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Psalm 62
1. Declaration of trust in God (vv.1-2; 5-7)
– God as my rock, salvation, strong tower, glory, and refuge.
2. Context of that trust in God: Opposition of the wicked (3-4)
– flattering lips and cursing hearts
3. Exhortation to trust in God and not man (8-10)
– trust at all times
– trust includes pouring out your hearts
– man as vapour
4. Mercy and Strength belong to God.
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Luke the historian (Luke 1:1-4) and Mary as a source (Luke 2:19).
Why Mary includes the story of Jesus staying back in the temple when he was twelve (Luke 2:41-52)
Glory only in the Lord
Mary as a ‘real’ mother.
How do we interpret the history?
Motives:
His mother said to Him, “Son, why have You done this to us? Look, Your father and I have sought You anxiously.”
Reasons:
And He said to them, “Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?”
What is the Father’s business and is this news to Mary?
Who is to benefit from this history?
Mary’s preparation.
Our understanding.
Take aways:
What is in God’s Word is there for a reason.
Mary (in particular) and Joseph were children of Adam needing redemption like all of us.
God was merciful to Mary
God is merciful to us. God through Mary and Luke included this history of Jesus’ life to remind us that God is always working. Always working toward His purpose of saving the world. He is saving the world through His Son and through His Bride. We are His Bride and He is cleansing us, strengthening us and beautifying us so that the light of the Gospel might shine through us in the world that the world may be drawn to the Head of the Bride, the Lord Jesus.
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Weeds and Grains
Genesis 2:4 marks the beginning of a new section in the book of Genesis. However, to many it doesn’t just look like a new section, but it actually looks like a section that contradicts the previous section. Gen. 2:7 appears to put the creation of Adam as after the creation of plants, contradicting Gen. 1, where plants are created on the third day and man is created on the sixth day.
However, a closer read of the text shows that 2:5 is actually referring to a much more specific kind of plant. 1:11-12 refers to “grass” and “herbs yielding seed” (grain). But 2:5 refers to “plant of the field.” The Hebrew for “plant” here is not a super common noun, but one that usually refers to the wild shrubs found out in the desert (Job 21:15). This would mean that 2:4-7 is telling us that Adam was created at a moment in time before there were weeds in the ground and before grain had begun to sprout.
Before the Curse
So why is there a need to specify this particular moment? We have to look at the curse in order to understand this. Look at 3:17-19. When the ground is cursed, the result is that man will now have to work to eat from it. In chapter 2, the author of Genesis focuses on the trees that God provides to Adam for food (2:9, 16 and 3:2). But after his sin, Adam is told that now he will toil to get his food from the ground (3:17). He will have to fight weeds and he will have to sweat (v. 18).
Dust to Dust
Adam having to till the ground for grain was a consequence of his fall (3:23). After the fall, our work for food requires that we work in the dirt. You will eat from the ground (3:18), eating grain (3:18), and eating bread (3:19). God cursed the ground and made us farmers.
Why farming? Adam was made from dust (2:7). And because Adam sinned, he was going to die and return to dust (3:19 and 23).
You are Seed
But when a farmer cuts open the earth to put the seed in, he doesn’t do so in grim defeat. He actually does so with great hope. He looks to a harvest. And Scripture carries over this hope to us. Yes, we are all going into the ground, because we are all mortal. But we go into the ground as seed (1 Cor. 15:35-37, 48-49). Grain is provides food, just like a fruit tree. But the grain must die first. It must go into the ground to die, before returning in glory. And that is what man, after the fall is. We are creatures that must die first, but will live eternally.
The Seed
But the hope in Genesis 3 is even stronger than that. We always are quick to point out that when God gave the curse, he also gave the promise of the coming Messiah to deliver us from the curse. But how was that Messiah described? The Messiah was the coming seed of the woman (3:15). In fact, all of Scripture points to this one true seed, the seed whose death and resurrection makes possible our eternal life.
No Going Back
Notice that God did not solve Adam’s sin by giving him means by which he could undo the damage that he had done. Death has not been removed, but rather conquered. Our tendency, when we see the consequences of our sin, is want to find a way back to before our sin, to undo it. But that is never an option. The cross was not a time machine. Instead, God took Adam’s sin and all its consequences and turned it into another path for walking into God’s glory.
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Introduction
This is a challenging and powerful passage for how we can view, receive, count as joy hard things. We will look at how faith receives trials as the good and perfect gifts from our Father. This combination of joy in trial is evident in Hugh Latimer’s charge to his burning friend, “Be of good cheer, Master Ridley, and play the man, for we shall this day light such a candle in England as I trust by God’s grace shall never be put out.” Why could Latimer call for rejoicing? He trusted that God had a purpose for this trial. In faith, he saw the torching of their bodies as the spark God kindled that would continue to burn in England. Be of good cheer, for your trials are the good and the perfect gifts from God your Father.
Jesus Character Course (1-4)
In verse two, James rolls up his sleeves and gets to business, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kind…” James says that the flat tire when you’re already late, the roommate who doesn’t do her dishes, the back pain, the discovery of a brain tumor, another miscarriage, the inability to have children should all be considered joy. The reason you can have joy is because the trial has meaning. The trial is for your maturity––that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing (vs. 3-4).
When you become a Christian, you begin the life long process of becoming like Jesus, which is called sanctification. You are enrolled in the “Jesus Christ Prep-School of Character.” When the teacher gives you tests, you should not sigh, roll your eyes, or walk out of the class. One of the regular things being tested is our faith––Can you properly see and identify? Here’s a car accident or an angry child or cancer. What is this?
Asking for Wisdom (5-8)
If any of you lacks wisdom, specifically for what’s going on in this process of maturity, then you can ask God, and he will give what you need and give generously (vs. 5). God is willing to back up the dump truck of wisdom for how to joyfully live in trials. But when the truck has backed into your driveway and dumped half its load, you shouldn’t wave your arms and shout, “Actually, I don’t want this. Can you take it back?” Everyone wants wisdom, but we are not as keen on the process to gain wisdom. But this is a double-minded man (vs. 6-8).
The Long View of Faith (9-12)
The faith required for Christians can seem confusing up close, but becomes clearer with the long view. James gives a specific example of faith in finances (vs. 9-11). The poor can boast in his exaltation because true riches are not his own but come from another, and the rich can boast in his humiliation because true riches are not his own but come from another. Faith looks ahead to the promised end and lives like it in the present moment. The man with faith on the long view is the blessed man. Happy is the one who remains steadfast in the pain for he receives the crown of life (vs. 12). This is at odds with our culture that preaches, “Happy are those who take it easy.” Happiness comes not through the lack of trials, but from triumphing over them. A thirty-nine year man snuggled in his bathrobe that hasn’t come off since Y2K is not an exhibit of happiness.
Testing Not Tempting (13-16)
James anticipates several likely flair ups and explains the difference between testing and tempting. God can not be tempted and he does not tempt anyone, so God is not the source of the problem for temptation (vs. 13). The wagging finger is pointed back at each of us (vs. 14-15). Adam and Eve were lured by their desires, and these desires gave birth to sin and sin grew up and killed them (Gen. 3:6).
But God put them in the garden with the no-touchy tree. How was this not a temptation? God tests us but he does not tempt us. The temptation of Jesus in the wilderness helps to clarify. Both the Spirit and Satan are planning something for Jesus. The situation is the same––Jesus alone in the wilderness. But the Spirit and Satan have different objectives––Satan wants to tempt Jesus, the Spirit wants to test Jesus. Same situation, different objectives. Satan tempted Jesus to sin in order to disqualify him from being the Savior. The Spirit tested Jesus in order to confirm him as the Savior (Heb. 4:15).
Jesus Christ: The Good and Perfect Gift (17-18)
God the Father gives every good gift and every perfect gift (vs. 17-18). Look around your life, and see the gift boxes stacked from floor to ceiling. God gives generously, so we receive gratefully. Faith believes that nothing comes to us except by God’s will. By faith we know that everything that comes to us is for our good.
We must end with the Father’s greatest gift. For God the Father so loved the world that he gave a gift. You unwrap it and you discover Jesus, your Savior. All of this is yours because Jesus received the trials from his Father as good gifts in faith. And now he says to you, “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”
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Introduction:
You may have picked up on “one of the things we say around here,” which is “all of Christ for all of life.” But what do we mean by that exactly? It may sound very spiritual, but if it doesn’t mean anything, it can’t mean anything very spiritual.
The Text:
“And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence” (Col. 1:17–18).
Summary of the Text:
Jesus Christ is our entry point into everything. He is before all things (v. 17), prior to all things, antecedent to every contingent mote of material reality. He is the Head of the body, His own body, which is the church. We as believers make up that body, and so it is that He is the head for us. Paul then says that Jesus Christ is the arche. The translation here says beginning, but do not think of beginnings as measured by stopwatches. It is the same word that is used in John 1:1. Rather Paul is saying that Christ is the ultimate unity, the integration point for all things, the cornerstone and capstone both. He has been manifested as the heir of this position by His resurrection from the dead (Rom. 1:4), or as Paul puts it here, He is the firstborn from the dead. The end result is that we are to see Christ as having the preeminence over absolutely everything (v. 18).
The Fragmentation of Death:
Now I used the phrase integration point. Why is this important? As naïfs schooled in the catechisms of modernity, we tend to think of death as cessation. If something dies, that means it konked. If someone dies, that means their atoms return to the great cosmic slurry, and “they” cease to be (whatever “they” were). Even if we deny this formally as Christians who believe in the resurrection, we are still too much affected by the assumptions that swirl around the idea of death as cessation.
But death is actually separation. When our bodies die, the soul and body are separated (2 Cor. 5:8). When our first parents took the forbidden fruit, they were separated from their fellowship with God (Gen. 3:8). This was spiritual death, which is spiritual alienation. “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world” (Eph. 2:1–2).
So intellectual death is also separation—intellectual fragmentation. You have so many opinions, but they are all shattered on the floor. Nothing ties them together, which is why the Christian task is to bring all those thoughts into submission to Christ. “Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5). Before they are brought to the obedience of Christ, they—like the thinker generating them—are dead. And if you manage to get them published, and into libraries and bookstores, that just makes them deader.
Only in Christ can we find life, which means that only in Him can we live in a universe. Only in Christ can there be such a thing as a university. If Christ is not raised, then all our thoughts are nothing more than ten thousand tons of confetti dumped into an F-5 tornado. And the tornado really is a poor image of this, in that it exhibits far too much order.
A Ministry of Reconciliation:
Now if death is separation, then restored life is a reunification. Resurrection means reconciliation, and the message of the resurrection is the ministry of reconciliation.
“And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:18–19).
This is the grand project. Notice that phrase—in Christ, reconciling. That is as much as to say in Christ, resurrecting. This is what God has determined to give to a world that did not deserve its restoration. This is the word that we have had entrusted to us. This is what we are talking about.
“That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him” (Eph 1:10).
“And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven” (Col. 1:20).
Grace and Peace:
Now all of this should rejoice every believing heart. But let’s push it into the corners, shall we? In what ways have we among the Reformed made their accommodations with the ideology of death? Systematic theology is one of the glories of the church, but done the wrong way it results in us going into the mausoleum instead of the museum, and results in us sorting out bones instead of studying the exhibits. What do I mean by “the wrong way?” I mean separating things instead of making distinctions between them. The former is the death of the mind; the latter is the life of the mind.
Our temptation is to separate the doctrine of God from God Himself. It is to separate the graces of God from God Himself. It puts the truth about God here, and God over there, somewhere. But God does not store love, joy, peace, patience (or any other grace) in vats. They are not impersonal spiritual fluids running down to your deep sea diving suit through a hose. If you have anything at all from God, then you have all of Christ for all of life. Christ is not parceled out to us in bits and pieces.
Remember that virtually every New Testament epistle begins with “grace and peace” from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. This is not a separation of these graces from two persons of the Trinity, and an exclusion of the Holy Spirit. As Jonathan Edwards argued, this is likely saying that the Holy Spirit is that grace and peace, and proceeds from the Father and the Son. And this makes wonderful sense. As C.S. Lewis put it once, “He has, in the last resort, nothing to give us but Himself.”