Sojourner

I am a sojourner on the earth;

hide not your commandments from me!

Psalm 119:19

I’m on a temporary journey here

This life I live is not the end

I’ve got nothing from death to fear

Because I’m going to live with my Friend

On this earth I’m temporary

Eternity is where I’ll live always

So truth from God is necessary

To help me thrive in sojourner days

Just a short time is what I have

To prepare for my eternal home

So I’ll give to Jesus all I have

As I camp out here on earth to roam

I need His word to show the way

As I live expatriate from heaven

I’ll trust Jesus, read, share, and pray

Until my final home with Him is given

Jesus Shall Reign

Behold, a king will reign in righteousness,

and princes will rule in justice.

Isaiah 32:1

1 Jesus shall reign where'er the sun
does its successive journeys run,
his kingdom stretch from shore to shore,
till moons shall wax and wane no more.

2 To him shall endless prayer be made,
and praises throng to crown his head.
His name like sweet perfume shall rise
with every morning sacrifice.

3 People and realms of every tongue
dwell on his love with sweetest song,
and infant voices shall proclaim
their early blessings on his name.

4 Blessings abound where'er he reigns:
the prisoners leap to lose their chains,
the weary find eternal rest,
and all who suffer want are blest.

5 Let every creature rise and bring
the highest honors to our King,
angels descend with songs again,
and earth repeat the loud amen. 

Isaac Watts

can’t take that joy away

So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.

John 16:22

These words of comfort come from Jesus to His disciples. In a matter of hours they would be in turmoil of soul and Jesus would be arrested, mocked, beaten, tried, and executed. Their sorrow and fear would be impossible to console, but the story would not end there. Jesus would rise from the dead. They would see Him again, in victory over sin, death, and hell. And then their hearts would rejoice with a joy greater than their sorrow. And that joy could not be lost. In fact, it is still here in the world right now!

Jesus is expert at turning sorrow into joy. He brings new life from our old losses. He makes us new. He recreates new life in dead souls when faith comes to Him. And that new joy is a permanent fixture of that new life. Trusting Jesus means death will never prevail, sorrow cannot last, and life eternal is our only future! All my sorrows are eclipsed by that bright truth!

above

The Lord is high above all nations,

and his glory above the heavens!

Psalm 113:4

Nothing is bigger than God. Not a thing is beyond Him. He is LORD of all, above all, in control of all. None of the actions of mankind in all the nations of all the world is outside His sovereign control. Nothing is secret from the LORD. Nothing surprises Him. God is in complete control of the world. Nothing done by humanity changes that. God rules us.

God created all that is. Every particle of an immeasurably vast universe was made by Him. Each action and reaction of the chemistry of the universe is overseen by Him. No icy rock drifting in interstellar space would avoid His direct control. He knows and controls all that He has made. Even the nuclear reaction in the heart of a star is His doing. A vast nebula is not more glorious. Seemingly endless strings of galaxies stretching across the void of space so broad we see no end to the end, all these spin and glow at His command. And not one of them is more glorious than God. His glory is most glorious. God rules the universe.

Yet the God Who is above us came to us in Jesus. The God whose glory is greater than all the combined glory of billions of suns, sent His glory to us in His Son. And we beheld His glory — full of grace and truth! God is above all, rules all, but makes His glory and grace known to all... visible in Jesus! And that is the great wonder that for believers rules our hearts!

God is not mocked.

In that day the Lord God of hosts

called for weeping and mourning,

for baldness and wearing sackcloth;

and behold, joy and gladness,

killing oxen and slaughtering sheep,

eating flesh and drinking wine.

“Let us eat and drink,

for tomorrow we die.”

Isaiah 22:12-13

When God decreed judgment upon Jerusalem, the calloused disregard for God’s Word was so high that the leaders mocked the message. God called them to mourn and repent. Instead they fired up the barbecue and threw a raging kegger. Their mantra is hedonistic fatalism: “Eat up! Drink up! We’re dying tomorrow!” You can almost hear the mocking guffaws. God can be ignored, but He will not be mocked.

Jerusalem did fall. God’s people would be chastised for rejecting Him. The captivity would recapture their hearts in worship once again. The work of God in His judgment would bring about true repentance, renewed obedience, humble contrition, and a desire for God once more. This is a clear warning for us to take God’s Word seriously

“Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”

Galatians 6:7-9

under a new command

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.

John 13:34

Jesus gave His disciples a clear command: “Love one another as I have loved you.” This was new in the sense that the motivation to obey the command comes out of a loving relationship with our Savior. Unlike the Law, which had as one of its motivation a series of blessings and curses, this “new command” is about relationship, no curses attached. It is motivated by love itself as it calls us to love. We should want to love fellow believers out of our relationship with Jesus, Who always loves us perfectly.

Jesus sets the standard for this kind of love. In the immediate context of John 13, this love was seen in Him serving His disciples by washing their feet. This modeled the kind of love He also gave to us on the cross. And it shows us the love we should seek to have with one another. It is a humble love. It is a tangible love. It is an unconditional love. It is unglamorous. It did not love just to get something in return, in fact initially the whole foot washing love was misunderstood. And this is the way we love like Jesus.

Lord Jesus,

I want to humble myself to love others tangibly as You do. Work on my heart so that unselfishly I might learn to love with no conditions or self-driven motivations. Save me from grandiose self-promotion in my thoughts about love. I want to love well, as You love me well, so the world will know that You live and love in Your disciples.

Amen

I will praise.

With my mouth I will give great thanks to the Lord;

I will praise him in the midst of the throng.

For he stands at the right hand of the needy one,

to save him from those who condemn his soul to death.

Psalm 109:30-31

I will praise

The Lord has saved

me in my need

my soul is freed

from death’s door

saved forevermore!

I will sing

my heart will bring

joy and praise

to Him Who saves

me from sin

all glory to Him!

Jesus I love

Who came from above

my soul to free

from sin’s tyranny

and bring me safe

to His eternal place!

Freed from death

upon this earth

I praise His name

spread His fame

telling the gospel story

upholding His glory!

exiled, but protected

And the king of Babylon made Mattaniah his father's brother king in his stead, and changed his name to Zedekiah.

2 Kings 24:17

So at this point, with Babylon controlling the palace in Jerusalem, the Exile of the Jews has begun. The Chaldeans began deporting the Jews to Babylon. Having a puppet ruler on the throne to facilitate the control of the people only helped to serve this purpose. But really, all of this occurred by God’s direct decree. He warned the people through His prophets that it would happen. And now as the consequences of their repeated unfaithfulness became reality, the curses of the covenant would bring judgment.

For the next seven decades the Jews would be forced to live in Babylon. But they would thrive there. God would keep them safe. Many of them would even rise to positions of authority in their service to their captors. Men like Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah, and especially Queen Esther, would be used to save and to encourage the exiled nation. And God would eventuallly lead them back, a humble and newly worshipful people of His own, ready to rebuild in repentance what their sins had torn down in judgment.

Exile leads to renewal for the Jews. And God can use consequences of our sinfulness to draw us back to Him. At the end of a season of such suffering and reflection can come strong and new redemptive work from God. 

Jesus gave Himself.

“For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”

John 10:17-18

This is a very bold claim by Jesus. He has authority over His own life... something no human as a creation of God can really claim. But Jesus is both Creator and created. And in the Father’s plan (to which Jesus totally agreed and yielded Himself) Jesus will die for the sins of the world. Jesus boldly says He will lay down His life by His own choice (not really so hard... any human can choose to die) AND He will take it up again! Jesus claims authority to be raised from the dead! That’s where the impossibility of Jesus being merely human happens. 

The death and resurrection of Jesus then are no conspiracy. He did not die by accident. He pleased the Father by giving Himself to His mission to die for sin. He knew it would be completed in His resurrection from the dead. Jesus came to do the Father’s will. And the atonement is the climax of human history as God and man are one in Jesus. And human sinful enmity against God is eradicated by the death and resurrection of Christ!

Thank You, Father, for loving and sending Your Son! Thank You, Jesus, for laying down Your life and taking it up again for us! Amen

what false worship looks like

They exchanged the glory of God

for the image of an ox that eats grass.

They forgot God, their Savior,

who had done great things in Egypt,

wondrous works in the land of Ham,

and awesome deeds by the Red Sea.

Psalm 106:20-22

Psalm 106 is a song that sings about the history of failure. It recounts the sinful failures of the nation of Israel, beginning at the Exodus, all the way through the Babylonian Exile. As it looks at the way Israel abandoned God, it gives us insights and warnings into our own tendencies toward false worship. We may think ourselves too sophisticated to worship idols or carved images. That is probably our first step into idolatry.

Israel exchanged God’s glory for a “made thing”. They made an idol. It represented something in creation. False worship always pulls the focus away from our Creator, and in unhealthy ways, onto His creation. When we expect a created thing to satisfy us, we are caught in the downward spiral of idolatry.

Israel also forgot God’s salvation. God had just delivered them from slavery in Egypt when they made the golden calf. They began to ascribe to their idols of comfort the salvation that God had brought them. And in that way they were thinking they had saved themselves. They had a god they could manage and control.

And finally, God’s people had forgotten God’s works. The miraculous signs of Moses, the deliverance across dry land at the Red Sea, the destruction of Egypt’s army... all this faded into common background noise in their glamorous pursuit of a false gold god. Idolatry ruins us and robs us of God’s power at work among us. We are satisfied with too little, with what our senses can see and be tingled with rather than with the extraordinary, amazing work of God that is beyond our ability to fully understand.

God saves for His name’s sake.

“Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there, or come before it with a shield or cast up a siege mound against it. By the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come into this city, declares the Lord. For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.”

2 Kings 19:32-34

And with this promise, God protected Jerusalem for what looked like certain destruction. Hezekiah, king of Judah, had already stripped the temple of gold to pay tribute to Assyria as Sennacherib threatened to invade Jerusalem. Most of the cities of Judah had already fallen to the unstoppable Assyrian army. It didn’t look good for Jerusalem.

But Hezekiah sought the Lord in tearful prayer. And the answer came back through Isaiah the prophet. Jerusalem would be spared. And the Assyrian army would be humiliated without a battle even beginning. The very night of the reassuring prophetic message, the angel of the Lord killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers as they slept. And Sennacherib quietly left Jerusalem’s outskirts with a meager few troops. Once he returned to Ninevah, he was assassinated by his own sons. All his boasting against God was silenced.

God protected His people for His own name’s age. He delivered and kept covenant with David because of His own name. God’s name is great. His word never fails. His power always prevails. Great is God to His people!

not mine, but his

So Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me.”

John 7:16

And in this way Jesus dealt with the people who hated him most. He simply spoke and did the will of His Father in heaven Who had sent Him. He spoke the truth boldly. He just did the Father’s will. He was perfect in His obedience to the Father.

And in that obedience Jesus showed us how every one of His disciples should act. We sense Jesus perfectly obeying to fulfill the mission for which the Father sent Him. And those who are now sent by Jesus into the world should say the same thing as we share the good news of the gospel with those around us: the gospel is not ours, but is from Jesus, Who sent us.

Lord Jesus,

You were willing to obey the Father in what You taught and did, perfectly following the Father’s will all the way to the cross. And that obedience brought my salvation. I am always so thankful for the life-giving gospel.

Now Lord, I pray I might follow You in my commitment to obey Your call to bring the gospel in my words and deeds to my world. May they see You and not me.

Amen

under a true and better King

I will look with favor on the faithful in the land,

that they may dwell with me;

he who walks in the way that is blameless

shall minister to me.

Psalm 101:6

The hundred and first psalm is an interesting bit of poetry. It is written by David, but the king doing the speaking is the idealic King of the Davidic Covenant. As such this is obviously not fulfilled in David, whose own story and reign is full of sin and failures. Rather, this song is fulfilled in Jesus. Jesus is the true and better King. Jesus is the Son of David Who can do all that this psalm says about the King.

With that in view, some powerful promises are seen in this psalm. And I think verse six is one of the clearest: Jesus brings God’s favor to the faithful. Those who by faith in Him and in faith follow Him will know God’s grace. They will dwell with the King living with them. They will be in the presence of the King every day.

And because of Jesus, with sins forgiven, they can serve the king. They can bless others because the King has blessed them. They can do the King’s will because the King has made them His servants. The King that is an intimate friend, that brings us to His palace, is also the One we serve. We do the will of Him Who loves us in this way.

every leader answers to God

Ahab said to Elijah, “Have you found me, O my enemy?” He answered, “I have found you, because you have sold yourself to do what is evil in the sight of the Lord.”

1 Kings 20:21

God is not enamored with any earthly human power. Elijah can boldly confront the wicked king Ahab, confident that God’s judgement will fall on both Ahab and Jezebel as well as their descendents because God has had enough of their wicked activity and decreed their fall. God rules over all the actions of all the powerful people of all the earth whether that power is political, military, economic, religious, or academic. Nobody can hide from God’s rule.

Elijah could not be harmed by any who hated what God had to say since God was using Elijah to bring notice of God’s judgment. And his last message to Ahab is brutally clear: Ahab had shamelessly prostituted himself to evil. And the king would reap public, shameful, humiliating judgment at the hand of God. He would die a bloody cowardly death. Jezebel would die a violent death. All of Ahab’s children after him would end their lives in humiliating defeat. And God would do this. His decree by Elijah would stand.

God is in control. He will do as He wills. He will judge sin. He will protect His people. He will bring justice on the earth. And just as surely as He did so in ancient Israel, He will always do so.

no distance limits grace

The father knew that was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” And he himself believed, and all his household.

John 4:53

Belief in Jesus came to this “official” in Cana, and to the whole household of this man, because they encountered the healing, saving work of Jesus in the most unusual way. The manner in which Jesus worked was powerful. The official came to Jesus, desperately interceding for his dangerously ill son. He begged Jesus to come back with him to Cana to heal the boy. Jesus draws out the man’s faith and then confidently informs the official that his son will live.

The man is later met by his servants on the way back home. They tell him his son is recovering. When the man is told that the fever left his son at the same time when Jesus told him his son would recover, he believed. And he preached Jesus to all his family and servants, and they believed! There was a huge saving work that followed this miraculous healing work.

Jesus,

I believe distance is no barrier to Your work. You will save lives as You wish. And so I will be encouraged to continue to not let any distance of miles or of memories keep me from trusting You. I will pray hard still, for I believe You will make Your power and Your Word known. I will trust. I will pray. I will believe. You can do the work.

Amen

joy in God’s judgment

Let the rivers clap their hands;

let the hills sing for joy together

before the Lord, for he comes

to judge the earth.

He will judge the world with righteousness,

and the peoples with equity.

Psalm 98:8-9

This is not your typical call to rejoice in worship. Psalm 98 is joyous and loud. It calls all the people of all the earth to make joyful noise to the Lord. It opens with a rejoicing earth singing a new song of praise to God as all the people in the earth rejoice in the steadfast love and the salvation they have seen come from God. The first three verses give us a picture of a global praise service, and it is, of course, all realized fully in Jesus.

Then the orchestra kicks in with the second stanza in verses four through six. The strings are strummed and trumpets blow, carrying on the melody of praise and blasting even more joyful noise as the Lord is celebrated as the true King of this world. The joy just keeps building.

Finally, the natural world itself is called upon in verses seven through nine to add to the symphony with more joyful praise. The roaring ocean waves, the noise of all the beasts of all the earth, the rivers and the hills all add their joyous sounds as the King descends to rule a jubilant earth and dispense His judgment and justice. And this is the crescendoing point to all the joyful noise: God is going to judge the earth. His judgment is worthy of our praise because finally all will be made right as it should, and that makes the whole earth extremely glad!

where wisdom originates

And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding beyond measure, and breadth of mind like the sand on the seashore, so that Solomon's wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt.

1 Kings 4:29-30

Any human capacity for thought, creativity, engineering, explanation, or discovery comes from the hand of God. The human mind is His creation, first made in His image, for His glory. This is seen clearly in the life of Solomon, genius level king of Israel whose wisdom was the greatest in the world in his day. All that Solomon accomplished was because God gave him those gifts.

And the same is true in human achievement today. Wisdom and knowledge are God’s gifts to humanity. The achievements humanity makes in science, engineering, literature, medicine, or manufacturing... all of them originate in what God gave us in our individual creation. In a sense, God gets the credit for every Nobel prize. And it is a good thing that humans have such remarkable intellects. It should point us to the Greatest Intelligence in our Creator. It is a common grace of God that we can achieve much with our minds.

I’m glad I live in an age where human ingenuity mastering technology has done so much. But it really is a two-edged sword. For sinful pride usually gives all the credit to the people who achieve, and ignores the God Who enabled them to do so. Grateful praise for what we have done must go to the God Who gave us the minds of achievement.

life, light, love

In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

John 1:4

Lord Jesus,

I need Your life and Your light. I am miserable any time my world is confined to just my own thoughts and actions. I am so thankful that You are my life and my light... You shine on the dark times and the good moments. You have saved me by Your life. And that will always get me through and provide my direction in life. I am an arrow pointed at You!

Though Your world did not know You, still You loved us. And that love led You to come to this earth, to live among us, to show Your glory to us, and to die for the sins of the world. I am in awe of that life, of that light, and of Your great love!

Amen

kept safe

The LORD reigns; he is robed in majesty;

the LORD is robed; he has put on strength as his belt.

Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved.

Your throne is established from of old;

you are from everlasting.

Psalm 93:1-2

This short song celebrates the power and strength of God to keep the world secure no matter what crisis we may find ourselves enduring. In the text of this psalm, which opens with this confidence in the security that God brings to the world, the crisis in verse three is a raging flood. The roaring waters of the destructive flood are no match for God’s mighty power though (Psalm 93:4).

It is comforting and strengthening to know that despite the very worst things I face in life, God is in control. And there are many times when the stress of things comes roaring in like a mighty flash flood. I may feel like I could drown in the potential panic and helplessness. But faith carries me above the waves, out of the raging current, and into the strong arms of my God and Savior. Jesus, Who calmed the wind and waves and who walked on a stormy sea securely carries me.

I agree with Psalm 93:5... 

Your decrees are very trustworthy;

holiness befits your house,

O LORD, forevermore.

The God Who saves me will always keep me safe in Him. I just trust that truth!

river crossing

So the king came back to the Jordan, and Judah came to Gilgal to meet the king and to bring the king over the Jordan.

2 Samuel 19:15

At the lowest point

the king had been at war

as his own son tore

the kingdom apart

also breaking David’s heart

no longer feeling like the Lord’s anointed

But God kept him safe

and generals waged battle strong

until the rebellion could not prolong

the rebels stretched too thin

and David’s forces finally did win

...the sons’s death sickened David’s face

Grieving the high cost of staying king

the army wanted David back home

ruling from the palace throne

the civil strife must end

so the king could cross Jordan’s bend

back to the palace, ruling everything

And welcomed at the river’s shore

the nation ushered David back across

the same king, but humbled by loss

to rebuild the broken, and to face

the pain and victory by God’s grace

prefiguring a True King Who rules forevermore

prayer in the garden

And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw, and knelt down and prayed, saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”

Luke 22:41-42

As Jesus obeyed the will of the Father, to lay down His life for the sins of the world, to face scourging, rejection by His people, mockery, desertion by His disciples, and death on a cross, He prayer this prayer alone in the garden. There, sweating blood and being strengthened by an angel, Jesus prepared to be arrested, tried, and executed so that He could bear the sins of the world. The perfect Son of God was preparing to take all the guilt and face God’s wrath so that those who believe in Him would not have to die guilty in their sins. This is love.

Just minutes after this prayer, resigning Himself to the will of God to be struck down for the sins of the world, Jesus knew Judas would arrive with guards to hand Jesus over the the High Priest. And the path to the cross would begin. Then the accusations, mockery, lies about Jesus, and trials would all quickly procede throughout the dark night. And in hours He would be led up Calvary’s hill to be crucified.

Jesus knew this would mean unimagineable suffering. But He also knew it would not end on that cross. What would seal death’s fate and ensure salvation would be His resurrection from the dead on the third day! Even though His death was hard to face, it would not be the ending. There would be a victory far beyond the pain of cross. And that is the gospel that saves me!