Author Archives: reveds

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About reveds

Occupation: Pastor, Ebenezer Presbyterian Church, Lennox, SD Education: BS - Christian Education, Sterling College; MDiv. - Princeton Theological Seminary Family: Married, with Four children. Hobbies: Running (will someday run a marathon), Sci-Fi (especially Doctor Who and Sherlock), Theater, and anything else my kids will let me do.

We are His Portion

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First – let me apologize for my absence the last couple of days.  I was home sick on Monday with a stomach bug when my wife fell on the ice and hit her head.  Not the best start to a busy week.  But we’re both slowly recovering, and here I am writing again.

 “But the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.”
(Deut. 32:9 ESV)

Have you ever looked at something for so long you’ve forgotten it’s even there?  Have you ever missed the forest for the trees?  I remember the first time I ever went to the Circus.  Ringling Bros. had come to Kansas City and my grandparents took the family.  I sat next to Aunt Jane in wild-eyed wonder at the spectacle before me, taking it all in.  Aunt Jane was excited too.  All she could talk about on the drive to the Circus, as we waited for the show to start, and all through the evening, was how much she wanted to see the Tight Rope Walkers.  That was all she really cared about.  She couldn’t wait to see them.

And she talked right through their performance – missing the whole thing.  She was so caught up in the anticipation of the act that she missed the act entirely.  No one knew she wasn’t watching it, she was talking about it while it was happening.  When the show was over, she expressed her disappointment that the Tight-Rope Walkers didn’t perform, that’s when we realized what had happened.  Sometimes its hard for us to see the things that are right in front of us.

I’ve kind of had that realization lately with the passage given above. 

  • One of the first songs I can remember from Sunday School is: “The Lord is mine and I am His, His banner over me is love.”
  • I know from my study of Scripture of God’s immeasurable love for His people, a love so great that He would send His only begotten Son to pay the price for our guilt, so that we might be presented as Christ bride, holy and blameless, without spot or blemish.
  • As a Presbyterian, I can recite from heart the key components of the doctrine of election, how God has chosen His people to be set apart as a holy people, a royal nation. 
  • I was even swept away by David Crowder’s lyrics in the song “How He Loves”: “We are His portion, He is our prize, Drawn to Redemption by the grace in His eyes…”
  • Last Sunday I preached on the love story of God in Hosea 3.  This week I’m preaching on the love song of God in Zephaniah 3.

This was all around me, but know I see it.  We are God’s special treasure.  A.W. Pink wrote, “How overwhelming the thought that the great God should deem Himself the richer because of our faith, our love and worship!  Surely this is one of the most marvellous truths revealed in Holy writ – that God should pick up poor sinners and make them His inheritance!”

God delights in His people (see Deut 30:9; Ps 35:27, 37:23; 147:10; Is 62:4; Zeph 3:17).  God loves to love those who love Him.  John Piper wrote, “God does not do you good out of some constraint or coercion. He is free! And in his freedom he overflows in joy to do you good.” 

God did not send His Son to redeem us from slavery to sin and death so that we might become slaves to a despotic and tyrannical god.  No.  God so loved us that He sent His Son so that we, who were once not a people, might be called the people of God; so that we, who once knew no mercy, might receive mercy (1 Peter 2:10).  “Behold, what manner of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God, and so we are” (1 John 3:1)

“Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it” (Psalm 139:6).  May God’s grace, and the knowledge of His love for us, strengthen us to walk worthy of such a calling.

SDG

No Shallow Christianity

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As I was studying for Sunday’s message on Hosea, I came across the following from James Montgomery Boice’s commentary on the Minor Prophets.  This doesn’t really tie in anywhere with my sermon, but I found it particularly meaningful, so I thought I’d pass it on.

We live in an age where everything good is interpreted in terms of happiness and success.  So when we think of spiritual blessing we thing of it in terms of these things.  To be led of God and blessed by God means that we will be “happy” and “successful.”  In fact, if a Christian does not appear to be happy or successful, there are scores of people who will be ready (like Job’s counselors) to work with him or her to see what is wrong.  This is shallow thinking and shallow Christianity, for God does not always lead his people into ways that we would naturally regard as happy or as filled with success.  Was Jesus happy?  He was undoubtedly filled with joy and all the other fruits of the Spirit.  but he was also called “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.”  Was Jesus successful?  Not by our standards, nor by any standards that might have been applied to him by anyone living in that time.  Let us put down as a great principle: God sometimes leads his children to do things that afterwards involved them in great distress.  But because God does not think as we think or act as we act, it is often in these situations that he accomplishes his greatest victories and brings the greatest blessing to his name.

If God has allowed tragedy to slip into your life, this does not necessarily mean that you were out of his will when you married that husband or wife, took that job, or made that commitment.  He may be giving you a chance to show the love and character of Christ in your situation.

Again, you may be able to learn something of God’s love for you through the difficulty.  For what is the story of Hosea if not the story of ourselves as members of that body which is the bride of Christ?  We are Gomer, and God is Hosea.  He married us when we were unclean.  He knew that we could prove unfaithful again and again.  He knew that we would forsake him.  Still he loved us and purchased us to himself through Christ’s atonement.  If Hosea’s story cannot be real (because “God would not ask a man to marry an unfaithful woman”), then neither is the story of salvation real, because that is precisely what Christ has done for us.  He has purchased us for himself to be a bride “without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Eph 5:27), and he has done this even though he knew in advance that we would often prove faithless.

Boice, James Montgomery. The Minor Prophets: Volume 1, Hosea – Jonah (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1983) pg 16-17.