A View From The Sycamore Tree: Bless the Lord / Be Blessed By Him

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Bless the Lord / Be Blessed By Him - Psalm 134

"Behold, bless the LORD,

all servants of the LORD,

who serve by night in the house of the LORD!

Lift up your hands to the sanctuary,

and bless the LORD.

May the LORD bless you from Zion,

He who made heaven and earth."

(Psalm 134)

This morning I come to the final Psalm of ascent. I'll miss these. This last one is a short one, but it says plenty. It speaks of blessing God and being blessed by Him. Glance with me at these 3 short verses and at the three points I have derived from them.

1. The ascenting psalmist begins with a call for ALL of the servants of the Lord to bless the Lord.

"Behold, bless the LORD, all servants of the LORD,

who serve by night in the house of the LORD!"

In the cultural context it is a call to the Levitical priests who served during the night watches of temple time to bless the name of Jehovah. It encourages them to speak well of their God - is He deserving of any other type of speech?

It is a call for them - it is also a call for us. We have been declared, by God, to be "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of God's own possession that we may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9)".

So, my fellow priests, are we blessing the Lord? Are we proclaiming the excellencies of this great God who has called us from darkness to light? Are we extolling the wonders and grace and mercies of this One who called us out and drew us in? "For you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy" (1 Peter 2:10). Are we blessing this One who is so worthy of our praise and adoration?

If not, is it not time to start? If we don't want to, if we have no desire to, then what does that say about the condition of our hearts?

2. The ascenting psalmist exhorts us to bless the Lord through our worship of Him.

"Lift up your hands to the sanctuary, and bless the LORD."

We are not only to speak well of Him with our lips, we are to live well to Him in our worship! "Let us lift up our hands in prayer and praise and vows. Let us do our religious work with diligence and cheerfulness and with an elevation of mind" (Henry).

So, my fellow worshippers, are we worshipping?
Are we reaching up to the One who has reached down to us?
With David are we "glad when they said unto me, let us go to the house of the LORD?"

Oh, may He make us glad. There is no other more glorious act done under the sun than this act of worship.

3. The ascenting psalmist ends with the benefit of being blessed as we bless.

"May the LORD bless you from Zion, He who made heaven and earth."

God deserves our blessing and our worship. He is God - that is enough motivation for us to praise Him. However, God is an ever benevolent God. He just keeps giving and giving and giving and giving. His mercies are new every morning. His loving-kindness is everlasting. His goodness endures forever. He is a fountain of never ceasing grace. The psalmist knows that. Therefore immediately on the heels of encouraging our blessing the name of God he prays that God will in turn bless us - because that is simply what God does.

This closing prayer in verse 3 is a reminder to us that it is the blessing of God that we should desire. It is not the blessing of men, nor the blessing of the world. It is not wealth, or fame, or prosperity that we should long for - it is God and His gifts. We should seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. We should hunger and thirst for His righteousness. We should desire His gifts and not our own.

Matthew Henry ends his brief comments on this psalm with these words.

"God's blessing us is His doing well for us. It is that which we are taught here to desire. We need desire no more to make us happy than to be blessed of the Lord, for those whom He blesses are blessed indeed."

How true. How wonderfully true.

My friends, my fellow servants, may we bless the Lord this day. May we worship Him with lifted hands and hearts and heads and as we do may we wait expectantly for the true blessings that come from being His people and the sheep of His pasture. It is "He who made heaven and earth." It is He who made us and not we ourselves. Let us therefore enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Let us give thanks to Him and bless His name. For He is good and His loving-kindness is everlasting and His faithfulness is to all generations.

Bless the Lord with me and be blessed as you do!!

In His glorious grace,

Lori

No comments:

Here We Go!

This is a blog about the goodness and grace of God, even amidst the angst of autism.

So ... how did this whole thing start?

Well, I said I'd never do this but obviously here I am. After being challenged, encouraged, goaded and double dog dared, several years ago I began to blog.

Near the end of 2008, I found myself with renewed passion for God's Word, Kingdom, and people and I was stirred, through nothing other than the simple means of grace, to a hunger and thirsting for righteousness unlike any other time in my 20+ years as a Christian.

During that period, I began typing out the things that were striking me the most in my quiet time each morning. Honestly, I started because I wanted to have a written record that I could pass along to my children one day - lettered Ebenezers reminding them of how much their Mom loves God and His Word.

While doing that I found myself so excited on certain days that I began to email my musings to some of my girl friends, hoping to encourage them even as Christ was encouraging me. Many of those gals challenged me to put these things online in a blog form so others could have access to them. That's how this site started.

Now, to shoot really straight with you, that personal "revival" of mine has pendumatically ebbed and flowed over the course of the days, months and years since 2008. For a prolonged period after that initial renewing surge I actually found myself in an utterly antithetical place. God, in His wisdom, was pleased to grant me a substantial season in the dark dungeon of "doubting castle" - those days were some of the hardest of my life post-Jesus but were providentially ordained days ultimately used for my good and for my God's glory.

"Through many dangers, toils, and snares I have already come" by nothing but the amazing grace of an amazing God.

I've learned that even in the midst of the darkest of days there's just something about the light of God's Word that is powerful. The Scripture has been an anchor for me in the storm surge of life. Even when my eyes have seemed to be rather veiled and my vision somewhat dimmed, there has still been a re-focusing force that has risen when I have gazed long and hard upon the Word of God. Thus, even as a saint who struggles, I continue to write of my God, my Redeemer, His promises, and His truth.

I'm not always very regular at posting here because there are many more important duties in my life right now than blog uploads - ie. being wife, mom, housekeeper, cook, taxi service, chief bottle washer, and laundry lady - along with that music thing I do as a side gig! But, as time allows I'll be cutting and pasting from Joshua and Elizabeth's future journal gift and sharing some of it with you as well.

Thanks for stopping by!

Who's Doing This?

Lori Sealy is daily amazed at the grace of God in her life. Adopted as an infant and raised in an evangelical church, she rebelled against the things of Christ during high school and considered herself an atheist. Upon entering college, the God who ordains our steps ordained that her path would cross with several students who loved Christ and loved His Word. During that first year of college, she set out to destroy the faith of these young Christians. They set out to pray for her salvation.

Knowing that "faith comes through hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ," six college students daily confronted her sin and challenged her with the truths of God's glorious Word. Their obedience in proclaiming the good news of the gospel of Christ bore fruit in August of 1988 when by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, she was adopted for the second time in her life - this time into the family of God.

Lori is now the wife of Phillip Sealy. They live in Sylva, North Carolina where Phillip has been called to plant a new church for the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA) - Redeemer Church Sylva. The Sealys have two children Joshua (14) and Elizabeth (12). Lori and Joshua both live with autism.

In her spare time (what little there is) Lori masquerades as a part-time songwriter/singer and performs on a limited monthly basis. Lori's newest CD, "The Strife is Over," has recently released. Hard copies of it, along with her last release "Begone Unbelief", are available through CD Baby and Lori's own website. Digital downloads are available through iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon mp3!

Be sure to visit http://www.lorisealy.com/ to learn more!

Why the Sycamore Tree?

Zaccheus, the wee little man, wanted to see Jesus and so he climbed into the sycamore tree in order to get a good look. Lori, the wee little wife and mom, longs to see Jesus as well. I realize that the place where I will catch a true glimpse of Him is in the pages of His Word.

The Bible is my sycamore tree and I find myself longing more and more to climb up into its branches that I might see Christ more clearly. This blog is simply a record of what God is teaching me as I spend time in "the tree" of His glorious Word. If anyone reads it I'll be amazed; if anyone profits from it I'll be humbled; and if anything good is found in it Soli Deo Gloria!

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Bless the Lord / Be Blessed By Him - Psalm 134

No comments:

Post a Comment