Pastoral Letter 31

Dear Members of St. Andrew’s Uniting Church, Friends and Adherents,

Grace and peace to you all in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Once again, I write this week’s Pastoral Letter with a heavy heart. I am devastated as a great danger of extinction is looming over the heads of the Armenian nation and our kin in Artsakh and Armenia. In the words of the Armenian Missionary Association of America’s Executive Director, Mr. Zaven Khanjian, an existential threat shadows the sovereign states of Armenia and Artsakh, as we are witnessing an uninhibited emergence of a century old evil on the Western and Eastern borders of our homeland.

Early morning, Armenia time, on Sunday, September 27, 2020 the standing ceasefire once again was violated by Azerbaijan. Provoked, encouraged and armed by Turkey with the participation of a big number of armed Syrian extremist rebels, Azerbaijan launched an all-out military assault on the peaceful population of Artsakh, with a terrible and indiscriminate shelling by heavy artillery fire, military assault drones, helicopters and missiles of the peaceful civilian population of border towns and villages including the capital Stepanakert. Our people are crying for PEACE and in the process, the heroic defenders of the land, homes, churches, families, women and children are determined to secure the homeland and protect its borders. Dozens of young military and volunteer recruits have been martyred, hundreds wounded and thousands have been evacuated.

We are called to pray for peace, raise awareness in our surroundings and share our material resources to sustain the people, support the victims of war, care for the wounded and the misplaced. The AMAA has placed all its facilities in Artsakh and Armenia under the disposal of the civilian authorities to shelter women, children and the elderly.

Please pray for Armenia. May God be with the suffering Armenian nation.

As I have indicated earlier, the Elders and the Church Council will meet this Wednesday and revisit the matter of reopening our church doors for worship and fellowship. As the restrictions ease, I am hoping that before the end of the year, we will be able to reopen our church doors to gather for worship and fellowship. We will keep you posted. In the meantime, please join the other members tomorrow morning in worship, following the Order of Service. Please light a candle, have a small roll and a cup of wine ready for the Communion and give a little more time for your personal prayers and pray for others. Especially remember the Armenian nation, Armenia and Artsakh. Thanks to Mark for suggesting the hymns for this Sunday’s Worship.

Be well and safe and if you need any kind of help or support, please do not hesitate to ask.

Continue to pray and remember the following points in your prayers:

1. Pray for Armenia and Artsakh as the violent war continues with the number of casualties are growing day by day, including civilians, young and old, women and children.

2. Pray seeking God’s help as we go through the difficult time of pandemic.

3. Pray for those who are struggling financially, lost loved ones, in pain, not well and lonely.

4. Pray for world peace and ask for God’s blessings.

Krikor

Remember Daylight Saving starts tonight, please make sure to move your clocks forward.

The Lord is My Rock

Psalm 19:1-14

As a child, I am sure you loved to play the game, “Hide and Seek.” I remember spending in summertime and during school holidays hiding and seeking with the kids in our neighbourhood. Now we have given up this much-loved game as adults, but interestingly we find ourselves increasingly occupied with this game. As we grow older, we put or hide our car keys somewhere and we spend too much time seeking them. Most probably we play the same game with our wallets, mobile phones, an important document, even some cash and a lot of other items.

Sometimes even we find ourselves playing ‘hide and seek’ with God. There are times when God seems so close to us, we know that He is with us and watching over us, but sometimes we feel embraced by God’s love and supporting presence. At other times, it seems as if God is hiding and wherever we look we can’t find Him. We think He has abandoned us, closed His ears to our cries and prayers. When we look around and see what’s happening in our lives, in the place where we live and in the world, sometimes we wonder if God cares for us or even if He is with us in our challenges and when we are going through tough times.

In Psalm 19, David gives us ideas where to find God and to behold God’s power and love, that surpasses all human understanding, because it is totally different than the love our minds comprehend. It is a kind of love that expresses affection in an entirely different way than we, humans, do.

This Psalm, which has been called the most majestic of David’s Psalms, is a powerful song of praise. David writes: “The heavens declare the glory of God and the skies proclaims his handiwork.” In other words, sun, moon, starlit skies with stars, forests, oceans, mountains and rivers and even deserts proclaim God’s presence and glory.

Some years ago, visiting central Australia, Uluru, we observed sunrise and sunset. With the rising and the setting of the sun, the colour of the rock transformed its colour and the crowd around us were amazed with the change of colours. At sunrise, the sun creeped from the ground and slowly filled the rock with a bright red, as if it was on fire. As the sun made its way over the rock, it transformed back to its original rusty orange colour. Sunset was mainly from the red end of the spectrum and its reflection from the rock and turned into reddish-brown colour. It was amazing. Also, one night we gazed at the starry skies in total darkness and we could easily see thousands and thousands of stars, as well as a glimpse of parts of our galaxy, the Milky Way. With this unforgettable experience, we had caught a glimpse of God’s magnificence. It was God’s beautiful creation.

All creation proclaims the greatness and wonder of God. We see God’s transcendence—that God is a bigger God than all of creation, and it takes our breath away. In the beauty of the creation we see a hint of God’s love. But we also know that in this beautiful God’s creation life can be harsh and unfair. In this magnificent innovation, sadly we see pain, suffering, pandemic, hatred and war.  Because of those, we think that creation can be ungracious, and because of this, we can assume that God is not totally revealed in His creation. In other words, although creation declares God’s glory, that’s not all. Because we see the glory of God in His law as well. David begins his song of praise in adoration toward God solely in terms of His glory in nature, yet the most prominent feature of this psalm is praise to God for His law (His Word).

Hence, David turns his attention from creation to the law. God is not only found in gorgeous sunsets, but also in the do’s and don’ts of life. Like creation, the law is a demonstration of God’s love. The Ten Commandments, that I am sure we know almost each and every one, even if not all the words, are in a way an expression of love. The first four having to do with how we look at God and the fifth the parents, father and mother, speak of our relationship with God and in a way that demands that we love and express that love. And the remaining five, deal with the relationship that we should have with each other or our fellow men. Again, they demand that we express and practically show our love.

God’s law is good. But it doesn’t justify us before God. Keeping the law does not encourage God to answer more of our prayers or enable us to avoid many of the trials and tribulations of life. The law, however, is a good way to live—it gives life rather than taking it away. But we, as humans, fail at keeping the law and what started out to be a gift of grace and love becomes a curse. Because of this, we need something beyond the confines of this psalm. We need Jesus, the Christ, our redeemer.

Let’s first look at this magnificent psalm of David in some details.

This Psalm has three main sections dealing respectively with Creation (vs. 1-6) and Covenant (vs. 7-10) and with an application to follow (vs. 11-14). These distinct parts form a unified Psalm.

1. Creation – “The Glory of the Lawgiver” (1-6) – In two subsections:

a. The first speaks of the ‘voice’ of Creation (vs. 1-3): Creation’s witness to the existence of God. David is standing upon the earth admiring the results of God’s handiwork and wants to share this pleasing view, this landscape, with the whole of mankind.

b. Verses 4-6 deals with God’s sustenance of His Creation. We cannot live on sunshine alone, but we cannot live without it! We are not worshipping the sun or any other created object: but rather rejoicing in the hand that created all these things.

The “heavens” are plural, describing their variety; there are the watery heavens with their clouds, the higher heavens with their calms and storms, the solar heavens with their glories of the day, and the starry heavens with the marvels of the night.

The word “declare” indicates that every moment God’s existence, power, and goodness are being expressed by the heavenly heralds that shine upon us.

“Day after day …and night after night” the heavens give their information.

Each day is poetically pictured as informing the next day of God’s glory; therefore, the Good News has been nonstop through the ages.

In verse 3 “speech” and “language” indicate that in all languages, humans have recognized in some way the glory of God in nature. “The heavens declare the glory of God.”

Paul, in his letter to the Romans said it in this way: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made,  so that men are without excuse” (Rom. 1:20).

The heavens tell about the wisdom of God, they tell about the power of God, and they tell about, I think, something of the plan and purpose of God.

From the beginning the heavens have been the primitive witness of God to man.

Looking in the Old Testament and the New Testament, we find that the Trinity was involved in the creation of the earth. Genesis 1:2 says: “The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”

The apostle John tells of another beginning: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…Through him all things were made by him; without him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:1-3).

Colossians 1:16 speaking about the Lord Jesus, says: “For by Him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and for Him.”

God the Father planned this universe; the Son carried out the plan, and He is the One who redeemed it; and the Holy Spirit today is moving over this creation.

This beautiful Creation does not stand alone in its testimony to God. The Lord God has entered into a covenant relationship with mankind and spoken to us Himself.

2. Covenant – “The Glory of the Law” (7-10)

At this point we might recognize that God’s Word is not limited to Torah, to the Law alone. God’s Word is revealed in the unfolding of His special revelation throughout the Bible, from Genesis to the book of Revelation. This includes all the books of the Old and the New Testaments, Pentateuch, history books, wisdom books, prophecies, Gospels, Acts, epistles and Revelation.

John writes:“But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you might have life in His name” (John 20:31).

Paul agrees: ‘Now all these things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfilment of the ages has come’ (1 Cor. 10:11).

In verse 7 we are told: “Whatever comes from God is perfect.”

The law cannot save us, because it is perfect and we are not. We cannot measure up to it. The law is perfect, and it provides true wisdom, in revealing how to live a life pleasing to God (Deut. 29:14).

The fact that salvation doesn’t come by keeping the law, is not the fault of the law, but of humans, who cannot keep the law.

We are also told in verse 7 that the law is useful for “Reviving the soul.” The law, by instructing people, restores them from moral blindness to the light that is theirs by nature (Romans 1:19). And in many cases, it restores them from sin to righteousness as they repent of their sins and receive Christ as Saviour.

3. Application – “The Law in Relation to Man” (11-14)

The application begins with a recognition of the need to heed the warnings of Scripture, and to acknowledge the value of keeping God’s law (vs. 11). The heart of man is desperately wicked, and deceitful with it (Jeremiah 17:9).

So, David searches his own heart, and asks to be cleansed from secret sins – those which have been committed in ignorance, and which he has not yet discovered to be sins in his life (vs. 12). A thoughtful reflection on God’s Word will lead us in the same direction, teaching us new things every day, but leaving us also with a deep impression of how poorly we know and apply that Word.

The David prays also to be kept from shameless and wilful sins (vs. 13). It is a cry for the grace of God. ‘The temptation is strong Lord, and only you can keep me from the great transgression.’

David felt that God’s law was a constant source from which he was taught and instructed. He knew that the reward that comes to one who endeavours to abide by God’s commandments is immeasurable. We see in verse 13 that David feared that in times of weakness he would be guilty of committing “arrogant” or wilful, deliberate, intentional sins. David couldn’t understand why he did some of the things he did, and he felt frustration which was made more severe as he studied God’s law. He prayed that God would keep him from sins committed unconsciously and in ignorance, and then he would be innocent of the great transgression.

Finally, we see in verse 14 that David was concerned that not only what he said, but also what he thought in the depths of his heart, would meet with God’s approval. He knew he could do this only as the Lord was his constant “strength and redeemer.” For David, the Lord God was his rock, his solid foundation, upon which he built his life. Yes, so many times he failed, but most of the time, as we read in the scripture, God was there to help him, guide him, give him he strength to struggle and even win the battles he was challenged with; starting with the challenge he received as a shepherd boy from the mighty Goliath. With God’s grace and power, he was able to succeed and gain the victory.

From the start God was with David. He chose him and anointed him to be the greatest king of Israel. Jesus was born from his line and was called Son of David. This was more proof to confirm that indeed God was his Rock and the Redeemer.

Now listen to how David ended this psalm. This is the verse you hear many times in a Believer’s prayer.

“May the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.”

Who was David’s strength?  –  Jesus Christ!

Who was his redeemer?  –  Jesus Christ!

He is also my strength and my redeemer.

He becomes that through the grace of God.

God communicates His love for us in creation and in the law, but the clearest demonstration of God’s love for us is in the person of Jesus Christ. The law becomes an unbearable burden if we try to use it as a way to become perfect and to earn our salvation and God’s pleasure. We sin and we fall short of the laws demands and God’s expectations.

God’s love, which is given to us in the gift of Jesus, gives us the forgiveness of our sins and a new relationship with God—where we are God’s children and God is our father. We find God in the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus. If we open our eyes, we can discover God in the struggles, trials and tribulations of life. He is with us. God never left us.

Where’s God? There are times when God seems so distant, but God hasn’t moved and abandoned us.

Where is He, when we suffer, have pains, are lonely and stressed?

Where is He, when we face the challenge of deadly pandemic?

Where is He, when the enemy rages war against us and many young lives are perished, people, young and old are killed with brutality, many are displaced leaving behind their homes and lands?

Where is He, when death knocks on our doors?

Is He really our Rock and Redeemer?

These are all legitimate questions we frequently ask, especially in difficult circumstances.

Somehow, we find the answer to our questions in this Psalm.  We can encounter God in the wonder of creation, in our struggle to live as God’s children, and in the person of Jesus Christ, who is with us to remind us of our forgiveness, and to assure us of God’s presence through the thick and thin of life.

I want to end by pointing out that the cry of David’s soul in this psalm was that he might always recognize the glory of God’s law and, as God gave him strength and wisdom, have the determination to apply it daily to every part of his life. God’s law still applies; what was sin back then is still sin.

Paul puts it this way: ‘If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord”, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved’ (Romans 10:9).

This is not only head belief, but heart belief, even as the Lord has promised (Hebrews 10:16-17).

In the end, after all, the witness of Creation and Providence, and the words of Law and Gospel, are of no value at all to us unless they are allowed to take residence in our hearts.

Who was David’s strength?  –  Jesus Christ!

Who was his redeemer?  –  Jesus Christ!

He is also my strength and my redeemer.

He becomes that through the grace of God.

Amen!