get in the plate

Pastor Bob (senior pastor at 'my' church) has been preaching a series on Stewardship. Today he preached out of 2 Cor. 9. I was reminded of this song and shared it with the high school students in SES (Sunday Evening Study) this evening. Its a fun song, but also serious...chew on it (and 2 Cor. 9 is a good chapter to read too).

As the music starts to play
we mechanically obey
and scrape our scraps off in the plate so God can eat.

10% so very small
most don’t feel it though at all
just a fulfillment of a holy quota we guess we should keep

we believe what God desires is our money
the whole gift of giving we’ve completely missed
and while my solution may at first seem funny
if you truly want to give God what He wants I must insist

get in the plate
blow the ushers mind
when the offering plate is passed just climb in one foot at a time
get in the plate
try something new
Jesus won’t accept your offering until you’ve offered you

we’ll need forklifts in the aisles
just to move the bodies piled
in the offering plate so high it’ll scrape the roof
no one ever will complain
singing [something i can't understand] ....

but this dream world is in [can't understand these lyrics]
do you tithe to ease the guilt you feel inside?
death to self is what the gospel is demanding
so put your patronizing gifts away get in the plate and ride

get in the plate
blow the ushers mind
when the offering plate is passed just climb in one foot at a time
get in the plate
try something new
Jesus won’t accept your offering until you’ve offered you

we believe what God desires is our money
the whole gift of giving we’ve completely missed
and while my solution may at first seem funny
if you truly want to give God what He wants I must insist

get in the plate
blow the ushers mind
when the offering plate is passed just climb in one foot at a time
get in the plate
try something new
Jesus won’t accept your offering until you’ve offered you

“Get in the Plate”
Everybodyduck

lovingkindness

"For His lovingkindness is everlasting."
Psalm 136:1b,2b,3b,4b,5b,6b,7b,8b,9b,10b,11b,12b,13b,
14b,15b,16b,17b,18b,19b,20b,21b,22b,23b,24b,25b,26b

Yes, it says it that many times in one Psalm.

Recently I read a book called "More Than Meets The Eye" by Richard Swenson. It talks about God's Creation and how awesome it is and continually points out that God did that, and God is even MORE AWESOME than His creation. His creation is simply a display of His glory, not His glory itself.

The book focuses on many parts of creation, but it spent a lot of time on the cosmos: energy, force, matter, newtonian physics, einstein's theories of relativity (which are probably true), string theory, stars, time, space, light and other stuff. i loved reading it and learning more about God's creation. it even inspired me to do some more research on what happens when you go the speed of light and time travel etc. pretty incredible stuff.

but, i've been reading through the psalms, and a couple days ago i got to psalm 136. when i read verse 5 it hit me. v3a says, "Give thanks to the Lord of lords..." v5 is a continuation of this thanksgiving and says, "to Him who by understanding made the heavens...".

i just read a book that helped me understand the heavens better. "better". maybe i understand them 0.0384%. in that book i read about newton and kepler and einstein trying to understand the heavens. as einstein himself was figuring out more about quantum physics he was appalled that things would work the way they do. so much so that he said he would "rather be a cobbler, or even an employee in a gambling house, than a physicist." (p136) even the genius einstein couldn't understand how things work.

but God. God, in His INFINITE understanding...not only understands the universe--He created it by His understanding!

He created and understands black holes, superstrings, why gravity exists, how time correlates with space, how to make stars (all the different kinds of them), why venus spins the opposite way of the other planets, antimatter, the weak nuclear force, the strong nuclear force, quantum physics...

He understands it all. but even though Creation declares His glory (ps 19), it does not declare it fully. His glory is infinite. His understanding is infinite. Creation is only a partial, a fractional, display of how much understanding God has. surely His understanding was not exhausted by Creation!

His understanding is impressive! It is worth being in awe of! His Creation is incredible! It is worth being in awe of!

BUT, that's NOT the point of this Psalm!!! Basic reading skills tell us that. The phrase "For His lovingkindness is everlasting" is repeated twenty-six times in this psalm! God's lovingkindness is the focus of this psalm! God's lovingkindness is EVERLASTING! Creation as we know it will be changed and destroyed. It is not everlasting. God's lovingkindness is.

if God's Creation is worthy of awe...His lovingkindness is infinitely more so.

Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good,
for His steadfast love endures forever.
Give thanks to the God of gods,
for His steadfast love endures forever.
Give thanks to the Lord of lords,
for His steadfast love endures forever;

to Him who alone does great wonders,
for His steadfast love endures forever;
to Him who by understanding made the heavens,
for His steadfast love endures forever;
to Him who spread out the earth above the waters,
for His steadfast love endures forever;
to Him who made the great lights,
for His steadfast love endures forever;
the sun to rule over the day,
for His steadfast love endures forever;
the moon and stars to rule over the night,
for His steadfast love endures forever;

Psalm 136:1-9 (ESV)

desire

for the last couple years or so i've considered myself a "Christian Hedonist". some people who are older than me find that term offensive or crude. i don't really blame them. in the past the term "hedonist" was used a lot and understood to relate to people who sought sexual pleasure at any cost. the true definition of the term is simply "a person whose life is devoted to the pursuit of pleasure and self-gratification" (dictionary.com). so, it's not strictly related to sexual pleasure, instead it's the general pursuit of pleasure.

the duo of Sam Storms ("one thing" and "pleasures evermore") and John Piper (mostly his sermon "Quest: Joy; Found: Christ") convinced me of the truth of Christian Hedonism. Basically it's based on the observation that all people pursue pleasure. all people. no matter who you are. ultimately, the thing you are pursuing is pleasure. that's how we are wired. you can try to deny it, but the reason you'd try to deny that you seek pleasure is so that you can be humble, perhaps because God called you to be humble. and why do we humble ourselves? because we are following Him. and why do we follow Him? so that we can enter His presence for eternity. and Psalm 16:11 tells us that in His presence is fullness of joy, at His right hand are pleasures evermore (see also James 4:10).

even in Matthew 16 where Christ tells us to deny ourselves...denying yourself is NOT the ultimate goal. look at the passage again. the ultimate goal is to find your life, to preserve your life, to have eternal life. which, again, ends in pleasures evermore.

I also see it ALL over the Scriptures. Most notably Psalm 119. I love Psalm 119. William Wilberforce had this Psalm memorized (all 176 verses) and would recite it as he walked to and from work. I want the same attitude this psalmist had.

Recently I was introduced to Jimmy Needham. An amazing musician with a HEART (desire) for Christ. His songs are amazing and chock-full of allusions to Scripture. Check out the first verse to his song "For Freedom" (itself an allusion to Gal. 5:1)

oh to be
delighted by You
and to see
the colors of
Your Train
and to be
freed by You
it would be
it would be
it would be
my claim to fame
so rejoice my friend
because my friend
you've got a Friend indeed
yeaaaha....
it is for freedom He set us free.

Jimmy Needham
"For Freedom"

"oh to be, delighted by You" is my desire. my hope. my aim. as i grow, i am more and more convinced that the more i fall in love with Christ, the more i am delighted by Him, the more i find my pleasure in Him...then i will realize how pale and even putrid sin is. often times sin looks good to us. but, as Sam Storms says in his book "Pleasures Evermore", "Sin becomes ugly and is subject to defeat only when viewed in light of Christ's beauty."

my desire is to fall in love with Christ. to find my pleasure in Him.

look how beautiful our God is...

"the colors of Your train" is an allusion to Isaiah 6 where we see "the train of His robe filling the temple", a magnificent picture of our God. the colors would be a picture of the beauty and multifaceted-ness (that's a word, right?) of God's glory. A train is a picture of royalty. The bigger a king's train, the more majestic and royal he is. Our God's train FILLS the temple. not just any temple. this is the temple in Heaven, the temple of the one, true, Creator God! His train is HUGE, a picture of His superior royalty and grandeur.

He is worthy. i pray that i would be delighted by Him, that i would open my eyes to see Him. and when i see Him as He truly is...how can i not respond by pursuing Him with everything i have?