Scripture Reflections – February 2025
2/25/2025 (222) Good morning,
Psalm148, Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise him in the heights! 2 Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his hosts! 3 Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars! 4 Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens! 5 Let them praise the name of the Lord! For he commanded and they were created. 6 And he established them forever and ever; he gave a decree, and it shall not pass away. 7 Praise the Lord from the earth, you great sea creatures and all deeps, 8 fire and hail, snow and mist, stormy wind fulfilling his word! 9 Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars! 10 Beasts and all livestock, creeping things and flying birds! 11 Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth! 12 Young men and maidens together, old men and children! 13 Let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is exalted; his majesty is above earth and heaven. 14 He has raised up a horn for his people, praise for all his saints, for the people of Israel who are near to him. Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord! There is no doubt in the purpose of the last few Psalms. Praise! Praise! Praise! I am always fascinated by the call on all of creation to praise the Lord. In this Psalm there is praise from the heavens and heights, angels, hosts, sun, moon, stars. There is praise from the creation on earth, sea creatures, fire, snow, wind, mountains, trees, beasts, all in praise simply because they are God’s creation and it is God’s creation that reveals the existence of God (Psalm 8) and the very reason for their creation is to give God glory and praise.
The final act of praise is from all people, kings, princes, rulers, men, and women. It is one of our acts of sacrifice and obedience, an act of joy and thanksgiving to sing the praises of God. Praise is not only due to God because of who He is and what He does, but it also helps us to remember that we are not our own, but have been bought with a price (1 Corinthians 6.19-20). When we praise we yield our lives over to God’s Lordship and authority. We die to self in order to live to God (Romans 6.11). Praise Him today and forevermore that He might be known to all and that those who do not yet know Him may come to praise Him.
Pastor Ed
2/22/2025 (221) Good morning,
As we continue reflection on prayer and the Scriptures, let us consider how the Bible teaches us to pray.
Matthew 7.7-11, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
A large portion of the Sermon on the Mount includes Jesus teaching on prayer (Matthew 6-7) and the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray (Luke 11.1). The Bible is filled with examples of prayer to help us in the life of prayer. In Matthew 7.7-11 Jesus teaches that we sometimes fail to find what we desire simply because we fail to pray; we do not ask, seek, or knock. The promise is that God will give good things if we pray. We are to persist in prayer! Ask God. Address God in all things. Seek the Lord daily. Knock! Consider prayer a knock at the door. What might be opened for us in hope and thanksgiving? Asking, seeking, and knocking are all the same in the sense that we pursue God in prayer. We are seeking to know Him and His path for life. What is on your heart today? Take it to the Lord in prayer. No need for impressive words, no need to worry that we do not know how to pray. In fact, sometimes words are not needed, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Romans 8.26). Enter into a position of prayer: examples would be addressing God verbally, reading Scripture, closing eyes, bowing one’s head, whatever it takes to get our hearts and minds focused on God that we may ask, seek, and knock. God will answer and God will provide.
Pastor Ed
2/20/2025 (220) Good morning,
In our last reflection we looked at how Scripture might help direct our prayers. Today we shall examine a Scripture passage and let it shape our prayer!
Psalm 121 I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? 2 My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. 3 He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. 4 Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. 5 The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand. 6 The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. 7 The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. 8 The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore.
The Psalm does not directly address God as we might normally think about a prayer. What it does do is reveal the character of God which might direct our prayer. In essence, the Psalm is a prayer in the form of a confession/affirmation of who God is and what God does!
One of the first things we might do is notice particular words and phrases that touch us right away. I notice my eyes looking to the hills, seeking help, and that the Lord is my helper. Prayer may begin with praise of God – “Lord, we praise You because You help us each day. You are the Creator of heaven and earth and there is none like You. We confess that sometimes our eyes do not look in the right place. We are distracted by the world and the rhetoric of vain thoughts. Forgive us and direct our eyes to You alone.”
The second part of the Psalm that we might take to heart is the word “keep”. God keeps us. What might we imagine in those words? God is a keeper who never slumbers or sleeps. He is always there. He keeps us from harm, no sun or moon, no evil, always there in our coming and going. “Lord, we praise and thank You for the promise of keeping us. You are our refuge and strength, our provider and protector. Forgive our lack of trust in these promises from the Psalm. May we start anew with confident trust and faithfulness that You are keeping our life and there is nothing that can separate us from Your love and Your keeping.”
It simply takes a little thought and imagination to utilize the gift of God’s Word to direct us in prayer. This is one way to pray, not the only way, but I trust it is a wonderful way to offer prayer to God.
Pastor Ed
2/19/2025 (219) Good morning,
Joshua 1.7-8, “Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. 8 This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.
One of the ways I think about prayer is to pay attention to the intersection of the Word of God and our lives – events, circumstances, feelings, discernments, etc. Scripture feeds our prayers and our prayers help feed our understandings of Scripture as well as our lives. Scripture assists us to find the language we need to express our life experience. When we feel weak or discouraged, Joshua reminds us to pray for strength and courage. When we wonder about how to follow Jesus, God tells us to be careful “to do according to all the law”. These are the things of prayer, of discipleship, and faithfulness to God’s Word. So, Joshua, like Psalm 1, tells us to meditate on the Word day and night and repeats the exhortation to be careful to do the Word. When I think of a way to keep the Word “in our mouth”, what better way than to utilize that Word in prayer! Some examples would be to pray the Word of God verbatim (any Psalm or direct prayer), or rephrase a text in our own words, or pray by a biblical topic. We seek the words to express praise and thanks, and to open our hearts to God for all things. We offer ourselves in prayer to the God who makes all things possible.
Pastor Ed
2/11/2025 (218) Good morning,
Genesis 4.7, If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”
We always need to be careful to not pluck one verse out of the Bible without taking care to see how it fits into its context. So, this verse is amid the story of Cain and Abel. Cain’s offering was not received while Abel’s offering was. We have no specifics behind why one was regarded worthy and the other not, but we do know that it led to anger and disappointment in Cain. This brings us to 4.7. The assumption I believe we can make in this verse is that Cain’s offering was not done well, was not authentic, was not an offering of the first and the best of what he could have offered. Because he did “not do well, sin is crouching at the door”. This is such a vivid image of sin set to pounce! I imagine a large cat, not a house cat, but a mountain lion sneaking up to the door of our hearts. Sin is a predator, not unlike the devil who prowls around like a roaring lion ( 1 Peter 5.8) seeking to devour.
We normally think of sin as that which we do against God’s commands or what we fail to do, and rightly so, but there is another aspect of sin, revealed in this text, sin depicted as a predator. As we look back at the serpent, he was more subtle and deceptive while this image of sin is that of an aggressive posture waiting to attack us. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s command, sin grew into fear, leading to shame, and blaming others. Sin was obviously passed on to Cain and Abel. While we do not have a clear motive for Cain’s action, it is clearly sinful even prior to having the commandment not to murder. It is known in Cain’s heart that he has done wrong. Romans 8.7 speaks to the mind of Cain, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.” May we set our minds on the Spirit and God’s Word, that crouching sin may not have power over us.
The final phrase of Genesis 4.7 is that we are capable of ruling over sin. We have a choice to make in our free will: do well or not do well. Take every thought captive in Christ (2 Corinthians 10.5). Crucify the flesh in Christ (Romans 6.6; Galatians 2.20; 5.24). We cannot do this on our own. We need the sacrifice of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome temptation and sin, the sin that is crouching at the door. Thanks be to God we have the victory in Christ, justified in His work of atonement, and sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
Pastor Ed
2/5/2025 (217) Good morning (with 2 minutes to spare),
Today we consider two verses pertaining to God’s will. We are often questioning God’s will for our lives. The Bible makes clear His will!! Two important distinctions are to do His commandments and be sanctified in Christ by the Holy Spirit.
Deuteronomy 29.29, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”
1 Thessalonians 4.3a, “For this is the will of God, your sanctification”
Looking back over my reflections last year, I wrote about the will of God in a reflection on various Scripture readings that demonstrated God’s will like that above in 1 Thessalonians. I mentioned Romans 12.2 on not being conformed to this world…John 17.3 on knowing God and a couple of other texts. In this reflection I want to take a slightly different slant with Deuteronomy and 1 Thessalonians, to say that in doing the Words of this Law, we are placing ourselves in a position for sanctification. That is to say that obedience is like a boat sail set to catch the wind of the Holy Spirit for sanctification. This relates to a word from Ligonier Ministry on sanctification: “While definitive sanctification is a once-for-all act of God in breaking the bondage of sin in believers’ lives, progressive sanctification is the ongoing work of God’s grace whereby the Holy Spirit enables the regenerate to put sin to death more and more in their lives. The Westminster Shorter Catechism offers the following succinct definition of progressive sanctification: ‘Sanctification is the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness’ (Q&A 34).” [https://learn.ligonier.org/guides/sanctification]
Progressive sanctification, I would think, is more effective when we are obedient to doing God’s Word. God’s will is certainly to follow the Ten Commandments and to do as Jesus taught and to follow all of what God desires of us throughout the Bible. Does it not make sense that the Holy Spirit has a better way with us when we are obedient to do what God has commanded? Is it not sensible to believe that when we meditate on God’s Word (Ps 1), to change my metaphor from sailing to planting, “He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.”? To prosper is to be sanctified, to be made holy, to be set apart for God’s glory!
Deuteronomy 29.29 reveals that part of God’s will is secret, known only to God, and part of God’s will is revealed, in His Word. Ours is not to question the secret will of God but to discern that which has been revealed in Scripture. That takes effort to read and study and then do the Word. That also takes the work of the Holy Spirit in and through that reading, studying, and doing. May the Lord bless us all with His sanctifying work to make us holy as He is holy (1 Peter 1.16).
Pastor Ed
2/3/2025 (216) Good afternoon,
Genesis 3.14-24, The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. 15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
16 To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.”
17 And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; 18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
20 The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. 21 And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
After the forbidden fruit was eaten, God addresses the three characters in the story.
To the serpent, cursed on his belly and eating dust. 3.15 is the first indication of Jesus Christ who will crush the devil when He comes.
To the woman, pain in childbirth. It is not that there would not have been any pain in the garden but that the pain will be multiplied. She will have an “urge” for the husband and he shall rule over her. This certainly offends modern sensibilities as now some women claim they can live without men altogether. In an age seeking “gender equality” the creation order of desire and rule is overturned. God’s design is denied for the sake of no distinctions between male and female. This eventually lends itself to the massive gender confusion of our time which is a push toward things like non-binary or the other “alphabet soup” categories.
To the man, because he did not fulfill his role as head of the relationship (listened and disobeyed), the ground is cursed and therefore, I have to work that much harder now for a summer tomato!
What can we understand from verse 22 that “man has become like one of us”? The way of being like God is to know good and evil. That may mean that man now has the ability to determine for himself what is good and what is evil. This also means that man has the capacity to deny what God has said is good and what is evil. This is the teaching of humanism, for instance, that we determine for ourselves what is good and what is bad. It may be a collective determination or it might be an individual determination. What one might consider good another may think is evil. The point being that God’s law and commands are no longer valid in determining right and wrong with those who think they know better.
This disobedience and its curse has been passed down to all humanity. Only the promise of Gen 3.15 gives hope. So Paul writes in Romans 5.19,”For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” Our righteousness is not from anything we have done, but solely because of what Christ has done on the cross and through the resurrection. One day we will see the tree of life again, “Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates” (Revelation 22.14). What a day that will be!
Pastor Ed
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