Rescue Psalms

I have lately been making my way through the Psalms, and have sometimes found myself reading cries and petitions that don’t seem to have a great deal of immediate application to me. I’m thinking of those psalms in which the psalmist groans for deliverance from his enemies. These 'rescue psalms' (as we might call them) are wonderful psalms! And yet, what to do with them when I don’t really have a great many earthly enemies? What does an American, living a pretty easy life, do, for instance, with verses like the following?

Lord, how long will You look on?

Rescue my soul from their ravages,

My only life from the lions.

I will give You thanks in the great congregation;

I will praise You among a mighty throng.

Do not let those who are wrongfully my enemies rejoice over me;

Nor let those who hate me without cause wink maliciously.

For they do not speak peace,

But they devise deceitful words against those who are quiet in the land.

They opened their mouth wide against me;

They said, “Aha, aha, our eyes have seen it!”

You have seen it, O LORD, do not keep silent;

O Lord, do not be far from me.

Stir up Yourself, and awake to my right

And to my cause, my God and my Lord.

Judge me, O LORD my God, according to Your righteousness,

And do not let them rejoice over me.

Do not let them say in their heart, “Aha, our desire!”

Do not let them say, “We have swallowed him up!”

Psalm 35:17-25

What do I do when there is no one (seemingly) “open[ing] their mouth wide against me”? A few thoughts on how to make good use of these psalms:

1. Remember our brothers and sisters who do have such enemies. Persecuted Christians in places like North Korea, or the Middle East. Christian business owners in this country, under fire for trying to work according to their consciences. Abused women and children. And so on. There are those for whom the words of such psalms are very immediately relevant. So use the psalms to pray for them!

2. Remember these psalms for when you do need them. Life is not always easy! And a time may come when someone does set him or herself up as your enemy … either because of your faith, or perhaps for some other reason. Gossip, slander, persecution, abuse, unfair lawsuits. These sorts of things can happen. And we’ll need the likes of Psalm 35 then! So remember that they are there! Keep them in your back pocket, as it were, and pull them out when the tough times come.

3. Remember that you do have enemies. Maybe not in the form of other people who desire to “swallow [you] up” … but your own sin is a mortal enemy! And so are the devil and his minions. And so, when sins, or doubts, or temptations, or the devil’s accusations are laid before you like snares, the rescue psalms can be taken up then, too. “Rescue my soul from their ravages, My only life from the lions.”

4. Remember the Messiah. Two of the seven statements Jesus uttered from the cross are direct quotations from the sorts of psalms I have in mind in this article (see Psalms 22:1 and 31:5), and a third is closely connected with Psalm 69:21. So Jesus was thinking of these sorts of psalms when under the thumb of His enemies! And that means, I would say, that we should be thinking of Him when we read them!* No one ever suffered like Jesus! And He repaired to the psalms in the midst of His suffering! And so when we read the suffering and the cries of the Psalms, let us think of this ultimate Sufferer, and praise God that His cries were heard … and that, in Him, so also will be the cries of His people!

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*Not to say that everything in the rescue psalms has a correlation in Christ’s suffering and cries. But there are correlations – some more general, others more direct – that you will notice if you are looking for them.  So look for them!  Think about how what you are reading in the Psalms compares to the sufferings and/or cries of Christ.  And, if your Bible contains cross-references, use those to help you!  Not every correlation may be listed in the cross-references (so do some comparative thinking on your own, aside from the cross-references).  But some such correlations (especially the more direct ones) may be noted in the cross-references. And so it would be a good exercise, when reading the rescue psalms, to scan down through those cross-references, looking to see if they call attention to any correlations between the psalm and the life of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Doing this with Psalm 35, while working on this article, the NASB cross-references informed me, for instance, that Psalm 35:19 is quoted in John 15:25 in reference to the sufferings of Jesus: “They hated me without a cause.”

The Olympics, the Nations, and the Gospel

The games of the 23rd Winter Olympiad are just a few days away. And the Strassner family loves the winter Olympics! Every four years, we huddle together in front of the television for those 2-plus weeks, delighting in the artistry of phenomenal athletic skill brushed across the brilliant white canvas of winter scenery. I can’t wait!

One of our family traditions is that each of us chooses a different country (in addition to the USA) for which to cheer. And, since we want to actually see the teams and athletes for which we have chosen to cheer, we choose countries that tend to do well in the Winter Games. This year we’ve got Norway, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, France, Sweden, and the Netherlands – eight of the top ten medal-winning countries from 2014 (the others were Russia and the USA). 

But how fares the gospel in these eight countries? That’s the question that occured to me recently. For answers, I turned to the 2010 edition of Operation World (a must-have Christian resource, by the way). And the statistics I turned up were striking. Of the eight countries for whom we are cheering, none of them (as of the 2010 statistics) is more than 8.4% evangelical. In France, evangelicals make up only 1% of the nation’s populace. In Austria, the percentage is half that! And even in nearby Canada, there are less than 8 evangelicals per 100 people! This is striking. In fact, of the 26 nations that won medals at the 2014 Sochi Games, only four (the USA, South Korea, Australia, and Finland) have evangelical populations that number above 10% (percentages, again, according to Operation World). 

What this means is that, if and when you watch the Winter Games, chances are (first of all) that you’re going to be watching a great many men and women whose athleticism marvelously demonstrates the image of God in man … but who do not know that God, and who do not know “the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.” Pray for them. Pray, too, for their countrymen who have travelled to see them (and who are part of the same statistical milieu). Pray for Christian athletes, coaches, and officials to be witnesses for Christ. And pray for the witness of local South Korean believers, of missionaries in the area, and of others who may come in on short-term mission trips specifically to share the gospel with those in town for the Games. The statistics indicate there will likely be plenty of folks who need evangelizing.

The statistics also mean that, if and when you watch the goings on in PyeongChang, you are also going to be seeing the regalia and hearing the names of a whole host of nations whose countrymen, back home, desperately need evangelizing as well! America is the most evangelized of any nation that won a medal at the last games … and you know how much we need the gospel here. So what must be the need in a place like Austria, or China, or Slovenia (0.1% evangelical!), or Japan? Think of this when you watch the games. Root for these nations, as it were, in prayer! And maybe someone who reads these lines will even be moved to go to one or other of them, carrying the gospel, and pursuing a prize even greater than Olympic Gold!

Reckoning with Death

A singer whose inimitable voice was very much a part of the soundtrack of my youth; two babies and a grandfather, loved by folks in our congregation; a long-serving deacon in a sister church; a gospel minister whose story of perseverance, hope, and love for his daughter has been greatly moving to me – each one of them departed from this life in recent days.

Monday was the ten year anniversary of the death of a dear friend; a death which – both for the pain that it brought, and for the backdrop for God's kindness that it proved to be – left a deep imprint on my life. And then it was one year ago this coming Sunday that a man died whom I, from a distance, had come to consider as, in some ways, my pastor.

Some of them died tragically; others more ‘naturally’. Some are gone, as we say, ‘too soon’; others had lived full lives. But they are all gone, leaving gaps that cannot be humanly filled in the lives of those who loved them.

It’s a strange thing, death. So unnatural (when seen in the light of Genesis 1), and yet so inevitable in this now-fallen world. So certain, and yet still always so painful. So wrong, and yet so filled with significance:

Death should make us hate sin for having called down such a curse upon the world. Death should urge us to love others more deeply, who are with us only for a short while, in this life. Death should motivate us to be all the more urgent about making ready (and helping others make ready) for the life that is to come. And death should move us to love Christ who, out of love for His own, entered into death on their behalf, and defeated it for all who will call upon His name.

Let Him be our hope in the face of death – the hope we share with those around us who are facing death; our hope when we grieve the loss of our loved ones; our hope when we wade, with Bunyan’s pilgrim, through the river of death ourselves (knowing, in the words of Samuel Rutherford, that Jesus “knoweth all the fords”); and our hope for life beyond death, since He has died and risen on behalf of His people!

Let us reckon rightly with the reality of death, which is ever present all around us. Let us understand and accept its inevitability. Let us learn and apply its lessons. And let us look to Jesus in its face.

A Vapor

Step outside on one of these cold winter days, and watch your breath as you exhale. In all seriousness. Don’t just read this article. Go outside, literally, someday soon, and observe the vapor of your breath as it eases from your lips … and then disappears, so very quickly, from before your gaze! Why? Why go out into the cold to take in such a sight? Because this is a portrait, says James, of your life in this world! “You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away” (James 4:14). And it will do you good to go outside, and to envision what James has written, and to consider the brevity of your life. And, as you consider that brevity; as you meditate on the fleeting nature of the vapor, I hope three demeanors of heart and mind will come over you:

First, humility. This is the demeanor that James is promoting when he likens our earthly lives to vapors: ‘“You do not what your life will be like tomorrow.” Your life is so fleeting! And therefore you ought not to go making boastful plans about where you are going to go, and what you are going to do. “Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that’”’ (see James 4:13-16). The fragile, fleeting, vapor-like nature of our lives ought to humble us into a constant awareness that our plans, and even our awaking tomorrow morning, are always ‘Lord willing.’

And then also, the vapor-like brevity of our lives in this world ought also to promote a sense of urgency. If life is a vapor, shouldn’t I want to capture the few brief ticks of the clock that I have been given, and use them well for the One who gave them? Life is too short for spiritual dilly-dallying! It’s too short for just whiling away the months and years, not really doing anything that will make an impact for eternity! You only have a few years (if the Lord even wills for you to have that long) in which to serve the gospel in this world! Don’t dawdle that time away! And let me remind you, also, that since life is so short; and since we don’t know how short (since we don’t know if we will even wake up tomorrow), it is great folly to put off being ready for your own eternity! You don’t know if you will have tomorrow, or next week, or next year to repent of your sins and trust in Christ! So do it before your vapor disappears!

And then also, as you consider the vapor of your life, may such a consideration, if you are in Christ, bring you serenity. For, if this life is a vapor that will soon fade away, then those who are in Christ don’t have very much longer to endure their trials, do they? The non-Christian will perhaps take some of his difficulties with him, even into the next life (and will then face even greater difficulties, to boot). But for the believer, “the sufferings of this present time” will evaporate along with the vapor of earthly life in which they arose! And since vapors are but brief, relief is not too far in the future! It won’t be long and we will be with Jesus! And all will be well! And that should make us just a little more calm in the face of our trials! Someday soon we will suffer, and struggle, and sin no more!

So step out, in the days ahead, into the cold winter’s air, and learn the lessons of the vapor.

Farewells

Farewell. It’s a word we don’t use terribly often in modern English. But it’s an activity in which we must all engage … farewelling those who pass from the scenes of our lives, or at least from the everyday scenes. And we’ve become quiet experienced at it here at PRBC. For, in the decade-and-a-half that this has been my church home, the Lord has seen fit, both to gather a handful of our number into His heavenly presence, and also to send a great many handfuls of PRBCers to live, work, and worship in other earthly locales. And so we’ve had to wish a great many people God’s blessings as they have gone on from our fellowship. And we do so again this coming Sunday.

Now, in this day of phones, email, automobiles, and airplanes, farewelling a moving friend is not nearly so stark a goodbye as it once would have been. I am able to stay in quite easy touch with former PRBCers in Washington, and in Florida, and in many places in between. And so maybe we don’t feel these sorts of farewells as keenly as we might have if we’d lived in the days of the covered wagon. But it’s still hard to see people go. And it’s hard to be the one who goes (probably harder, in many cases).

And yet I am reminded today, as our brother and sister and their children depart from us, that even if they were heading out on the Oregon Trail, never to see our faces again in this life; or even if they were departing this life altogether … the farewelling would only be for this life. Because, for the believer in Jesus Christ – in addition to being “always … with the Lord”, and being finally rid of our sin forever – the eternal world that lies before us will also be a grand reunion of the saints, will it not? As my friend Eileen once told me, on her way into surgery, ‘I will see you soon … either here, or there!’ And she was right! If we are in Christ, we will see our Christian friends again! Perhaps face-to-face, thanks to automobiles or airplanes. Maybe on FaceTime or Skype. But assuredly in glory!

Now, I doubt there will be a Pleasant Ridge seating area in eternity. But we will all be in the same congregation together once again! And I feel confident we will track one another down, and fellowship together, once again, just as we did here at the crest of this hill in Cincinnati (only, in that day, we will do it without time constraints or sin!). And so, in this day of farewells, we look to that day of reunions. And thus we can be “sorrowful yet always rejoicing.”