Genesis 1:2

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God has built a training into how life works into every moment of your day. This occurred to me recently, and it occurred while I was studying the Holy Spirit, and that the word that is translated spirit in the Old Testament in the original language is this word ruach. Hebrew is a really fun language. You get to clear your throat all the time. Ruach. You say it with me, Ruach. And it’s a word that literally means spirit or means breath or wind. And so you have this beautiful picture in Genesis one of the Spirit, the ruach of God, the breath of God, hovering, and actually that word too describes like a bird hovers. So here we get this beautiful already an image of the Holy Spirit right there, over the waters. And the breath of God as it’s breathed out is what’s there kind of stirring things up and getting creation started.

So as I was thinking about the breath of God, I realized, what do we have to do each moment of our lives? We have to breathe in.

We won’t live if we don’t breathe in this breath that comes from outside of us. If you hold your breath and try to do it yourself, you don’t get very far. We can’t manufacture breath in and of ourselves. Our very existence is dependent on breathing in something from outside of us. God’s training us every moment that we have to receive life from him. Isn’t it foolish, then, that we have this idea, this tendency to try to do it on our own? But that’s what sin is. Sin is trying to do life to live your own way instead of God’s way, acting like we’re God, not him. That’s what happened with Adam and Eve in the garden. That’s what we do again and again today. I’m going to live life my way. But really, that’s just holding our breath. And while it might work for a bit, it only gets us so far. Doing life for our own way, living like we’re God, it’s a path towards not just sin, but also death and eternity separated from God.

But we have a loving God who has made a way for us to breathe in life again. Jesus came, lived, and died and rose again. He has taken away your sin, your guilt, your shame, everything that separated you from God. He defeated death itself to give you life again. And now the Holy Spirit, the Ruach of God, has breathed new life into you. Spiritual life, the ability to believe in God again, to have life from him again. And he’s even built into our daily life as Christians a new way for us to really practice and exercise this. When you take the Lord’s Supper, the bread and the wine with it, you get the body and blood of Christ. What do you have? The life of God. You are taking it into yourself again.

So today, breathe in. Breathe out.

Think about your breathing. Not too hard, that’s when breathing gets weird. Is when we think too hard about our breathing. But just think about the fact that every moment you have to take in something from outside of yourself. And that’s something, is the life that God has given you. And God today has given you new life through the death and resurrection of His Son, and by the work of the Spirit. So breathe in this life that comes from God, today.

Psalm 1

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Psalm one begins with three postures or positions of the believer. He doesn’t walk alongside the wicked. He’s not going in their direction. And the believer doesn’t stand in the way of sinners. They’ve stopped walking, now. They’re standing there. They’re discussing things. Maybe they’re planning, planning to sin, but the believer is not with them. And third, the believer doesn’t sit alongside, sit with scoffers. He doesn’t break bread with those who mock God, God’s way, God’s word. This doesn’t mean we don’t have friends, family members, coworkers who are unbelievers. It means we’re not participating in their sin.

Instead, the psalm goes on. It tells us what the believer delights in. God’s law. God’s word. More than just the commandments, all of God’s word. That’s his comfort. That’s her companion. Let’s look at an example from nature. A tree or any other plant, it needs water to survive. Back home in Washington, where I live, I can walk outside and I can see trees that are over 100ft tall. And I don’t have to be a great botanist, a great scientist, in order to know at least one thing about any tree that’s lived that long and that has reached that kind of height. It’s a tree that’s well watered well. Psalm one verse three says that the believer is like that. You don’t have to be a great theologian to look at someone, maybe someone that you admire, that you sort of look up to, maybe at church, a kind elderly person. You don’t have to be a great theologian in order to realize that person is well watered, watered with God’s own word, the water of life. Psalm one begins by telling us this is essential to spiritual life. God’s word is. Its essential to producing fruit, to growth.

And it contrasts that with the life of unbelievers, despite any seeming profit or success, that their sin may give them. Their unbelief and their sin have already determined their end. And so verse six, the last verse, it makes one last comparison, the comfort that the Lord knows the way of his people, and that means he knows where we are. He knows what we face. He knows what we struggle with and wrestle with in this life. In fact, the Lord is intimately aware of it all. In fact, we could even say he is personally aware of it. How? How can God, who is spirit, God who is perfect, be personally aware with all that that we wrestle and struggle with and as we try to produce fruit and at times we don’t produce the fruit, we should?

Psalm one is a perfect description of Jesus who did delight in God’s Word and who submitted himself to God’s law. But because of Jesus, because of him, his relative Elizabeth once called him the blessed fruit of Mary’s womb, because of him and that fruit all of God’s people are blessed. We’re blessed in him, and we are like trees that are living beside streams of water, trees that are well watered.

So Psalm one, have a read of it yourself, and in it, first and foremost see Jesus, your Savior, the Blessed One of the Book of Psalms, the Righteous One in whom we’re nurtured and in whom we grow. So it’s about him. And because it’s about him who took on our nature, it’s about us, our brother, our Savior. God bless you and we’ll see you again.

1 John 4:16, John 3:16

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Are you familiar with Pascal’s Wager?

Blaise Pascal was a 17th century mathematician, physicist, and philosopher. And his wager, his argument is that if he is wrong, as a Christian, if Christians are wrong, if atheists are right, and there is no God, then there’s nothing is lost at the moment of death. Nothing happens. Christians haven’t lost anything. They’re just wrong. The other side of the argument, though, is that if Christianity is true, if there is a God, and if there is a heaven and a hell, then there’s something great to be gained for the Christian, for the believer, and there’s a whole lot to be lost for the atheist. Eternity in hell.

So basically, it’s a good bet. It’s a safe wager to believe in God.

That argument might have some force. It might be used when we’re talking to an atheist about the importance of thinking about things spiritually and about the importance of considering Christianity.

But is that why we as Christians believe?

Is it just to hedge our bets just in case there is a God, we better believe in him. Is it because we’re afraid of going to hell?

It’s not. We believe because by God’s grace, he has worked faith in our hearts. And he has brought us to know Jesus as our Lord and Savior. And we know his love for us. And so we’ve grown to trust him. As we read in first John 4:16.

We also have come to know and trust the love that God has for us. (1 John 4:16)

So we believe because God has worked faith in our hearts. We love because by God’s grace, we know the love of God, that God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

This makes all the difference for us.

We have peace because we know the peace that Jesus has won for us, in paying for all of our sins, and in forgiving all of our sins. And so we are at peace with God, and we have an eternal future secure for us in heaven. And so we have eternal hope. Hope that doesn’t change. Hope that doesn’t fade away.

And that’s why we tell others of God. Not to brag. Not because we have to. Not just in case. It’s because we want them to know the hope and the joy and the peace and the love that we have in God.

May God bless us as we walk in that love, live in that love and share that love. Amen.

John 20:25-29

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Kids will argue about the strangest things, won’t they? I’d be willing to bet that on any playground in America, there’s an argument going on going something like this.

“My dad’s so strong that I saw him lift up an entire house.”

“Nuh-uh. That’s impossible.”

“I saw him do it. Really?”

“Well, then prove it.”

As silly as that sounds in the moment, it feels very real to those children, doesn’t it? On one hand, the child isn’t crazy for having faith in his father. In his mind, his father can literally do anything, right? But on the other hand, the kid he’s arguing with he isn’t crazy either, because he wants proof to prove this outlandish claim. In our text today, we have a situation just like this in the Gospel of John, where the disciples tell Thomas that Christ has risen from the dead. And Thomas says,

“Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” (John 20:25)

In essence, this interaction is like the two kids in the playground shouting prove it! I’m guessing that if we were in Thomas’s shoes, we’d be saying the exact same thing. And then eight days later, Jesus appears to the disciples and to Thomas, and the first thing he says is, peace be with you. But the next thing he does is approach Thomas and say,

“Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” (John 20:27)

And Thomas replies, my Lord and my God. (John 20:28)

And Jesus later says,

“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29)

Now I think we’d all like to believe that we would be one of the ones who would believe without seeing. Right? But the reality is, is that if you and I were at this, in this room that day, it’s very likely that account would be about you and me. They would call me Doubting Scott. And the reality is, is we’re all guilty of that same doubt in our lives. We all doubt the resurrected power of Jesus when we can’t clearly see him. Sometimes we doubt him when we receive that cancer diagnosis, or when our marriage is struggling, or when our prayers go seemingly unanswered, or when we lose our job, or when our child gets sick, and maybe we don’t say it in the same way that Thomas did, but with our thoughts and our sins, we proclaim that I won’t believe it unless I see it.

But notice that Jesus doesn’t rebuke Thomas for having doubts or questions. No, he comes to Thomas with his word, his comforting word of peace. And he says, place your hand into my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe. And although we don’t get to place our hands into the side of Jesus the same way Thomas did, Jesus is still approaching you in the same way he approached Thomas through his comforting word, the word that attests that he appeared over 500 people after he rose from the dead and engaged all of their senses to prove to them that he really was the resurrected Christ, the same Christ they had seen crucified on a cross only a few days earlier.

And those people were so moved by what they saw and sensed with all of their senses that Jesus was truly alive. They went around the world proclaiming in an outlandish way that my God is so strong that he raised Jesus from the dead. And today, Christ is proving his resurrection to you today through His Word, through your baptism, and through Holy Communion. He’s engaging all of your senses to prove to you that he really did rise from the dead. And if he really did rise from the dead, then you can have full comfort and confidence and conviction that your sins are truly forgiven, that you too will rise again, just as Jesus did on the last day. And don’t you doubt it.

So may the grace of our risen Lord Jesus Christ. Guard and keep your heart in undoubting belief and faith and obedience to him. Amen.

Hosea 13:14, Zechariah 2:8

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Our reading today is from Hosea the prophet, chapter 13, verse 14 And God says,

O Death, I will be your plagues!
O Grave, I will be your destruction!
Pity is hidden from My eyes.” (Hosea 13:14)

There are times when snakes will climb up into tall trees and go way up into the nest of, let’s say, an eagle or some other bird, and they might start eating the eggs or the little chicks that are in that nest. And those tiny birds are just completely powerless from such a deadly predator. And that’s really kind of symbolic of how we are that when it comes to death by ourselves, we are completely powerless to do anything about death. We can’t hold it off. We can’t keep it away from us. In fact, it frightens us to such an extent that we don’t even like to look at it or think about it. We even pay people a lot of money to take care of it for us when it happens to one of our loved ones.

And that’s why the Bible often speaks about death in Scripture as an enemy of ours. It describes it as a prison. It describes it with words like being a sting. And Martin Luther said about it, even the nature, he says, even the pig squeals at the slaughter. So there’s something inside of all of us that just recoils at the concept and the idea of death. Because we’ve been made to be alive, our bodies want to live.

There’s also a type of eagle that’s called a brown snake eagle, a brown snake eagle, and it actually likes to eat snakes as a source for food. And if a poisonous snake were to go up into the nest of this eagle and attack one of the small eagles in the nest, this mother eagle, the brown snake eagle will not only take and kill the snake, but consume it and swallow it whole. A lot of ancient writers in the church used to use that type of a bird to depict what Jesus has done. He’s gone into death itself, and he’s taken death on, going into the grave, on Good Friday we know he was laid in the grave, cold, dead, in order to go in and destroy it. By allowing himself to be taken into death he has now destroyed death and consumed it. And he’s done all of this on your behalf and my behalf. He takes absolutely no pity on death and the devil. That’s why he says here. Pity is hidden from my eyes.

But thank God he has taken pity on you and me. Because through faith in him we have this wonderful power now over death because of what our Savior has done. He wants you to be able to live forever without fear of death in your future.

Note something here that death and the grave are not merely our enemies or the enemies of Christ’s church, but they’re also the enemies of Christ Himself. And he is the Lord of all life. And he’s more powerful than anything like a fallen angel the devil could ever do. And so to those who belong to Christ, the prophet Zechariah tells us from God. Whoever touches you touches the apple of my eye. (Zechariah 2:8) Isn’t that a great line? Whoever touches you touches the apple of my eye, your gracious God says. Amen.

1 Corinthians 15:56-58

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Our devotion today is based on First Corinthians 15, beginning with verse 56.

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! (1 Corinthians 15:56-57)

Back in 1933, during construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, unemployed men would stand waiting at the foot of the bridge to see if other workers up on the bridge would end up falling to their death, hoping to take their place and take their jobs. They were 750ft high in the air, and ultimately 11 men fell to their death during that construction.

Our text talks about the sting of death. There’s kind of a double pain when it comes to death. The hurt that takes place, just like venom going into our veins, has a double impact. It’s hard to watch other people die in our families, and to see loved ones have to deal with loss. But it also points each of us to our own mortality when we watch people go through it as well. On Good Friday, the evil serpent of the devil dug his fangs into the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, who took that venom. But he has then come out alive, victorious, and he himself has now become the very antidote of death itself. That’s why Paul says he gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

And in a sense, Jesus has defanged your death. All this is now yours, this victory of Christ, through a little activity that God places in your heart the gift of faith to trust in Jesus as your Savior. And the mission of the church is to implant that faith in us and to cause it to grow so that we can ultimately be death defiers, just like our Lord Jesus. Because of this victory, we can now stand over the graves of our loved ones who have fallen asleep, asleep in Christ, and sing wonderful hymns of victory. I know that my Redeemer lives, and so on. I remember at my mom’s funeral, I just love singing a hymn verse that had this line in it. I’m going to quote, and every time I sing it, it makes me think of her victory as well, and her now life in heaven. This is the line: Death itself is transitory. I shall lift my head in glory.

Death is now nothing but a passing for us. When they were building the Golden Gate Bridge, they designed a safety net, finally, because so many had died that would catch the workers below. And it saved the lives of 19 men. They called themselves jokingly, the Halfway to Hell Club because they felt that they had cheated death. And the man who came up with that idea knew that it would save lives. But he also knew that it would give greater confidence to those who were doing the work. The resurrection of Jesus Christ not only spares us from our future death and giving us life. In that way, it’s the ultimate safety net, but it also gives us tremendous confidence to carry out the work and things that we do on behalf of God’s church.

And that’s why Paul concludes this section with these words, knowing that we have the resurrection, our own Easter coming.

Therefore, my dear brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the Lord’s work, because you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. (1 Corinthians 15:58)

May God grant all of us a blessed celebration of our Lord’s Easter and our own future easters. Amen.

John 17:20-22, Romans 8:34

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What does Jesus pray for? Well, what do you pray for?

We probably pray that God will bless us in different ways, right? That he would give us good health, that he would restore us to health after we have a medical issue or an illness that we’re dealing with. We may pray for our loved ones, that the Lord would bless them, that he would help us in our relationships. We pray that he would watch over our community, maybe our nation. But what does Jesus pray for?

What would it surprise you to know that Jesus prays for you? And you’re not just somewhere on his prayer list, you are a pressing concern for him. And we see that the night of his betrayal and arrest, the night before his crucifixion. And you think about, man, there’s got to be the most distressing night of all for him. He knows it’s all coming. He sees it coming. And yet what’s on his mind? You are on his mind and he prays for you. And by the way, it’s in the book of John that we see this John 17. We see his prayer. He prays for himself, but it’s so that he has the strength to bear the cross for you. And then he prays for his disciples. And then he prays for those who might hear the message of his disciples. And that’s you and me.

We read in John 17,

“I am praying not only for them, but also for those who believe in me through their message. May they all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. May they also be one[a] in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me. I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one:” (John 17:20-22)

How awesome is that? That on that most stressful, anxious night that Jesus was praying for you. And then it was even more awesome as what happened after that, that he allowed himself to be betrayed and arrested. And he went to the cross, and there he took the punishment for the sins of the world and your sins and my sins. And there he paid for those sins, and there he conquered Satan, death, and hell.

Three days later, he rose again to show that his payment was accepted so that you can know you are forgiven. And through faith in him you’re a child of God. You’re an heir of eternal life in heaven.

And then 40 days later, he ascended into heaven. And what does he do now?

He prays for you. He intercedes for you. We read in Romans 8:34.

Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus, who died and, more than that, was raised to life, is the one who is at God’s right hand and who is also interceding for us! (Romans 8:34)

And so when you fall into a sin and Satan goes to God and he says, “look at that person, they have broken your trust. They’re not worthy to be your child.” Jesus stands in for you and he prays for you. And he says, “yes, they have sinned, but I paid for that sin on the cross. They are forgiven. You promise that they are forgiven through faith in me, and they are your child. And you promised that they have eternity in heaven waiting for them.” Isn’t that so awesome? Jesus prayed for us on that most distressing night, and that he continues to pray for us and intercede for us as he leads us on to that heavenly home that he has won for you.

May God bless us as we bring our prayers and petitions to our Heavenly Father. Amen.

2 Corinthians 1:9-10, 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

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I realized it was too big for me and it was incredibly liberating.

Recently, there was some just heavy things going on in my world and in my life, and I just realized that I don’t have the wisdom for this. I don’t know how to work this all out. I don’t have the strength in and of myself. And yet I was also confident God was calling me to to serve in this way. So if God is calling us to do things that are bigger than us, that must mean God’s going to provide what we need to do those things, right? At least that’s the reasoning I had. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought, I think that, I think that works.

And part of the reason why I thought that, it has to do with what Paul says in Second Corinthians chapter one. He talks about the challenges they had. And he said,

Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. (2 Corinthians 1:9-10)

See, God often uses those moments where we realize it’s so clear that we don’t have the strength to show us that we are not the source of the strength. I mean, the whole way this is all set up is that we were created to eat from the tree of life, in the beginning, humanity was. To receive life from God. And where everything went wrong is when Adam and Eve that they did what looked right in their own eyes and they tried to take what was good and seek wisdom and things their own way. God is again and again teaching us that it’s not for us to try to do it ourselves. We were meant to receive from him. And the message of the gospel starts with the law that we cannot set ourselves right with God. We have it in our hearts. We know we were meant for something to live a certain way, and we don’t do it. We can’t by ourselves. And so we need a Savior to do what we can never do for ourselves. Jesus lived the life we were meant to live. The life you were meant to live, died for your sins, and rose again to give you what you can never achieve yourself. It is simply a gift. It’s something given to you that you can’t do yourself.

And so whenever we are reminded that we don’t have the strength for this, good! Because it points us back to his, or like Paul says later in Second Corinthians, the Lord said to him,

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:9-10)

It’s so liberating to come to the end of our own strength, because then we can be free of trying to be strong enough. We can then really begin to experience and embrace the strength of God. That’s what the gospel does. It frees us from trying to be good enough for God. You can know that Jesus was good enough for you, then every time in this life, whenever we come to the end of ourselves, we get to more fully embrace that we are in his hands, that Jesus has died. He has risen again, that we have life with him for eternity. And it’s all because of what he has done, and he is the one who will provide for us every step of the way today.

Matthew 27:25

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This is going to change the lives of you and your children forever. How would you respond if someone said that to you? Personally, I wouldn’t know how to respond. Who’s saying it to me? What is the context? Right? If it’s a doctor standing in my hospital room going over my test results, that sentence might make my heart drop through the floor. It’s not just a normal neutral sentence. It would be more like a death sentence, like a generational curse. But if the person saying that sentence to me is sliding a check to me across the table big enough to wipe out all of my debt and fund my retirement, all of a sudden that sentence isn’t a neutral sentence. It’s actually life giving. It’s a generational blessing. But it’s still the same sentence, but two completely different meanings.

In the Gospel of Matthew we find a sentence just like this, where Jesus, the Son of God, is on trial before Pilate. And Pilate, finding no wrong in him, says, I wash my hands of this man’s blood. But the crowd screams at him.

“Then let his blood be upon us and upon our children!” (Matthew 27:25)

You see, the crowd here is willing to take the guilt of Jesus’ blood upon themselves and upon their children, because so great was their hatred for him. They were willing to take on a generational curse to see him die.

Now we might shake our heads at the crowd, but the reality is, is that your sins and my sins are in that crowd as well, screaming the exact same death sentence. Let his blood be upon us and upon our children, and we know how the rest of the story goes. The crowd actually gets exactly what they want, exactly what they ask for. But ironically, the same sentence that they screamed for let his blood be upon us and upon our children was actually the exact thing that they needed most. The blood of Jesus.

You see the sentence the crowd meant as a death sentence toward Jesus, Jesus means it to you and I in a completely different way. He means that same sentence to give you life, a generational blessing upon you and your children. It’s as though upon the cross he is saying, let my blood be upon you and upon your children, and through faith that blood is indeed poured upon you and upon your children abundantly through Holy Communion. His body and blood is given to you to eat and to drink, and it is the very same body and blood that was given and shed for you upon the cross, for the forgiveness of all of your sins.

So yes, let his blood be upon us and upon our children, but don’t shout it as a death sentence, as a generational curse upon you and your children. But shout this life giving sentence to your Savior, who poured out his blood upon you and your children as a generational blessing. So may the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ be poured out upon you and your children this Lenten season, and always so that we might grow in true faith and obedience to him. Amen.

Romans 5:8

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Your ‘but’ matters. The word ‘but’ matters.

I can’t tell you how many times I will be talking with fellow Christians who are sharing a challenging time. Things are difficult and so they need encouragement and then I will share encouragement with them. I’ll remind them what Jesus says. Things like, don’t worry about tomorrow, but how you can cast your anxiety on him about how God sees you through Jesus. And they will often say, yes, I know that, but this is still going to be really challenging. But what about this thing? But… I will remind them of God’s truth, and then they sneak this little but in there that immediately turns away from the truth that we just talked about, and goes either right back to the source of anxiety, or right back to their shame, or right back to trying to prove they’re good enough. And that but, that kind of but is a problem.

It’s a problem because it shifts us away from God’s truth, but also because it really positions us or postures us as if our but actually has more weight than God’s Word.

Like what you see with your eyes actually means more than what God says in His Word. What you’re experiencing in your life is more significant than what God says in His Word. And that’s a problem. That’s something we need to lay before God and confess before him what you see, what you feel, what you’re experiencing, as significant as that all is, it is not, it does not have more weight than the words of the God of the universe. So lay that sin before the cross. And when you do, then you can shift to a better but.

I think of when we get to Romans chapter five and verse eight where it says,

BUT God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)

But God. That but is the but that changes everything. You realize you’ve sinned. You realize that you’ve put your own experience over God. Okay, but God. But God sent his son Jesus, who died for you. You don’t know how tomorrow is going to work out. You are worrying about what’s ahead, but God has it all in his hands. You are stressed out about the past. You are worrying about your shame and your guilt. But God says that you are washed. You are clothed with Christ and that’s how he sees you. You say, yeah, but I don’t feel that way. But God doesn’t base it on your feelings. He bases it on what his son has done for you.

This but God changes everything, which is why, and I don’t know how well you can see it, actually, my PopSocket on my phone has those two words. But God. Because anytime you find yourself stuck in sin and doubt. Doubting your relationship, your life with God, your fear of the future, these two words, but God can make all the difference when they are followed by something from God’s Word. The good news of the gospel. Hope for the future. What God says about you. Whatever is going on in your life, remember, but God.

Psalm 42:1,11

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I’d like to read the last verse of Psalm 42. This is verse 11.

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God. (Psalm 42:11)

When we hear from God’s Word, what God would have us believe and do, we know where we’re headed. Jesus died on the cross for all of our imperfections. We know the goal. He has planned eternal life for us and the joy of that eternal life. We have depictions of that, descriptions of how God wipes away every tear from our eyes when we get to heaven. What a joyful thing that we’ll get to look forward to. The end of this Psalm is an effort at comforting ourselves that will one day come. The soul speaks to itself. I speak to myself and say, I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. Especially we’re looking at that praise in eternity with all the saints and angels in heavenly glory and bliss. And in fact, that verse is repeated. It comes earlier in the Psalm as well, almost right around the middle, so we can see how important that is and how necessary it really is for us to remind ourselves of that, because we know where we’re going. We know what’s promised, and we also know it’s not here. We don’t have it. We’re waiting. We’re struggling. We’re in pain so often that it obscures that heavenly glory. It’s hard to see.

I’ve had people say to me, especially when they’re grieving the death of a loved one, we have the comfort that they, because of their faith in Jesus, they are in heaven now in glory and bliss, and so we can be happy for them. And yet it’s also comes up yeah, pastor, I know that, but I’m sad now. I’m struggling now. So where’s the comfort for life? Not just death. There is comfort for life.

This psalm begins with the problem. The first verse is

As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God. (Psalm 42:1)

We’re thirsty for God. We’re thirsty for what he can provide. Think of that as parched lips and how all you can think about is water. Just getting rid of that pain, that ache of the parched mouth. We want God to come and comfort us in this. And that’s exactly what he does through His word, not just, oh, just wait, look ahead. This is going to come for you. But no, he is with us right now. We want God, that’s why we want to be in heaven, because we’ll be with God in perfection. And he is with you now. He’s with you in his word. He’s right beside you. He’s behind you. He’s beneath you, holding you up. He is within you. The Holy Spirit uses you as his temple.

We’re looking forward to our Sabbath rest right on the last day. When we come in glory with all the saints and angels, we get to worship God forever and enjoy that Sabbath rest. Well God established the Sabbath also for himself. He wants his Sabbath rest, and he takes that Sabbath rest in his temple. He takes that Sabbath rest in you. God comes into your heart to rest. And where he rests, he brings his joy. He brings his peace that passes all understanding. It’s not necessarily something that will feel every moment of every day. And that’s why we need this word. We need this comfort of the Holy Spirit. We can’t comfort ourselves. It only comes by the Holy Spirit through the word. God does comfort us in life and death. The advice isn’t, oh, just hold on. No, the advice is more here’s God. He comes to you in His Word. He’s with you as you weep and as you wail and as you wait and as you hope. And he strengthens that hope, and he strengthens you in that comfort.

John 6:4-7, Matthew 5:48

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Loaves and fish. I give that phrase, I’ve answered that phrase to people several times recently who have been asking about, how are you going to get through all the things that you have going on this year, or how have you? This last year for me has been crazy. Maybe you can relate, but I’ve just had a number of things, many things that have been very challenging situations, difficult ones personally, but then also very just ones that have a lot of responsibility and are big tasks. And people have said, how do you keep getting through that? What how do you feel about this? And I just keep answering loaves and fish and here’s why.

I think about when we’re told in John chapter six that

The Jewish Passover Festival was near. When Jesus looked up and saw a huge crowd coming toward him, he asked Philip, “Where can we buy bread for these people to eat?” But Jesus was saying this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii[a] worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to have just a little.” (John 6:4-7)

What I love is that Jesus asks Philip, where are we going to get bread for all these people, knowing full well that what’s going to happen next is what we call the feeding of the 5000. Jesus knows he’s going to multiply just a few loaves of bread and some fish to feed the 5000. When he asks Philip to do this, Jesus is not expecting Philip to be the source. He’s not expecting Philip to come up with this on his own. The whole point was to drive Philip and the rest of his disciples to look to him. Jesus did not ask his disciples to feed these 5000 and then expect them to do it themselves. Jesus said, hey, how are you going to feed them, knowing that they would need to look to him and he would provide.

And that’s why I keep saying loaves and fish, these things that have been in front of me this year and are continuing to be in front of me. How are you going to get through them? Loaves and fish. If God has put this in front of me and called me to do it, I know he’s not saying, now, Nate, you have to figure out how to get it all done. You have to muster up the strength. That’s not how God works. It’s not how the gospel works. These different life experiences like this where we have to depend on Christ, are all little exercises and reminders of how the gospel really works. Well, God, he does say, be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect, (Matthew 5:48) but as sinful people, God knows we are not going to be perfect.

He knows, though, that he had a way and has a way for us to be made perfect before him again. And that way is that Jesus came into this world to be everything you and I were created to be, but aren’t. He was perfect for us. He laid down his life and died for you, and rose again for you, so that through faith in him you could be right with God. When you are baptized into Christ, you are clothed with Jesus. And Jesus is God. Which means then that when God looks at you, he sees you through God. He provides what you need to be right with him. This is how your relationship with God works. And every time that you face a time where you are reminded, ah, I, I don’t have the capacity. I can’t do it. I need to look to him. It’s a little reminder, a little exercise, that yes, this is how our life with God works.

Loaves and fish. God doesn’t look to us to do it for him. We get to look to him and trust in him always. How are we going to get through this? The same way that we’re right with God looking to him, trusting him. Just bring your loaves and fish.