Stepping in the Light

“Turn us again, O LORD God of hosts, cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved.” Psalm 80:19

At any given time, any group of people will display a prevailing attitude. That attitude may not necessarily be representative of every person in the group, but it will represent the group in general. In the sense of civic interactions, this is true of nations, states, cities, and people groups. In the spiritual realm, this is true of all Christians in general, a particular church, a Sunday school class, a youth group, or a family. Asaph, the writer of this psalm, is asking for God to change the prevailing attitude of the nation of Israel. Much like the prayers of Nehemiah and Daniel, it is likely that Asaph was a very spiritual person whose heart was in tune with God. He had observed the apathy and carnality that had become prominent among his people, and he was asking the Lord to do something about it. As always, the answer is for us to turn to God. If there is going to be a change in a family, a church, a neighborhood, a city, or a nation; it generally begins with one person who becomes burdened enough to turn to God and begin asking that God would turn others to Himself as well. There is nothing wrong with any group of people that could not be remedied by a majority of that group turning to God. If the spirituality of your family, your neighborhood, and your city depended upon you; how spiritual would they be? Since God is looking for someone to be the first one to turn to Him, it really does depend on each one of us. Are you willing to pray, “Turn us again”?

“Will the Lord cast off for ever? and will he be favourable no more? Is his mercy clean gone for ever? doth his promise fail for evermore? Hath God forgotten to be gracious? hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies? Selah. And I said, This is my infirmity: but I will remember the years of the right hand of the most High. I will remember the works of the LORD: surely I will remember thy wonders of old. I will meditate also of all thy work, and talk of thy doings.” Psalm 77:7-12

The Israelites had a rich treasure of miraculous interventions which the Lord God made on their behalf. He chastened Pharaoh with the plagues of Egypt. He parted the Red Sea, and His people walked across on dry ground. He fed them with manna in the wilderness and brought forth water from the rock. He stopped the Jordan River so that the people walked across a dry riverbed. He knocked down the walls of Jericho and drove out the Canaanites before His people in one battle after another. The list of God’s great works on behalf of His people goes on and on. It seems that the writer of this psalm was experiencing some sort of infirmity. His suffering was so intense that he found his faith beginning to waver. In his hour of despair, he made a choice. He said, “I will remember the years of the right hand of the most High,” and, “I will meditate also of all thy work.” When life becomes difficult, it is easy to be overwhelmed with the circumstances. But the darkest hour is the very time that we need to remember the good things that God has done for us and share those victories with others.

“For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another.” Psalm 75:6-7

Many people dream all of their lives of making it to the top. They want to experience the heady rush of adrenaline associated with being well-known, famous, and important. From the first day on the job, they are looking for a promotion. They want a new title, a new office, or a new position. Inevitably, this desire to get ahead drives them to seek the favor of man. The scripture above is clear. East, West, and South are horizontal directions from which we might search for someone to help us become important; but God is above all, and He is the One Who decides who will be promoted and who will not. His prerequisites are different from those generated from the human perspective, and His discernment of personal character and qualifications is unimpeachable. If we are looking for an important person to give us an inroad into the next level, we are looking in the wrong direction. If we are scouring the landscape to find people who will follow us and make us feel more important, we are going about it the wrong way. The One we need to worry about impressing is God. He will decide how far we make it in our career and how high we will be able to climb. Jesus taught us that the servant is greatest of all and that the person who wants to lead must learn to serve. The Lord is going to decide how far we go in life. Are we doing our best to impress Him? 

“But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped. For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. 

Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end.” Psalm 73:2-3, 17

It is almost universally assumed that good things should happen to good people and bad things should happen to bad people. We naturally think that actions should dictate outcomes. This inborn expectation of fairness demands that justice be served posthaste and that rewards be bestowed swiftly and displayed prominently. Our sense of morality leaves little tolerance for exceptions to the rule; and while basic logic causes us to lean toward an inherent insistence that good deeds should be rewarded and evil deeds should be punished, reality does not always reflect this idealistic sense of order and sanity. Sometimes we have to wait a long time for the outcome that we expect, and, in some situations, it seems that a satisfactory result is completely impossible. Bad things can happen to good people. Whenever we see this, we can begin to become disoriented to right and wrong. The psalmist is pointing out our tendency to become fixated on the exceptions and begin to lose our ability to make right decisions in our own lives. In verse seventeen, he indicates what enabled him to make sense of it all; considering the end. One day we will all stand before God. When we consider the judgment day, we can easily decide the way that we should live our lives.

“Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.” Romans 8:26-27

The word infirmities in the passage above refers to feebleness of body or mind. It says that the Spirit of God helps our weakness because we do not know what we ought to pray for. Jesus taught His disciples to pray, “Thy will be done.” Of course, God knows what His will is, but many times we do not. Parts of God’s will are spelled out clearly in the Bible. We know that it is God’s will for every person to be saved. We know that it is His will for us to love others, to forgive, and to be kind. However, there are many specific questions in our lives that the Bible simply does not address. God still wants us to speak to Him and pour out the desires of our hearts, but sometimes we ask for things that are not in His will. In these cases, the Holy Spirit goes between us and God the Father and intercedes on our behalf. What a comfort to know that we have an Intercessor who helps us in our prayers! Even when our feeble attempts to reach out to the Father go astray and we ask for things that are outside of the Father’s will, the Holy Spirit represents us to the Father and asks that the Father would give us what we really need instead of what we want. These verses should encourage us to come boldly to the throne of grace!

“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” Romans 8:1-2

The word condemnation in the verse above refers to a sentence or a verdict. Because of our sins, we are condemned. Not only are we condemned before God; our own conscience condemns us, and sometimes the people around us condemn us for the things that we do wrong. God’s gift of salvation frees us from the eternal consequences of sin, but sin still has a devastating effect on us. If it is true that we are sinners by nature and that we still have our carnal nature after we are saved, how can we ever hope to please God at all? This passage gives us the answer. We must walk in the Spirit. When we are saved, the Holy Spirit takes up residence within our being. God’s Spirit works within us to convict us of sin, to aid us in understanding the Bible, to guide us in making decisions and interacting with others, and to empower us to tell others about the good news of Jesus Christ. Because of the work of the Holy Spirit, we have the continual possibility of pleasing God. In any given situation, we have the ability to choose to do the right thing. When we evaluate our options based on God’s Word and make our choices following the influence of the Holy Spirit, we are walking in the Spirit. As we walk in the Spirit, we will please God, and thus we do not experience condemnation. The secret to the Christian life then, is walking in the Spirit. 

“For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.” Romans 7:22-23

In the first several chapters of the book of Romans, Paul thoroughly demonstrates that every person is a sinner. He makes it clear that we must realize our sinful condition before we can truly understand our need for salvation. After we accept Christ, our sins are forgiven. We are justified in the sight of God. Because of what Jesus did for us on the cross, our sins are no longer recorded to our account. The Holy Spirit comes to live inside of us, and we become a new creature in Christ. In the verses above, however, Paul points out that we still have a problem. The law of sin still reigns in our flesh. We still have our carnal appetites, attitudes, and desires. We are still capable of being angry, bitter, unkind, lustful, untruthful, vengeful, hateful, and even murderous. A careful reading of this chapter reveals a struggle between our old nature and our new nature. Many would regard the Apostle Paul as the greatest Christian who ever lived, and yet he says that the things that he wants to do, he doesn’t do; and the things that he doesn’t want to do, he does. He expresses a deep desire to please God with his actions, but he acknowledges the challenge that he personally faced in dealing with his own carnal nature. If we are going to experience success in obeying God’s Word, we must remember that we will never achieve sinless perfection. Every moment of the day, we face a battle against our sinful nature.

“What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” Romans 6:1-2

Down through the ages, there has been a continuing controversy regarding the work of grace in the life of an individual and what the implications of various interpretations of scripture might mean in a practical sense to our daily lives. Are we saved by grace or by works? Are good works necessary to salvation, or are they the result of an inward transformation? Where do we draw the line between the power of God and human effort? Much effort has been invested in drawing clear lines of distinction between the various theological viewpoints, and yet a great deal of confusion remains in the minds of many. There seems to have been a major shift in recent years towards an emphasis on the grace of God. To some, the grace of God has become the excuse for the modern Christian to live any way that He pleases. Sin doesn’t seem like a big deal to many who claim to be saved because they are relying on the grace of God. Paul addresses this idea in the passage above. He makes it clear that God does not want us to continue to live in sin just because we know that He will forgive us. While it is true that good works do not save us and that God’s grace allows Him to forgive us when we accept Christ as Saviour, it is also true that God does not want us to continue with a sinful lifestyle. When we sin, God wants us to confess and forsake our sin, rather than take advantage of His grace.

“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” Romans 5:1-2

The opposite of peace is war. The carnal nature of man is at war with God because God is holy and man is sinful. Man’s attempts to reach across this great divide have always been futile because no matter how hard we try, we can never eradicate sin from our lives. We are born into this world as sinners, and we would be completely without hope except for the fact that Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay for our sins. God reached out to us first in an effort to end this age-old conflict. Peace with God is now available to us, but we must first be justified (made righteous) by coming to Christ for salvation. Because Jesus paid for our sins on the cross, we are made righteous in the sight of God when we accept His payment by faith. Those who have received Christ’s payment for their sins by faith in Him are counted righteous before God based on Christ’s merit. This means that those who are saved are at peace with God because God no longer sees their sin, but there is more that the Lord has for us to experience. The passage above says that we stand in His grace and rejoice in the hope of glory. We are still sinners, but we must understand that through Christ we are not only saved and justified, but we are the recipients of His grace, and we will one day be glorified. When we get to heaven, our sin nature will be laid aside, and our peace with God will be complete.

“Deliver me from mine enemies, O my God: defend me from them that rise up against me. Deliver me from the workers of iniquity, and save me from bloody men. For, lo, they lie in wait for my soul: the mighty are gathered against me; not for my transgression, nor for my sin, O LORD. They run and prepare themselves without my fault: awake to help me, and behold.” Psalm 59:1-4

David wrote these words when King Saul sent men to watch his house in an attempt to keep him from escaping. Saul’s plan was to kill David, but David had done nothing wrong. Quite the opposite, David had been responsible for the Israelites’ victory over the Philistines and had faithfully served King Saul. David had been singled out by Saul because Saul realized that God’s blessings had been removed from his own life and that the Lord had chosen David to take his place on the throne of Israel. David’s response was to turn to God in prayer. He could have chosen to fight, to defend himself, and to ultimately claim his rightful place as king of Israel. After all, David had already been anointed king by the prophet Samuel. But rather than lashing out at Saul or defending himself against these unwarranted attacks, David turned to God. Though most of us will never experience anything quite so dramatic in our lives, we can certainly learn from David’s example. God is our defense. He knows our situation, and He knows exactly what we need. When everything seems to be against us, we must turn to Him for help.