January 13, 2019
Hymn 257 - Our times are in Thy hand
Prayer
Have you ever heard or said the phrase “that’s not fair”? Sometimes you’re playing games and someone isn’t playing by rules or someone gets something they don’t deserve. Our Psalm today starts like that. It also gives us guidance of what to do.
Psalm 37:1-7
We aren’t to worry about evildoers, their prosperity and the way they get it. God will take care of that and they will get their consequence.
Now God has given us here five thing we can do instead of worrying about the evildoer.
The first thing we can do is Trust in the Lord. If you have a problem you can trust God. You know God is watching over you and he cares for you. Back when we were in Proverbs we talked about fools trusting in themselves. God calls them fools. Don’t be a fool and trust yourself. Trust God and he will help you.
Secondly we can Delight in the Lord. If we delight in something we get joy or happiness from it. We could delight in many thing, but here we are told to delight in the Lord. People who aren’t saved delight in so many different things that fail them; but the saved can delight in the Lord and he’ll never fail.
I heard this story once about a missionary’s daughter who before she got saved and she heard this verse about delighting in the Lord. She was worried that if she got saved it would be hard to delight in the Lord instead of other things. Eventually she got saved and realized that it wasn’t as hard as she had thought.
Next we are told to Commit to the Lord. If we commit something to the Lord, we have to leave it with Him. A lot of times people will commit something to God and then down the road take in back when things are going wrong. We are able to commit our lives to the Lord. He will guide us.
The fourth lesson is to Rest in the Lord.
Philippians 4:6,7
We can lean on the Lord and have peace especially in trouble. He’s over everything.
Lastly we are to Wait. It can be really hard to wait. Sometimes it seems that God is late but he never is. Mary and Martha probably thought he was, but God had a plan.
We can look at these verses and learn from them. God is always there and is ready to help us in his own timing.
John 8:47-59
In verse forty-six Jesus asked who convinced Him of sin. He had already convicted them all. Sin is obnoxious to God. They couldn’t convict Him although they had tried. He brought them the truth, but they wouldn’t hear because they weren’t of God.
The Jews considered the Samaritans as a lower class and looked down on them. They had noticed something supernatural about Him and tried to put it down as demonic. They were greatly dishonouring Him and didn’t believe what He said was true. They looked at Him as a possessed Samaritan and asked, “How could you even know Abraham?“. Jesus was there in full obedience and sinlessness manifesting God and saying, “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father”.
Darby put verse fifty-six as, “Your father Abraham exulted in that he should see my day, he saw and rejoiced”. Abraham had anticipated that day.
These people didn’t realize the One they were looking at was eternal. He was and is the ever present, self-existing One; the I Am. He was before Abraham. This was another claim of divinity. He came from, was honoured by, and is God. That was all they could take. They picked up stones to throw at the Lord. His time hadn’t come, so He hid and exited the temple.
In this chapter we have seen the rejection of Christ’s words, and in the next one we will see the rejection of His works with the miracle of the blind man. At the beginning of this chapter we found a woman alone with the Lord. At the end of chapter nine we will find a man alone with the Lord.
Hymn 15 - O what a gift the Father gave
Prayer