Psalm 67:1 “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us.”

There is a whole world view in the words with which the psalmist begins this prayer. In Christianity, everything begins with grace. Asking God to be gracious to us is more than a request for God to be kind to us, to do something nice for us. If you ever listen to radio personality Dave Ramsey greet his callers, when they ask him “how are you?” his stock answer is “better than I deserve.” Better than I deserve. That’s God being gracious.

A Christian doesn’t approach God and say, “Just give me what I’ve got coming to me.” That would be insane. What I’ve got coming to me is really, really hot, and really, really uncomfortable, and lasts forever and ever. I have offended God with my life, and with my attitudes, not the least of which is the idea that somehow I deserve better than I’ve been getting. Asking God to be gracious is a way of saying, “I get it. I haven’t been banking all kinds of favors that you owe me, and now I am calling some of them in. It’s a blessing that you haven’t decided to squish me yet, because every day I am giving you more reasons to.”

But there is a more important part of this world view behind our prayer for God to be gracious. It is our complete confidence that he is! We don’t approach him in utter terror. We don’t come to him as a last resort because we are just that desperate. This is the God whose every dealing with us is always, only love. He doesn’t just send us a Savior. He comes here himself to rescue us. He doesn’t just put up a stiff fight to deliver us from our sins, and dig deep into his pockets to finance the operation. He dies in our place, he lays down his life as the payment that sets us free from all our sins deserved.

Maybe you heard of a campaign for evangelical Christians to text “God is not dead” to all their friends at Easter a couple of years ago. It was inspired by a movie of the same title. It’s true that he is not dead. But at the cross he was dead when Jesus breathed his last. He was dead until Easter morning, all because God is gracious, all because God is so intent on loving me and saving me that there is no price too high for him to pay. In Christianity, everything begins with grace, like this prayer, which understands from the very first words exactly where we stand with God. It starts and ends with grace.

Psalm 66:16-20 “Come and listen, all you who fear God; let me tell you what he has done for me. I cried out to him with my mouth; his praise was on my tongue. If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened; but God has surely listened and heard my voice in prayer. Praise be to God who has not rejected my prayer or withheld his love from me.”

Notice the pronouns the psalmist is using. In earlier verses he talked about “we” and “our” and “us.” Now he switches to talking about “I” and “my” and “me.” This is his testimonial. Because the Lord had tested him, and then preserved him, he had a story to tell. And so do you. And so do I.

Our story is the stuff of real praise because it is not so much our story as it is his story. Praising God is more than repeating acceptable slogans and phrases like “Praise the Lord,” or “Hallelujah” or “Hosanna.” It involves telling the story. Have you ever seen the Disney movie Finding Nemo? The little clownfish Nemo has been captured by an Australian dentist to be added to his aquarium. His father Marlin swims half-way across the Pacific Ocean to try to rescue him. He fights off sharks and jelly fish and hungry sea gulls along the way. Toward the end of his journey, Marlin’s story of adventure and perseverance gets picked up by some sea turtles. They tell it to other sea creatures. Pretty soon Marlin has become a living legend under the sea.

Our story is important not because we are the hero or the legend. We are more like little Nemo, stuck in the fish tank, waiting to be rescued. Our story is important because Jesus has come to the rescue—from sin, and death, and a whole host of lesser problems scattered across our lives. There is no higher or sincerer way of praising him than telling the story in which he is the hero every time that it’s told. “But God has surely listened and heard my voice in prayer. Praise be to God, who has not rejected my prayer or withheld his love from me!”

Does the story always have a happy ending? Maybe not when viewed through merely human eyes. Sometimes Israel lost its battles. Sometimes the Apostles died for their faith. Sometimes our circumstances go from bad to worse. Jesus’ own body was taken lifeless from the cross.

But we live every day and all of life in the light of Jesus’ empty tomb. His empty grave promises there is more to the story than meets the eye, and that our story, like his story, isn’t over yet. We worship the God who raises the dead. Praise the God who hears our prayers and never withholds his love!

Psalm 66:12-15 “…but you brought us to a place of abundance. I will come to your temple with burnt offerings and fulfill my vows to you–vows my lips promised and my mouth spoke when I was in trouble. I will sacrifice fat animals to you and an offering of rams; I will offer bulls and goats.”

The prosperity preachers tend to suggest that you can buy God off. If you just bring a big enough gift, the Lord will practically be forced to give you what you want. First comes your offering. Then comes God’s response.

The psalmist says it works the other way around. God’s goodness comes first. Our offerings are the response. We can’t pay God off. We have nothing to offer that isn’t already his. He needs nothing from us. Our combined treasures wouldn’t be worth a drop of Jesus’ blood, or a moment of his love, or an extra second added to our lives.

But God has already poured out streams of Jesus’ blood from the cross, and we live under the endless umbrella of his love every moment of our lives. He has forgiven all our sins and given us lives that never end. That inspires a response. I would like to give him something. What we bring is really just a token, just a symbol, that we are giving God the only thing he ever really wanted from us: our hearts!

The psalmist shows this with the gift he selected. The offering he brings to the temple is a whole burnt offering. This was the one kind of Old Testament sacrifice that was completely reduced to ashes when it was placed on the altar, kind of like when you get distracted and forget about the burgers on the grill. Most of the sacrifices at the temple merely cooked the meat, which was then eaten by the priests, or in some cases eaten by the worshipers themselves. The whole burnt offering was a sign of total dedication to God. It said, “Here, Lord, you get the whole thing–not just this animal, but my head, my hands, and my heart as well.”

That’s what the Lord wants us to bring him in response to his grace. In the first verse of Romans chapter 12, after exploring all the ins and outs of God’s saving grace for eleven chapters, Paul concludes, “Therefore, I urge you brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God–this is your spiritual act of worship.” Again, first God acts with his saving mercy. Then we respond with our offering: our whole bodies, our whole selves, given up in praise to the God who preserves his people.

Psalm 66:8-12  “Praise our God, O peoples, let the sound of his praise be heard; he has preserved our lives and kept our feet from slipping. For you, O God, tested us; you refined us like silver. You brought us into prison and laid burdens on our backs. You let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and water, but you brought us to a place of abundance.”

Take a moment to think about all your favorite stories, movies, or TV shows in which nothing ever goes wrong. There are no disasters or tragedies. Everyone always gets along all the time. No one makes any mistakes. No one is ever in danger, ever in pain, ever embarrassed. Can you think of any? I can’t. Whether it is drama or comedy, there has to be some sort of tension to make the story work.

Real life is similar. As hard as we may try to make sure that nothing ever goes wrong, it is filled with drama, trouble, and tension. Only now it doesn’t simply serve to make life more interesting. It makes it a little scary. Most stories and shows have a happy ending. Reality doesn’t always work that way.

If you back up a few verses, it seems that Psalm 66 has the Exodus from Egypt and the crossing of the Red Sea in mind. When it speaks of “preserving our life” and “keeping our feet from slipping,” it is clear that something hasn’t been going smoothly. Now here’s the shocking thing: Not only did our God know about it and fail to stop it. Sometimes he was the one behind it! “For you, O God, tested us; you refined us like silver. You brought us into prison and laid burdens on our backs. You let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and water…”

“You did this, God,” the psalmist says. “You brought us into prison.” Do you ever find yourself in a situation where you feel trapped? You size up the situation, look at your alternatives, and none of them seem very good? I can quit my job at a time when jobs in my field are scarce and face bankruptcy and starvation. Or I can keep showing up for work that is slowly robbing me of my sanity, raising my blood pressure to dangerous levels, driving me to an early grave. I can skip the chemotherapy, let the cancer take its course, and leave my children fatherless or motherless. Or I can take the poison, suffer through months of misery, and maybe leave my children fatherless or motherless in the end anyway.

“You put me in this prison,” the psalmist says. “You laid this burden on my back, or at least you let the bad guys ride all over my head.” Why? Why would my Lord do such a thing? “For you, O God, tested us; you refined us like silver.” Precious metals come from metal ores that have a lot of worthless garbage mixed in with the silver or the gold. It’s all good for nothing until you drop it into a blast furnace, turn the heat up to a couple of thousand degrees, and burn out all the impurities.

Sons and daughters of God come from raw material that has a lot of worthless sin mixed in, not the least of which is the pride that makes us think that we are gifted enough and good enough to get by on our own. It is dangerous to deny it. It will bite you if you do. We might as well own up to it. God intends to refine us, to burn that pride out of us by bringing us to situations that bring us to our knees. He leads us to that place where we can do no more for ourselves. All we can do is cry out, “Lord, help me!” Here is the test: Will we despair and give up? Will we get mad at God and turn away from him? Or will we trust him?

His salvation is waiting. “…but you brought us to a place of abundance.” When the Lord first leads a person to faith, he works in a similar way, doesn’t he? He leads us to feel the heavy burden of our guilt. He brings us to see that our sin is bigger than us. It’s crushing weight brings us to the place where we see there is nothing left for us to do. “Lord, help me!” And then he brings us to the cross, where we find an abundance of grace, more love and forgiveness than we ever thought possible. He doesn’t just help us with the heavy load. At the cross, Jesus removes it entirely and carries it himself. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” In leading us to repentance and faith, he brings us to a place of abundance.

The testing God sends after we come to faith brings us to a similar place of abundance. In stripping us of our self-dependence, and teaching us to depend on him, the Lord is drawing us closer to himself. He is showing us, truly, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” He is building in us the humble character and patient endurance that is appropriate for people who call themselves God’s sons and daughters. Even if the testing kills us, literally, he is only taking us home to the abundance of heaven. We have every reason to praise the God who preserves his people even though he may be testing us at any given moment.

Psalm 90:13-15 “Relent, O Lord! How long will it be? Have compassion on your servants. Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days. Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, for as many years as we have seen trouble.”

An old saying claims, “Hunger is the best cook.” Food never tastes better than when you have worked up a voracious appetite. When Moses says, “Relent O Lord! How long will it be?” he is speaking as a hungry man. But the food he longs for is something to fill the spiritual emptiness created by a long meditation on sin and death. If all we knew of God was his anger at sin and the death it brings, we would spiritually starve to death. But it also gives us an appetite for something else from God: his unfailing love.

You see, for as long and as passionately as our God has hated our sin, he has loved us with a love that knows no limits and knows no rest. His love knows no limits. Think about it. What could you possibly imagine to ask God to give up that would be such an imposition, such an outrageous request, such a painful sacrifice, that he would say to you, “Now that is going too far. That’s out of bounds. That’s just too much to give up.” What could you ask him? He has already given up his home, his power, his respect, his Son, his life to love you. Isn’t that what Jesus is all about, God giving up everything to forgive you and to save you?

His love knows no rest. It is unfailing love. He doesn’t have a bad day at the office and take it home to take out on you. He doesn’t grow in a different direction and grow apart from us. He doesn’t burn out from constantly pouring himself into this relationship with little or no appreciation in return. His love is unfailing. It knows no rest. It never takes a day off.

Doesn’t that satisfy the hunger, like a bowl of hot soup on a cold day? But doesn’t that also serve as something of an appetizer for even more? Happiness and peace are elusive in this world. We find our little moments of relief, we experience some joy, but it is all so fleeting.

There is only one place I know where God will make us glad for as many days as he has afflicted us, and even more, and that is in heaven. This is yet another promise of his unfailing love, and if we have learned to number our days here, we will spend them longing for the better days to come.

Psalm 90:1 “Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.”

God has been our dwelling place. There is a comforting picture of his constant care in that statement. God has been like a home around us. The help we receive from him is not so much like going to the doctor’s office. That isn’t some place you live. It’s some place you occasionally visit only when you are very ill. God is more than someone we go to for an occasional visit. He is like home. We live with him and in him. He is the one who has been our constant protection from the elements. He is the one whose grace shelters our souls.

The word that Moses chose for “dwelling place” also suggests that it is something of a hideaway, an escape where trouble cannot find us. Wild animals often have homes that are camouflaged and hidden to avoid the attack of predators. When we are dwelling with the Lord, we are likewise hidden away in his protection from those who want to prey on us. The devil may “prowl around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). But wrapped in the righteous life of our Savior, covered in the blood of his forgiveness, we are perfectly safe from the devil’s accusations.

This is where we have lived all our days as believers in him. God has always been our dwelling place, not only for us, but for our parents and grandparents before us and for our children and grandchildren to follow us, ‘throughout all generations.” It’s not as though people have ever had different options here. “Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.” Even before creation, our God is the one who stretches back forever without beginning. He didn’t replace some other god somewhere along the way. He didn’t come to his position by promotion, or succession, or acquisition. He has always been there, just as he will always be there. He is the only God there is. As we pray this psalm with Moses, we note that every day we have lived has been lived in his constant care.

Revelation 1:12 “I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands…”

Seven verses later the meaning of this picture is explained in simple terms: “The seven lampstands are the seven churches,” seven Christian congregations spread across modern day Turkey, each facing its own set of challenges and temptations at a time when persecution by the unbelieving majority made them feel rather alone.

The lampstands are a picture of churches, and I don’t think that it is hard to understand why our Lord chose that image. “You are the light of the world,” Jesus told his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount. A Christian congregation, where Jesus’ disciples are gathered together, is a light shining in a dark place. That is just as true of our congregations today as it was of any of these other congregations 1900 years ago.

Look at the values and standards competing with ours in the broader community in which we live. On my way back and forth between home and church I used to drive past a rather impressive looking building with one odd feature: it had no windows. Perhaps you can guess why. Inside women are paid to disrobe for the men who attend this club. I have never stopped to confirm what I am about to say — for obvious reasons — but my impression is that on any given day of the week between the hours of noon and midnight that parking lot has more cars in it than my church’s parking lot on Sunday morning.

You, dear Christians, are a light shining in a dark place. There are many interesting and useful things our churches could do, from feeding the hungry to entertaining the teenagers to keeping some stretch of a nearby highway free of trash. These could even be used to enhance the gospel ministry. But don’t let these kinds of things become a replacement. What good is it if a congregation should improve the whole world yet lose its own soul?

Let’s keep the gospel light burning in our lampstands. The light that calls lost souls to repentance, and to find the forgiveness of sins in the innocent death of our Lord Jesus, and never-ending life in his glorious resurrection from the dead, is the true light of our churches. Without it they are nothing more than a social club, and none of what we do will make a dime’s worth of difference the day after Judgment Day.

1 John 4:2-3 “This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.”

Saint Augustine preached on these words from the Apostle John during Easter week about 300 years after they were first written. He recognized almost a dozen dangerous teachings and religious movements that could be identified by asking, “Do they know Jesus? Do they recognize him as God and man? Do the recognize him as the Messiah, the Christ, the Savior?”

The same test is useful today. You probably realize that there are a number of world religions that fail the test on this point: Judaism, Islam, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, to name a few. More Christians are becoming aware that if you attend a college or university, many that are affiliated with Christian denominations, even some with the name Lutheran, and take a course in “New Testament Studies,” “the Gospels,” or some similar course, there is a high likelihood that the “spirit” teaching that class will fail on this point as well. Jesus’ divine nature, his atoning death for our sins, his bodily resurrection from the dead have all been denied in many Christian institutions of higher learning for well over a century now. It is inevitable that this same spirit has found its way into pulpits of Christian churches, too. That is why it is important that we heed John’s words, and test the faith of those who teach us. Regardless of who stands before you to preach or teach, including the man writing this devotion, have this question in the back of your mind: Does he know Jesus? Not “Does he speak warmly about Jesus?” Not “Does he make Jesus sound interesting?” Not “Does he use Jesus name a lot?” But “Does he know the same Jesus and preach the same Jesus that the Apostle John is describing here?”

It is not sinful judging to test our teachers this way. If you were shopping in the produce aisle at the grocery store, you would not put a badly bruised apple or an obviously rotting and moldy cucumber or a brown and mushy banana into your basket. You would “judge” these foods to be unfit for your consumption. Such judging is even more important when it comes to how we feed our souls.

A few verses later John clarifies our picture of what Jesus looks like, the standard for our test. “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:9-10). To know Jesus is to know God’s love. That starts with Christmas, right? All by itself, sending his Son into this world was an incredible display of God’s love. For many years now we have had great respect for the parents who sent their sons and daughters into enemy territory in Iraq or Afghanistan, with all the dangers involved. God sent his Son into the enemy territory of this world, with far more dangers, far less defenses, and far more certainty of death so that he could give us life. That is love!

God’s love on Good Friday naturally follows. “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” God not only knew that this could happen. He willed that it would happen. He sent Jesus to die as the sacrifice that took away the sins that stood between us and God. This sacrifice makes God smile at us, because we don’t look offensive to him anymore. It makes us smile at God, because he isn’t angry with us anymore. He did this, as the Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 5, when we, on our part, were still God’s enemies. That is love!

The result, then, is that God’s love for us just solves everything! It takes away our sin. It creates in us the new birth of faith. It shows us what real love looks like, and then it produces that love in our own lives.

Faithfulness to the gospel that tells us God became a man, took our place on a cross, died in payment for our sins, and rose to guarantee our own unending life is still the standard test for those who teach us. Don’t be afraid to administer the test.

Isaiah 25:9 “In that day they will say, ‘Surely this is our God; we trusted in him, and he saved us. This is the Lord, we trusted in him; let us rejoice in his salvation.’”

There is a flavor of waiting in Isaiah’s words here. God’s people often wait for him to keep his promises. Waiting requires faith. Abraham waited 25 years for the Lord to keep his promise to give him and Sarah a son. That’s half my lifetime. The nation of Israel waited hundreds of years in Egypt for the Lord to set them free from their slavery. The whole history of our nation isn’t that long.

Moments earlier in this prophecy the Lord promised to swallow up death. That promise was going to wait another 700 years after Isaiah put it on paper. That’s thousands of years after he had first made the promise to Israel’s ancestors. Many people gave up on the promise across the centuries. A faithful few waited, and believed. Their faith was rewarded and vindicated when our Lord Jesus came and destroyed death by his own death and resurrection.

Patience has never been a strong human trait. We probably have less of it than our ancestors. We live in an age of instant gratification. We don’t save up until we can afford something. We buy it on credit and pay with interest. We don’t save for retirement. There’s too much we want today. We get antsy if the checkout line at Walmart isn’t moving fast enough. We complain if they don’t open up a new register after five minutes.  A professor of mine once noted that the thing that makes common sense so valuable is that it isn’t all that common. In a similar way we need to keep reminding people that “patience is a virtue,” because while it may be good to have, not many of us show it much of the time.

The Lord’s timetable may seem painfully slow to people with so little patience. Believe. His answers to our prayers seem like they will never come. Believe. We have been putting up with these morons, suffering through this situation, dealing with this pain for weeks, or months, or years now, and he promises he won’t let me be tempted beyond what I can bear. Believe. Jesus promised to return and make everything right and take us home almost 2000 years ago. He still hasn’t showed up. Believe. The Lord kept his promise to destroy death and save us from sin thousands of years after he gave it. We can believe that he is good for every other promise on which we are waiting. In all of history he hasn’t missed one yet.

Imagine how your life could be different if you knew that you were going to live forever. O wait, you do know that. The Lord has destroyed death, just like he promised. Believe it.