Christ casts out such fear, because the grace of His saving Gospel won through His Cross overwhelms all righteous judgment according to the Law.  We are a people alive today, and alive every day throughout all generations, for Jesus’ sake.

 

And so, may the Lord of life teach us to number our days, to count them all joy no matter what trials and tribulations may come, because we have been taught the Wisdom of Jesus which overcomes our fear, our struggle, our sin, and our death.  Let the beauty of the Lord be upon us, that the work of His crucified hands may be established within, upon, and among us, and that with all generations of the faithful from before the foundation of the world, He may be our dwelling place forever. Amen.