Psalm 73:26

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My mom has worked as a cardiac rehabilitation nurse for more than 30 years. Most of my life, in fact. That’s just a fancy way of saying she helps people get their hearts back in order or to strengthen people’s hearts. It may be that someone has suffered from chronic heart disease for many years and their heart has over the course of those years become very weakened and even vulnerable, may be dangerous. Or it might be that a sudden heart event, like a heart attack, has weakened their heart and now it needs to be exercised back into working shape.

A weak and vulnerable heart in your chest cavity is a pretty dangerous thing to your body. We’ve been talking about Christian faith as being the heart of the Christian, as the scriptures speak of it. But if we were simply left again to our own sort of English metaphors about the heart we might think that a really strong heart of Christian faith would just be one that has lots of earnest desires, lots of passion, inside of it.

But that’s not how the Scriptures leave us to understand what a strong heart of faith is. Again we can go to the Psalms to take us right to the gold. From Psalm 73, the psalmist confesses:

My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever. (Psalm 73:26)

Our flesh and our heart do get weak. Maybe when we’re young, probably as we grow old, but the sturdiness, the strength, of the Christian heart is not found in our body. It is not found in ourselves. And it’s not even found in faith itself. Faith doesn’t cling onto itself to make it stronger, but rather faith says the Lord, the one who is outside of me and for me, the Lord is the sturdiness the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

The Lord who has created and preserved my body. The Lord who has redeemed my body and soul with the very blood of his Son. The Lord who has raised his Son from the dead to assure me that my very body that grows weak and faint will be raised again also on the last day. That Lord, that one, is the sturdiness of the heart of Christian faith.

God grant that the Lord give us over to that Lord for He is our strength and our portion forever. In the name of Jesus, amen.

Psalm 90:12

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A parent, maybe more likely a grandparent, might walk the young child into a candy store, show them the glass cases full of every kind of candy you can imagine, and then simply ask them “what is your heart’s desire?” What is your heart’s desire? If it were me, they would take me to a butcher shop. And they would show me all of the meat behind the glass case, and say “What is your heart’s desire?”

We recognize in a previous devotion that faith is likened to a heart, to a human heart. However, if Christian faith is likened to a human heart we might simply be left with the common English way of talking about hearts. And especially heart’s desires. And that might be what we want, desperately, or what our passions are. What drives us. Might even have to include our lusts or the things that we want that perhaps we shouldn’t want.

So we know that that’s not what Christian faith is. What do we have to understand then about what heart, what our Christian heart desires?

We learn about this from the psalmist.

Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. (Psalm 90:12)

Hearts of wisdom. That’s what the Bible tells us that Christian heart desires. Not specifically our own desires, our own wants, but it wants to be wise according to the Lord’s wisdom. And this has to do with learning to count.

Learning to number, to number our days not specifically to count up all of our days and see how full we can make each one of them, as if filling up our days with all of the most pleasing things we can think of is the end goal of Christian faith, but rather to count down our days. Rather to count down toward that day when our Lord will take us from this body and life and deliver us finally to the eternal paradise with him forever in eternity.

The Christian heart of faith desires to be taught to be wise according to the numbering of days. Learning to count down toward our Lord’s rescue of us from this body of life to himself and Heaven. Lord, teach us to number our days aright.

Proverbs 3:5

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God has given a pair of organs to your body that take in light and imagery, they behold beauty, you have a pair of them, they sit right about here, they’re called your eyes.

God has given another organ to your body that takes in data, it learns to think about it, and comprehend it, and then use it to make decisions. We call that organ your brain.

The Lord has given us still another important organ to your body, one that pumps blood all throughout the body, it’s made up of two ventricles, and four valves, and it’s attached to a whole system of veins and arteries, and we call that organ your heart.

What is the organ for faith? What is the organ for faith? Now faith isn’t a physical part of your body, but the Bible teaches us to know about faith and it does so by likening faith to an organ of the body. So we read in the Proverbs:

Trust in the Lord [Have faith in the Lord] with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; (Proverbs 3:5)

When the Lord teaches us about faith. He does it by using, among other things, the organ of the heart. To have us learn about what it is to trust or lean entirely on the Lord. Now faith doesn’t have two ventricles and four valves and it’s not connected to veins and arteries that pump physical blood around your body, but knowing about the organ of the heart does help us know something about God given faith.

First of all, just like the heart that sits in your chest cavity and does all kinds of good for your body and life is a gift to you, you didn’t do something to earn it, so also with faith. Faith is gifted. It is gifted to you and to me by God. And secondly just as the heart first receives the life blood of the body into itself and then as it distributes that life blood also then throughout the body, so also with Christian faith. First of all faith receives it passively takes to itself the life blood of Christ. His living and dying and rising again for you and for me. And then the heart of faith pulses that life blood throughout your body and it teaches you to think what is good. And it teaches you to speak and confess what is good and it teaches you to do what is good in God’s eyes and benefit to your neighbor.

Our hearts by their very nature the Lord speaks like this through the prophet as equal our hearts that we are born with are cold, and they are stony, and they are dead toward our neighbor. The Lord says we must have a new heart. And this is exactly what is given to us with faith. A new heart, one that is given the blood of Christ and that then pulses with the blood of Christ that it might be of benefit to our neighbor. Create in me a clean heart, O God. Amen.

Luke 24:27

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Where to start? Maybe you’ve asked yourself that as you stood in front of a giant Thanksgiving Day feast. A table, just a buffet full of food and you have your empty plate in hand. And now there’s so much to to pick from you wondered to yourself. I don’t even know where to begin. Almost like you’re paralyzed from the bounty that is before you.

For the Christian who is eager to read the scriptures, to read God’s Word for themselves, a similar thing can kind of perplex us. Where to begin?

There are thousands of pages, millions of words, God’s words, words about God speaking all that is around us into creation, about God using his words to part great seas so that his people can cross on dry ground. Words that literally become flesh so that our savior can do his work on our behalf. Thousands of pages, millions of words. Where to start?

I often encourage people to consider Jesus’ own words when they’re wondering how to read the Bible. Jesus, with some fraught friends that he meets after he’s raised from the dead, Jesus encourages them in a way about how to read the scriptures.

Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he [Jesus] explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. (Luke 24:27)

Jesus talks about the scriptures like they are a mosaic. Fine piece of art that is made up of tiny little pieces, but all of them serve to give one grand picture. And that picture is Christ himself. So when we read the scriptures I usually encourage an eager reader of the Bible to go straight to one of the records that gives us Jesus, one of the Gospel records that gives us his life, and his suffering, and is dying, and is rising again.

The Gospels aren’t better books than the rest of the books. They’re just the most well suited to give us that whole picture of what the scriptures are all about: Jesus for sinners. Jesus for you and for me.

God grant you an eager heart to read his words, and then ears that are filled, and faith that becomes full of the great mosaic of all of the scriptures. Jesus for you. In his name, amen.

Psalm 130:5

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God has graciously granted me and my wife six children. And I don’t tell you that because I’m about to open up a Go Fund Me page, not yet anyway. I do tell you though because on a daily basis my children astound me. Sometimes with their thoughtfulness, sometimes it’s with their memory, sometimes it’s with their humor, but almost every day they amaze me with their impatience. Almost every day. Maybe many times each day.

I probably don’t even have to belabor you with all of the different ways that can show itself. After I told you I have six kids you might have just gotten tired thinking about the impatience. Maybe the only thing that amazes me even more than their impatience on a daily basis would be my own.

My own impatience.

Whether it’s with them or with work or with members of congregation or brothers or sisters. My own impatience. Maybe you experience the same thing. Impatience at the heart of that sin, there is an arrogance. A pride that assumes that I know exactly what I should have and even more, when I should have it.

Curiously, or maybe not so curiously, the Scriptures put that patience to rest. In fact, they call upon us in faith to do the opposite. To wait. The Psalmist writes

I wait for the Lord. My soul waits, and in his word I have put my hope. (Psalm 130:5)

Waiting is the life of the Christian faith. It is the posture of faith, if you will, it’s how faith sits. It waits. It waits for that which it does not yet have in grasp. In faith, we wait for the things that are uncertain, that we desire, or ask the Lord for. So we might pray while we wait Lord, Thy will be done. And for those things that are most certainly promised to us, faith says Amen. Yes. Yes. It shall be so.

And so in faith granted by God and through His Word we also then pray with the psalmist. I wait for the Lord my soul waits. And in his word I put my hope. In Jesus. Amen.

Luke 9:51

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Have you ever been to Mount Rushmore to see the faces set in stone? My family and I were just there this past summer. I had seen it many times in pictures, but never in person. It seems fitting that the faces of those four men are set in stone. Four men, three of whom were very important in leading our country, our nation, through tumultuous and soul trying wars. They needed stone set faces to see themselves and those they led through very difficult and trying times.

Lent is also a season for us to behold or to look on one with a stone set face. St. Luke describes Jesus in similar terms.

Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem. (Luke 9:51)

Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem. Like stone Jesus could not be wavered or distracted from that work for which his father sent him. To fill up the holy will of his father, obeying all His laws with perfect precision in our place, and then taking that perfect holy life to the cross where he would pay the penalty for the sins of all people. Your sins, my sins. What a gracious stone set face we behold in Jesus.

I encourage you if they’re available in your local congregation, make time for midweek Lenten services with your family, your loved ones. There you will have your eyes drawn to the stone set face of Christ, your Savior, and your ears will be filled with the good news of the work he has accomplished in your place. Believe this for Jesus sake, amen.

Psalm 119:11

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Some of you grew up in the exciting days of the race to space. When the USSR and the United States were on a race to see you could put a man on the moon first. We don’t race too many people into space anymore. However we do receive all kinds of imagery now from space of our own planet where we live here and now.

One of the most fascinating images I’ve seen from the space satellites to the Earth are of the old Roman roadways, specifically in England, that are visible from sixty five thousand miles from us here. Roadways that are visible from sixty five thousand miles away.

We lay road surfaces on the earth. Those roadways are so engraved into the face of the earth that they’re visible from that distance away. Think of that.

Music that is paired with words has a similar exercise or ability in our lives to make something a fabric of us even when we’re not able to see it right in front of us. When the Christian church pairs music with the words and promises of God it’s after a similar exercise to make something so deeply ingrained that we might not even notice it at all times or in every place.

The words of the Psalmist encourage this exercise.

I have hidden your word in my heart. (Psalm 119:11)

When the Christian church pairs then words and promises of God to music. The music is in service to the words. The music is not the headliner it’s not for the sake of itself but rather we use the music to help emblazon and engrave those saving and promising words of God’s love to us in Christ Jesus and to bury them so deeply that they might even be hidden, hidden sometimes in plain sight. We might not always notice them, but that they would be there for us when we are in great joy, when we are in great distress, maybe even on our dying bed that the words and the gracious promises of God might be hidden and stored away in our hearts.

One hymn text comes immediately to mind. On my heart imprint thine image, O Lord. And then the hymn writer says and this the super scripture in this that great headline be Jesus Crucified For Me. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Luke 11:1, Psalms

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I have a son who is currently 2 years old. He’ll soon be three. As you can well imagine he is full, full of things to save these days. Some of them are even understandable, some of them are even intelligible. He always knows what he is trying to say. He’s very confident about what he’s trying to express, but his vocabulary at this point is incomplete or it’s hard for him to articulate it, or use the right words. His word bank, his vocabulary, is constantly being filled up. And that happens by him listening to the words that are read to him or the conversations that are had with him or even around him. Even if it’s not being spoken to him. His word bank is constantly being filled and in this way he is being taught to speak.

Curiously Jesus own disciples, his adult disciples, ask for this very same child like tutoring. They ask to be taught to speak, to speak to the Lord. They say Lord teach us to pray. (Luke 11) Teach us to speak. They’re literally asking for their own word bank to be filled up so that their mouths might be taught to enunciate who God is and how God is for them and for their own benefit. In this instance Jesus teaches them a prayer that’s fairly familiar. He teaches them the Lord’s Prayer.

But one could properly say there’s an entire book of the scriptures that is a word bank for talking to God. The Book of the Psalms is like one giant prayer book and with it the Lord speaks and has written even for our benefit so that our word bank, that our vocabulary in prayer might be built up with the Lord. So that we might be capable of speaking of who the Lord is. The one who has created the heavens and the earth. So that we might be right and correct in speaking about who we are, those who are sinful, who’s sin is always before the Lord. And finally that we might speak confidently and certainly about the works that God has done for us and for our benefit. Oh bless the Lord oh my soul and forget not all his benefits. The one who heals diseases, who redeems life from the pit.

What a gracious gift God gives a World Bank that he builds our vocabulary for speaking with him. Oh Lord open my lips and my mouth will show forth your praise. Amen.

Luke 24:27

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Are you taking a vacation in 2020? Maybe you’re still living off of the great memories of last year’s vacation. Perhaps you’re on vacation right now as you see this, but more likely being that it’s right at the beginning of the year you’re still anticipating or looking forward to the vacation that’s coming this year.

If you think about it vacation really does have sort of three phases to it. It has that anticipation stage or phase when you are planning toward and looking forward to anticipating vacation ahead. One might call the next one the animation phase where the actual vacation is lived out. It’s enacted. And then finally the recollection phase of vacation where one looks back fondly, or maybe with tears, depending on how vacation went, on what has already taken place.

One could look at the Scriptures in a similar model. All that has been written with a phase of anticipation and of animation and finally of recollection. Jesus even speaks of the scriptures in a similar way. After he is raised from the dead Jesus teaches two distraught men and he speaks of the Scriptures especially as anticipation words. He writes.

Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, Jesus explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. (Luke 24:27)

Jesus taught two distraught men and he did it with the Old Testament Scriptures, the law and the prophets, and he taught them that all of those words anticipated him. That they all anticipated his living and his dying for sins and rising to life again. What a gracious thing.

You could call the gospels the animation phase then of Jesus who is the great vacation the great rest for souls where he lives out that which has been promised and maybe even the epistles then are the recollections stage that look back on what has been animated and brought to life in the person of Jesus and all of his work for the saving of souls.

So now we have this very same thing we have an old testament scriptures by which God promised himself in the flesh and we have them now fulfilled completed in what Jesus has done for the sake of weary and burdened souls like yours and mine. And we get to recall we get to recall what has been done what has been completed for us in Jesus. Come to this one to this vacation this rest for you will find rest for your souls, amen.

John 3:19

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Can you think of some things that darkness is good for? Darkness is usually pretty good for sleeping. In fact you might even have blinds in your house that are called like blackout blinds or something. Maybe you particularly appreciate them for children so that they go to sleep or so that they can continue sleeping. Darkness, I’ve noticed, at least in a few establishments I’ve been in has been a pretty good friend to those establishments. Maybe the light is poor enough that it keeps you from dwelling on how unclean the floor is. Or something like that.

I have a two-year-old son who is always very happy to go and turn on the lights in his sister’s bedroom and they often are not so impressed with the light that comes pouring through into their pleasant darkness.

Darkness can be a help, but we might have experienced the shock sometimes if light comes pouring in through the house just right through the windows, you might all of a sudden realize, oh my. There is a lot of dust in here. It can reveal things that we would just as soon not be revealed. Light can do that and so darkness sometimes becomes our friend.

God speaks of light and darkness in connection with truth and that which is not truth or that which is lies. In fact Jesus himself says

This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. (John 3:19)

Light comes into the world. It’s God’s light and he means for it to be here, but one of the reasons we don’t like it is because our own deeds, the things that we do or that we love to keep doing, they are shown to be what they are in the light. And so the darkness we think is our friend that hides our own sins or the sins of the culture around us from us having to think on it or know of them. The light shows us our uncleanness, but that’s not the only thing that light does.

In fact perhaps even the more important thing that light does is that it brings life. Natural light delivers vitamin D and most living things can’t do without it. Light in addition to showing something that’s clean from unclean light also gives life. So also when Jesus refers to himself as the ‘light of the world’ he says ‘I am the light that gives life.’

He is the vitamin D for us who would otherwise be dying and all of our darkness and uncleanness and he delivers by coming into the world by being the light that intervenes into the darkness of this sin and dying world. Jesus himself becomes the light not only that deciphers what is true from a lie, what is good from not good, but by being the very life that supplies life to that which is otherwise dying.

Jesus is himself the light of the world the light that gives life. Amen.

Luke 12:32

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I was a twenty-three-year-old young man living in a brand new state. I didn’t know anybody there. I didn’t have any friends there. No family or even an extended family. And Thanksgiving came around. I didn’t know what I was going to do. And then a couple from church actually invited me into their home to be a guest with their family and their friends and their loved ones. And maybe not surprisingly they left none of the food portion of the day on the twenty-three-year-old bachelor.

I was a guest in their home and everything was provided. There are two different kinds of turkey. There were potatoes to feed a multitude. There were pies and all kinds of other good vegetables. There was a feast at hand and there was great company to boot.

I recall at the end of the day saying something that perhaps you’ve said multiple times after you’ve been in the situation as somebody’s guest. “I don’t know how I’m ever going to thank you.” I don’t know what I could say or what gesture I could give you that would show you the pleasure or return the pleasure to you that you have that you have given me. I don’t know how I could possibly thank you.

And the response was probably one you’ve given at various times too. “The pleasure was all mine.” That is to say the pleasure that I need or that I would ever want was simply to have you as my guest receiving these things that I’m giving to you.

In the next few days and weeks. We take time as a nation to celebrate Thanksgiving and as we do especially as Christians we think about all of the many things that are provided to us from the gracious hand of our Lord. They are the things that apply for our body and our life, the clothing that we wear, the family that we enjoy, but not only that the gift of his Son. And as we pause and think about such things we might find ourselves saying the exact same thing to the Lord. “How can I ever thank you?”

How could I ever thank you for all of the gifts that you give me and the pleasures that I receive simply from your gifts. Jesus tells us about where his Father’s pleasure is. One of the maybe the simplest ways that we could ever thank him that we might look right past. Jesus says of his Father.

Your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. (Luke 12:32)

This is what pleases our Heavenly Father to give gifts to supply us all that we need for this body and life not so that he can get something in return or get repaid equal gift for equal gifts but simply to be the one who graciously and mercifully opens his hands and supplies to us all that we need. It is our Father’s pleasure to give us the kingdom. Amen.

Matthew 20:1-16

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“That’s not fair!” Objects one sibling as he receives his allowance for the week. “That’s not fair that I get two dollars and my little sister who did significantly less work also receives the exact same amount of money. That’s not fair.”

We learn this objection perhaps in our earliest years of life and quite frankly it doesn’t really go away too easily in our adulthood. We seem to think or it’s our natural way of thinking that fairness is the highest commodity that we could ever come by. Whatever is fair must also then be favorable to us. That must be a good thing for us if all is fair.

The young boy objects to his mother and says “it’s not fair that I only get two dollars and my little sister gets the same amount as me.” What if the next week the mother came back and rather than giving that son two dollars she gave him a note and it was full of itemized amounts of money for food or for clothing or for the roof over his head or for the heat that keeps him warm at night. And now he realizes not only is he not going to get the two dollars that he was so sure was fair for him to receive, he is being billed money and the mother simply says as she hands over the note: “there, that ought to be fair.”

As Jesus teaches throughout the scriptures he often lays out a similar scenario to us and he teaches us against our own inclinations that fairness is not at all what we want from the God of heaven and earth.

Jesus tells a parable about workers in a vineyard. It’s kind of like what I just laid out for you. Some worked an entire day in the heat of the sun and some worked a half day and others came at the very last hour and the vineyard owner at the end of the day pays them all the exact same amount of money. One of them objects passionately and says: ‘this isn’t fair. This kingdom this vineyard that you’re running,’ but as it turns out the vineyard owner wasn’t in the business of running a fair business. He was running a generous one. He says to the man’s objection.

Are you envious because I am generous? (Matthew 20:15)

We often think what we want from the Lord is fairness. But the kingdom that the Lord gives the kingdom that he gives in his Son is an upside down sort of kingdom. It is not the sort of kingdom that makes all kinds of sense to our fairness or to our merit for merit kind of kingdom. Rather the kind of kingdom that the Lord gives is a kingdom full of generosity that is not fair in its unfairness is what is favorable toward us. When we learn to call upon the Lord and His mercy. We are thanking him for not dealing with us according to what we deserve, what is fair. When we speak of the Lord as a gracious Lord we are speaking of him as one who is unfair. Who is generous beyond what could ever be expected and generous to us. It is to our favor that he is unfair generously.

When the Lord gives his Son from heaven. When the angels of the Lord come and call out to the shepherds on the plains and they say we bring you not fair news of what you have deserved. They announce to the shepherds we bring you good news. It is unfair news and it is to your favor. We bring you news of God the Father giving his Son as the Savior of sinners the Savior of the whole fallen world. Unfair in our favor. God grant us such an upside down kind of kingdom the one that is unfair to us in our favor. Amen.