Editorial
From the Newsletter of Revesby Presbyterian Church
March 2010
Rev Dr Peter Barnes
Psalm 105 is an historical Psalm which recalls with gratitude God’s gracious dealings with His people Israel down through the ages. It was He who promised great things to the patriarchs, and who accordingly brought their descendants out of bondage in Egypt and into the Promised Land of Canaan. So the Psalm begins: ‘Oh give thanks to the Lord; call upon His name; make known His deeds among the peoples!’ The very first verse exhorts us to praise, prayer, and proclamation – alliteration no less! – and all because of what God has done in the history of His covenant people. As Charles Spurgeon has commented: ‘Memory is never better employed than upon the things that God has done.’
Our first joyous task is praise: ‘Oh give thanks to the Lord’. God’s people are to be a grateful people. One of the marks of the unbeliever is that he has some idea of God but does not honour Him as God or give thanks to Him (Rom.1:21). Ingratitude is the mark of unbelief. G. K. Chesterton once mused that ‘The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has no one to thank.’ Life becomes only an unfulfilling anti-climax. Our best moments as Christians are surely those when we can sing from our hearts: ‘Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name!’ (Ps.103:1)
We ought to praise the Lord for His mercies and benefits to us (Ps.103:1-5), for the goodness of creation which points to the kindness of the Creator (Ps.104), for God’s leading of His people to grant them His gracious promises (Ps.105), for His kindly and holy chastening of His wayward and ungrateful people (Ps.106), and for His special love to those in distress who cried out to Him (Ps.107). The happiest New Testament book is possibly the epistle to the Philippians where Paul tells us repeatedly: ‘Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice’ (Phil.4:4). And why not? When we were dead in Adam, the One who was in the form of God emptied Himself in order to take on the role of a servant, and to die the worst of deaths that we might know the greatest blessing (Phil.2:6-8). When we find ourselves with no righteousness of our own from the law, faith enables us to know righteousness in Christ (Phil.3:8-9). In Him our lowly decaying body will be transformed to be like His glorious body (Phil.3:20-21). It is grievous that so often we deserve the barbed rebuke of Christ directed at the nine lepers who were happy to receive good things from His hand but did not return and give thanks to God. They were shown up by a Samaritan; we may well be shown up by a similar outsider (see Luke 17:11-19).
Our second joyous task is prayer: ‘call upon His name’. Yet so we do not pray, or we pray in such a way that we would be ashamed if anyone should overhear us. Or we try to manufacture the right kind of spiritual-sounding prayer. Not only at the beginning of our Christian lives but all through them our prayer ought to be that of the disciples: ‘Lord, teach us to pray’ (Luke 11:1). An appropriate and helpful way to begin is to do what the Psalmist does in Psalm 105 – recount the goodness of God in times past. Remember your sins, remember how you tried to hide them, remember your reluctance to come to Christ, and remember His irresistible grace when He brought you to understand and embrace His Son as Lord and as Saviour.
On 21 December 1807 John Newton died, having first composed his own epitaph. The first half of it reads: ‘John Newton, clerk, once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he had long laboured to destroy.’ A grateful man prays, and that is one of the lessons of Newton’s life.
Our third joyous task is proclamation: ‘make known His deeds among the peoples!’ This is there in the Old Testament, where there is a chosen nation in a chosen land, and where the word for ‘heathen’ could also be used as the word for ‘Gentile’. When David told Goliath what he would do to him, he announced that one effect would be that ‘all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel’ (1 Sam.17:46). This was no petty squabble between tribal deities. The honour and glory of the God who created heaven and earth was a stake. Similarly, at the consecration of the temple in Jerusalem, Solomon prayed: ‘when a foreigner, who is not of Your people Israel, comes from a far country for Your name’s sake (for they shall hear of Your great name and Your mighty hand, and of Your outstretched arm), … hear in heaven Your dwelling place and do according to all that which the foreigner calls to You …’ Christ is no longer to be regarded simply as the King of Israel but as the King of heaven and earth. We are to be a missionary people because God is a missionary God whose deeds ought to made known to all nations and all peoples.
Praise, prayer, and proclamation – because we need to be reminded and the world needs to know what God has done in His world.
With warmest regards in Christ,
Peter Barnes