A Word about Our Help from Psalm 124

Today I want to share a word about Our Help as I comment on Psalm 124:

If it had not been the LORD who was on our side -- let Israel now say -- if it had not been the LORD who was on our side, when our enemies attacked us, then they would have swallowed us up alive, when their anger was kindled against us; then the flood would have swept us away, the torrent would have gone over us; then over us would have gone the raging waters. Blessed be the LORD, who has not given us as prey to their teeth.We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we have escaped. Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth.

A HAND UP:

Sometimes people just need a little help. As I read the 124th Psalm, I was reminded of  the testimony of a young lady who was a client of a food bank operated by the ministry which I serve as director.

This young lady was a single mother who was unemployed and receiving what we used to call "food stamps" to help feed her children. One day she was blessed to be hired at a local pharmacy. She had a full-time job, but her starting pay was not very high, and yet she was glad to have the work. Then she learned that she was earning too much money to receive the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program funds. And, you guessed it, her take home pay was not sufficient to pay her rent, utilities, and also buy groceries.

Fortunately for her, someone mentioned the food bank our ministry operates, and with the support she received there, she was able to keep working and not return to SNAP. She needed a hand-up, not a handout and I am grateful to God that we were able to assist her.

HELPLESS, HAPLESS, AND HOPELESS:

While this young lady only needed a little assistance, the Psalmist saw a different reality in the life of Biblical Israel. Instead of a simple hand-up, he clearly saw that without God’s intervention, Israel would have been utterly defeated. He described their potential fate without God in stark terms: swallowed-up; overwhelmed; swept away; ensnared; prey for vicious animals. Without God, Israel was hapless, helpless, and hopeless. The Psalmist wanted Israel to remember from whence their help came. 

One of the most besetting of Israel’s besetting sins was that they continually forgot that God won all of their battles for them. God chose them to be His people, He saved them from famine, He delivered them from slavery in Egypt, He parted the waters, He defeated kings, He laid waste to Jericho, and He gave them the Promised Land. Without God they wouldn’t have even been a people, or at best, they would have been an enslaved and impoverished one. They owed absolutely everything to God, and His actions on their behalf. He was their help, and even more than their help, He was the very essence of their existence.

The Psalmist knew the history of his people, Israel. He knew how they forgot their deliverance from Egypt when they complained about the mana which God freely provided to them. He knew about their rebellious fear at Kadesh-Barnea when they reneged on entering the Promised Land because the inhabitants of the land were so powerful, forgetting that their God had destroyed the armies of Egypt which was the Superpower nation of their day. He knew that they forgot that God had conquered Jericho as they went out in overconfidence and exceeded their orders by attacking Ai and how the result was that they suffered a bloody defeat. He knew that they had not driven the Canaanites out of the land as God had instructed and empowered them to do and he knew about the cycle of sin, oppression, and deliverance that resulted. He knew how this had consumed them and their relationship to God before they demanded a king of their own, just like all the other nations of the world. 

The Psalmist knew how much Israel needed God, and he knew how they often forgot about their reliance on Him, time and time again. And, he wanted his people to remember their God, because He was their Help and without Him they’d be utterly and totally lost.

OUR HELP:

If the Psalmist could have looked forward to today, he would have seen how the church has developed a poor memory also. It is easy for us to criticize Biblical Israel for their poor memory and their failed walk with God, but we, too, forget what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 6:11, “And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” 

If it were not for the Blood of Jesus and the filling of the Holy Spirit, we would be just like Old Testament Israel and the Sadducees, Pharisees, and Zealots of the Gospels. The members of the 21st Century church must humble themselves and realize, literally, that “there but by the grace of God go I.”

Like Biblical Israel, we too, would suffer a horrendous fate without the help of Our God. We too would be swallowed-up; overwhelmed; swept away; ensnared; prey for vicious animals. Without God, we, like Israel, would be hapless, helpless, and hopeless. 

We, too, need to remember from whence our help comes and when we do, we should rejoice with Paul that, “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”

CONCLUSION:

We, like Biblical Israel, need to remember who is Our Help! We need to remember what He has done, and continues to do, for us! Finally, we need to live in grateful obedience to the God who is Our Help!

I am so glad that God is on our side! The question is, are we on His?

Every blessing, 

Dr. Otis Corbitt

A Word about Wisdom Personified

Today I want to share a word about Wisdom Personified as I comment on Proverbs 1:20-33:

Wisdom cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice. At the busiest corner she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:

"How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge? Give heed to my reproof; I will pour out my thoughts to you; I will make my words known to you.

Because I have called and you refused, have stretched out my hand and no one heeded, and because you have ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof, I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when panic strikes you, when panic strikes you like a storm, and your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you. 

Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently, but will not find me.

Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the LORD, would have none of my counsel, and despised all my reproof, therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way and be sated with their own devices. For waywardness kills the simple, and the complacency of fools destroys them; but those who listen to me will be secure and will live at ease, without dread of disaster."

Wisdom Personified

As we consider this passage from Proverbs 1, we need to recognize that God used many different literary genres in the Bible. The fact that God could use literary devices to reveal His message to people should not be a surprise. After all, if humans can write poetry and prose, and if we can use metaphors, similes, parables, drama, and satire, why would we be surprised that God does also? God is far smarter and more sophisticated than we are and we are made in His image and His likeness. God is the Master Communicator and He knows how to speak with His people. In our passage for today, God used the technique of personification to teach about wisdom and folly.

We must be clear that although wisdom is personified in this passage, Proverbs 1 is not referring to the Greek god of wisdom Athena. In verse 29, King Solomon tells us that the foolish rejected “the fear of the LORD.” Wisdom here does not point to itself but to God Almighty. Wisdom is not a god in the Book of Proverbs, but it represents seeing things from God’s point of view.

So, what lessons can be learned from our focal passage for today? 

First, wisdom is available to all who would receive it. Wisdom is not some special gift or knowledge that is only available to a select few, no, it is available to all comers. In fact, we see wisdom depicted as standing in the busiest part of the city, crying out to all that will hear and receive the blessing of the fear of God. This vignette reminds me of a principle I was taught about the physical location of churches. 

It is common to see a sign at a crossroads, a busy intersection, or an exit from a highway which points the way towards a church which is hidden away in a neighborhood out of sight of the main roads. An expert in the field of church building design told me, “If you have to install a sign to point someone to your church, you should have built the church where you are placing the sign.”

Wisdom does not need a sign to point to it. Instead, God has taken the initiative, as He always does, to offer wisdom to all who would partake. Paul, in Romans Chapter 1 tells us that there is enough truth revealed to us in nature to cause us to seek God and His ways. This same truth is presented to us in our passage today.

Next, we see that it is foolish to reject wisdom. Those who do so are simple-minded and they reject knowledge. They are arrogant in their ignorance and they are proud of their rejection of the fear of the Lord. They have refused to hear wisdom and they have rejected it even when it was presented to them.

A Luddite is the term which is used to describe a person who willfully rejects the use of modern, labor-saving technology. The term originated with the bands of English textile workers who destroyed machinery in cotton and woolen mills that they believed was threatening their jobs. While they may have had a point, they were judged by society to be backwards, unsophisticated,  yokels and that is the connotation of the word as it is used today.

A Luddite blindly and viscerally rejects modern technology; in the same way, the foolish blindly and viscerally reject the fear of God and His Wisdom. What is the result of this obstinacy? In a word, disaster!

Disaster is the result of going one’s own way and ignoring the path of wisdom. Consider the terms used to describe what the foolish reap from their stubborn rejection of wisdom: calamity, panic, distress, anguish. To use a well-known phrase, "They that sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind.” In the midst of that storm, the foolish will seek the help of God, they will finally see wisdom, but it will be too late. The human consequences of sin are real, and they will be experienced. Humanly, once the dice are cast there is no taking them back. We will reap what we sow. 

The good news, however, is that there is hope in addition to our temporal reality. As this passage concludes, “For waywardness kills the simple, and the complacency of fools destroys them;  but those who listen to me will be secure and will live at ease, without dread of disaster.” Or as James put it, “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.”

When our children were still in high school, one of their friends had a part-time job at a pizza restaurant. We often saw him standing by the road waving a banner with the meal deal of the day, trying to attract new customers to the establishment. God presents wisdom in the same light; holding high a banner in the middle of main street, offering a blessing to all who would partake.

Are you willing to partake of the blessing of wisdom?

Every blessing,

Dr. Otis Corbitt

A Word about Demonic Wisdom

Today I want to share a word about Demonic Wisdom as I comment on James 3:13-4:8:

Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is dread of disaster. 

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. 

You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? 

But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

Which Type of Wisdom?

My wife and I often remind each other of  sayings that we have heard over our lives together. We use them to punctuate life events or to give ourselves a reason to laugh over a situation we are facing. 

One of those sayings comes from the John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd film “The Blues Brothers,” in which they were told by a waitress that the establishment where they hoped to play blues music had “Both kinds of music: Country and Western!” 

Well, I guess you had to be there . . .

When we look at wisdom from the Scriptures, we most often study God’s Wisdom, and we should. We must note, however, that there is another type of wisdom which is the total opposite of God’s type. James refers to this type of wisdom as  earthly, unspiritual, and demonic. In our focal passage for today, we see that both types of wisdom want our allegiance, and that James teaches us the ramifications of following demonic wisdom.

The first thing we will notice about demonic wisdom is that it is 180 degrees out of phase with God’s Wisdom. It is as far as the East is from the West! God’s Wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. This is a wonderful word picture! Contrast it with demonic wisdom, however; which is bitter, jealous and full of selfish ambition, grasping and covetous, and quarrelsome to the point of murder! God’s Wisdom is light, but demonic wisdom is full or darkness!

Another aspect of demonic wisdom is that it is wasteful and it is the epitome of poor stewardship. Instead of being a wise manager of what God gives us and using those resources to bless Him and to do His ministry, and also to bless our families, communities, and churches, we waste God’s bounty on our own lusts and passions. Those who follow demonic wisdom are walking in the steps of the prodigal son, and the end result will be the same!

We also need to note God’s Holy Jealousy which is revealed here. God created us and He loves us. He was gracious to us and He sent His Uniquely Begotten Son to pay for our sins and to restore us to fellowship with Him. God paid a high price for His love for us, and He will not stand for His people cheating on Him with the world in an adulterous relationship with demonic wisdom. This is serious business to God and it should be a serious issue for us as well!

Finally, as I said above, it doesn’t end well when we are friends with the world and when we adopt demonic wisdom as our philosophy. The Prodigal Son fell far and he fell hard because of his dalliance with the ways of the world. The same is true for us today, but there is also good news!

We Must Choose Wisely!

As James tells us, 

“But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”

As the old saying goes, “A word to the wise is sufficient!” To quote another movie, this time an Indiana Jones flick, “You must choose . . .  wisely!”

Every blessing,

Dr. Otis Corbitt

A Word about Doing All Things Well

Today I want to share a word about Doing All Things Well as I comment on Mark 7:24-37:

From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet.

Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."

But she answered him, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." Then he said to her, "For saying that, you may go--the demon has left your daughter." So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened." And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.

Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, "He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.""

Doing All Things Well

Churches often send questionnaires to potential staff members. Along with logical questions about personal testimony and doctrine, some of the questions can seem a little strange at times. One pair of questions I saw once asked in succession: How would you describe yourself? How would your peers describe you?

Now, the first question in that pair was very logical but I am not too sure about the second! The pastor who received that questionnaire answered it: “I hope my peers would agree with my description of myself, but I think you will have to ask them!”

It would be fascinating, though quite possibly embarrassing, for us to know what our peers actually think of us. We do know, however, what the people who walked with Jesus thought of Him: "He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak."

Wow, would to God that everyone who looked into our lives would say, “He has done everything well!”

The thing I have come to understand, however, is that the definition of “doing all things well,” can differ, depending upon who you may be talking to. As one pastor who moved from a large city to a rural area once told me, “When I was in [the big city], if a church held a community outreach event it had to be absolutely excellent. If it wasn’t done to a very high standard, people had many other churches to choose from, and they would just go down the road to the next offering. Here, people are not as concerned about how well you do an event as much as they see that you care enough to do the event.” This is similar to the catch-phrase, “People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.”

So, what about Jesus? Why did He seem to be “hiding His light under a basket?”

Simply this, Jesus did not come to heal people. He came to seek and save the lost souls of this world. He “came to the Jews first, and then to the Greeks” as Paul says in Romans 1.

He had a mission to accomplish, but that did not prevent Him from being kind and loving those who did not understand that mission. In truth, no one alive at that time understood His mission, and so Jesus had to be patient with all kinds of people, Jews and Gentiles, His disciples and His critics, those seeking salvation and those seeking miracles.

We should live our lives so that people will say that we do all things well as we serve God. It is a difficult balancing act to pursue a mission, while at the same time relating to people who don’t understand your mission, but Jesus did it, and since He sent us to the Holy Spirit to empower our ministry we can, too. 

As the advertising slogan goes, “If it were easy, anyone could do it.” Seek the help of the Holy Spirit, and while it will probably never be easy, it can be done!

Every blessing,

Dr. Otis Corbitt

A Word about the Greatest Gift of All

Today I want to share a word about the best gift of all as I comment on 1 Corinthians 13.

This is the last of four episodes in which we have explored the gifts of the Holy Spirit. 

Previously we have looked at how Christians are empowered by the Spirit for ministry, and we have also discussed the free gift of the Holy Spirit and the spiritual gifts He gives us. The last time we were together we explored the sign gifts.

All of God’s gifts to His children are wonderful, but the best of all, according to Paul is the gift of loving people the way God does. In 1 Corinthians 12:31, Paul instructed the Church at Corinth, 

But earnestly desire the higher gifts.
And I will show you a still more excellent way. 

THE WAY OF LOVE:

Love, while probably the most common topic for movies, books, and songs, is also one of the most misunderstood topics of those literary genres.  An example of this is the infamous line from the movie Love Story:  "Love means never having to say you're sorry." Huh? What does that even mean? 

A better way of describing love was told to me by a Warrant Officer in my National Guard unit years ago. He had just lost his mother to a long and difficult illness, and he said to me with tears in his eyes, “Chaplain, no one ever loves you like your mother.”

Love is also often a precious commodity in the church.  It was for good reason that evangelist Vance Havner once said: "You can be as straight as a gun barrel theologically, and just as empty spiritually."  

Paul taught the Corinthian church and us about God's love.

LOVE ENRICHES:  

 Verses 1-3 say:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

There is only one goal for God's type of love. It isn’t to get something in return for the love given. It isn’t to make a show of bestowing love. It is solely intended to enrich to one loved.

My brother-in-law once said, “Now that we don’t farm the way we used to when we needed large families to all the work we do today with machines, there is no logical reason to have kids; you have them to give love to them."

Paul, who was quite gifted in ministry and leadership made a powerful point here: It does not matter what gift you if you don’t have love. You may be a great leader but without love you will be ineffective. You may be a great supporter but without love your support is useless. You may do miracles but without love they'll just be a sideshow. A skilled surgeon who doesn't care can cause death just like one who isn’t skilled.

 God is our Model of enriching love by: 

• Creating the world.

• Sending His Only Begotten Son.

• Sending His Holy Spirit.

• Preparing mansions for us in Heaven.

LOVE EDIFIES:

Verses 4-7 say:

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

To reach its goal, love must act; love is not a feeling, it is action. We may not feel affectionate about someone you but can still love them because love is a behavior, not an attitude. In our youth group in my home church, we had a saying, "You don't have to like me, but you do have to love me."

 Love acts in the best interest of the one who is loved. Love does not lose patience and it allows for mistakes. Love gives the benefit of the doubt, and it doesn't jump to conclusions. Love is empathetic and helps us feel the way others do.

God is our Model of enriching love in action:

• When we hated Him, He loved us.

• When we slandered Him, He gave us His truth in the Bible.

• When we abandoned Him, He chose us.

 The truth is that God loves us even better than a mother does.

LOVE ENDURES: 

Verse 8 tells us:

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.

 Verse 13 also affirms this idea:

 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Love has a goal, a method, and a guarantee. True love will never end. Infatuation, lust, and affection fade, but love doesn't. You can't really fall out of God’s type of love because while our abilities and gifts will end; love won't 

Love will never end because it is a gift from God. This kind of love comes only from God, who is our Model of enduring love. God is eternal, and so is His love. We must turn to God for this type of love.

LOVE GROWS WITH EXPERIENCE: 

Verses 9-12 teach us:

For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

Loving like this is not a natural act. Naturally we are selfish, and self-centered. Naturally we prefer it if other others don’t succeed (less competition for us). In our natural state, we would make this hell on earth. All we have to do to prove that is to point the ethnic cleansing that took place in Hitler’s Germany, in the former Yugoslavia, and in Rwanda. 

Loving like this is not a natural act so it takes time to learn to love like God does. We must be taught and nurtured, and we must practice, and make mistakes. We must grow in the Lord. 

For all of this we need: to be transformed by God, by being saved in Jesus. We need the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome our own weakness. We need the willingness to be taught and corrected. 

Paul is our model of growing love. In Him we see the power of God to place the love of God in our hearts and the practice of God’s love in our lives. 

He went from being an accomplice to murder and a persecutor of the Church to becoming the first Christian missionary and to writing half of the New Testament including this treatise on love we have examined today.

Paul could not have such an amazing life change without the power of God, which He gave to Paul through the Holy Spirit. I am grateful that this same gift and same power is available to us, God’s people today.

CONCLUSION:

Seek the gift of loving the way God does. It will bless Him! It will bless you! It will bless those God puts in your life! What better gift could we want? 

Every blessing, 

Dr. Otis Corbitt