*Likely scratches record as he mucks up putting it on*
*Reclines on bed, eyeing uni book he’s avoiding across room
with indignation*
*Hopes indignation was the right word*
I want to write creative blogs again, but for some reason I
no longer back myself. I used to be so free and loose with that stuff. Have I
become uptight? What would happen if I were to return to architecture and do
some drawing? Would I be uptight there too? I’ve changed a lot this past year.
I got ‘all serious’ in the café when I started brooding on my loneliness and lack of satisfaction (intense little words those ones!). I longed for more of Jesus and started
wondering what that meant. I went to Bible college and continued asking the
questions, did all the reading and the writing, and less of the creative kind.
Have I blocked up my creative outlet that I used to use with such looseness and
freedom? Have I dried up the source?
I'd like to hope not.
I’ve become a man of want-to-dos, mean-to-bes,
when-I-get-time-I-wills. Then I’ll draw… Soon I’ll poet… After I’ll write and
design… In time I’ll improvise… How can I bring these parts that are so vital
to my existence, to my humanity, in amid the obligations of today? In between
the readings and the trainings, the chores and the socials, the quiet times and
the activities - how can I exude my creativeness amid all this?
How can I be a man who does, who acts, having thought about it enough?
Well here I am, and I feel a basic creativeness being
expressed already. I’m loose and free. But this is just the weak calf, the
worst fruit, the runt of the litter; this is me at my lowest, with eyes
drooping and time only made by avoiding what I really feel I should be doing.
I want this to be
what I’m really doing, what I’m really engaged in. I want to make quality time
to pursue creativity, not just moments of lazy procrastination. I want time to
explore as I create, as I take time to reflect all that I see - the beauty and brokenness and the wonderful breaking-ins of the kingdom coming - in pencils and pens, in lines and rhymes, in curves and in improvisations of
lengthy freedom. I need to embrace time like this and to nurture it – along
with the books, the quiet time, the chores and social responsibilities. I need
creativity back, to thrive and be vibrant!
In light of the Easter weekend we have just celebrated…
Last week at Easter Camp, we had a Scottish man telling the Easter story, and during the Sunday reading, where he talked about Christ’s resurrection, he went on to talk about thefreedom that had come about. I loved it because in his Scottish accent it reminded me of William Wallace from the movie Braveheart. It’s a great movie about this Scottish man William Wallace, who in the Middle Ages led the Scottish rebellion against the ruling English. Now… I apologise for potentially ruining the movie here… At the end of the film there’s thisglorious scene with one of the most courageous acts of defiance ever! In the scene we see William Wallace lying on a table in front of a large English crowd, and he’s being tortured, with the English demanding him to repent for his rebellion. But instead of giving them the confession they desire, in his thick Scottish accent, Wallace cries out a glorious long…
SUMMATION OF EASTER STORY:
Of course, the freedom the Scottish man was speaking about at Easter Camp was a bit different… Christ wasn’t dying for the freedom of the Scottish, but for the freedom of all from the burden of sin. If I were to sum up the Easter story, I would say that by Jesus’ becoming sin on our behalf, even though he didn’t, and by his dying on the cross to remove our sin, he redeemed us… That was Good Friday. And then we get Easter Sunday, when Christ was resurrected from the dead. Fifty days later, the Holy Spirit was given to the disciples at Pentecost, and with it came our freedom!
But what does that even mean? What is freedom? Does it mean we are free to do what we want… to live without rules or authority? Tonight we’re going to look at a psalm king David wrote, hundreds of years before Jesus had brought freedom. Back then God had given the Israelites all sorts of rules and commandments, which we can still find in the first five books of the Bible. We call these books the Torah. It was the Israelite’s burden to obey these laws, and if any of you have tried to read the Torah, you would know there were quite a few of them!
So we’re going to turn to David’s Psalm 19, to see what he thought of the laws. We’ll see if the Israelites thought the laws were a bad thing, and if they wanted freedom from a bossy God… This psalm talks about how God revealed himself to the Israelites in different ways, and howgood – and perhaps freeing, these revelations were. It also picks up on the inevitability of divine judgement, that one day we will all face…
Psalm 19:1-4a
The psalm begins…
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
EXEGESIS
So the psalm starts off with David writing about how nature reveals God’s glory to all people. He’s saying that for those who believe in God, nature gives us a glimpse of who he is. Have you ever looked at something of creation and gone, Man! God is good!
A couple of years ago, I was up at Tawhwaranui with some friends, and one night we were singing worship songs on the beach. It was a nice clear night, with the moon big and bright. It made us think God is pretty good… It got even better though, because as we were watching the moon’s reflection on the sea, a pod of dolphins swam past in the reflection! It was just too good! For a while we just let loose in singing, because as this psalm is saying, nature was declaring the glory of God! As He revealed himself through his creation, we felt freedom to worship without fear or pride. So God gives freedom as he reveals himself.
Let’s read on…
Psalm 19:4b-6
In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun,
which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion,
like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
It rises at one end of the heavens
and makes its circuit to the other;
nothing is hidden from its heat.
EXEGESIS
So here David gives the sun as a specific example of how God reveals his glory. Clearly in this description there’s a lot of joy and celebration: as the sun crosses the skies and all are warmed by it, so God reveals himself and people are glad of him. But it also gives a warning – especially the last line: ‘nothing is hidden from his heat.’ It’s a reminder that God sees all that we do, and that in the end, everyone will be resurrected to face judgement, for better or worse.
This connection between the sun and judgement would have been familiar to the audience in Israel, because the surrounding nations worshiped the sun deity Utu, or Shamash. These people thought of the sun as the god of justice. David uses this to remind his people of God’s glory, reminding them that God has the power to judge.
Of course, nature doesn’t give us a complete knowledge of God – you can’t see a tree and know that God thinks it’s bad to murder somebody, or that there even is a God. And so unlike the surrounding tribes who only had nature and human instinct to go on, the Israelites had the laws that God revealed to Moses, the Torah, which guided them in how to live in a way that was pleasing to God. By the Torah, God revealed to them more of who He is.
And so the psalm now moves from the symbolic proclamations of nature, to the very concrete and robust Torah.
Psalm 19:7-11
The law of the Lord is perfect,
reviving the soul.
The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy,
making wise the simple.
The precepts of the Lord are right,
giving joy to the heart.
The commands of the Lord are radiant,
giving light to the eyes.
The fear of the Lord is pure,
enduring for ever.
The ordinances of the Lord are sure
and altogether righteous.
They are more precious than gold,
than much pure gold;
they are sweeter than honey,
than honey from the comb.
By them is your servant warned;
in keeping them there is great reward.
EXEGESIS
When I first read this, I was a bit surprised. My impression of the Old Testament laws had always been that they opposed freedom. I’d always thought the Israelites must have found God to be really oppressive and overly demanding… A bit of a killjoy! But here we see David calls the laws perfect… trustworthy… right… radiant… He says that the laws revive the soul, theymake wise the simple, they give JOY to the heart… and they give light to the eyes… Clearly my impression was wrong!
But why did they consider the Torah to be such a good thing? If we look at the context, we find it starts to make sense…
You see… for pretty much all the Old Testament history, the Israelites lived among tribes and nations that worshiped all sorts of gods – before, I mentioned the sun god Utu as an example. They also called trees and rocks their gods, and they carved and sculpted things to worship. These people were lost. They didn’t recognise God’s revelation of Himself, and so they didn’t know Him.
The Israelites were unique though. They were God’s chosen nation, because God had made an agreement their forefather Abraham. The deal was, God would be their God, and they would be his people. He would give them land, and they would become a great nation.
Coming forward several hundred years, we see that God revealed more to the Israelites, when he gave the laws to Moses in the desert. By David’s time we see many of the promises of the agreement were being fulfilled: the Israelites had become a large and powerful nation. God blessed them with prosperity, and they won many battles.
This psalm is telling us about how good God’s revelations were – his creation and his laws. I’m sure for many of us, when we think about the Torah, or we try to read it, we struggle to recognise the joy of having these rules. The Israelites were glad, because they found freedom in knowing what God wanted. It was their great treasure to know God and to be his chosen nation! They had a sure guide, unlike the surrounding nations who were lost, trying to fend for themselves!
Let’s read the last section of the psalm…
Psalm 19:12-14
Who can discern his errors?
Forgive my hidden faults.
Keep your servant also from wilful sins;
may they not rule over me.
Then I will be blameless,
innocent of great transgression,
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be pleasing in your sight,
O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.
EXEGESIS
Here we read that it wasn’t a God with lots of stupid rules who David felt oppressed by, but sin. David longed for freedom from the sin that the laws revealed! In a strange way, the laws were in fact freedom giving! We know there were many laws, and they were hard to follow… But consider where the Israelites would be without them: they’d be just like the neighbouring pagan nations, up the creek without a paddle. For the Israelites, they had a paddle in the Torah, because it taught them about God, and it told them what He wanted. And so with His laws, God had given the Israelites a taste of freedom, because they pointed towards what it means to live in right relationship with God and with each other.
Their freedom wasn’t complete though, because as with nature, God had only revealed a bit of himself in the laws. They could only point at true freedom. The Israelites could only know Him in a disconnected way, because they didn’t yet have freedom from sin. No amount of rule abiding could save them from the fact they were fallen human beings.
COMPLETE FREEDOM IN JESUS
And this brings us back to the Easter story we celebrated last weekend! … For David and the Old Testament Israelites, they only knew partial freedom: they had a God who cared for them, and who showed them what He wanted, but he hadn’t fully revealed himself, and they weren’t yet redeemed. Enter Jesus, the Son of God. In him we found God fully revealed, because he was fully God. Jesus came to free us from sin, and to invite us into relationship with him – he even called us his friends! This is where our freedom extends from what the Israelites had. Jesus didn’t get rid of the law as if that was the bad thing. Rather, he freed us from the sin that the law accused us of. God didn’t free us from the need to live rightly - he freed us to have relationship with him, even though we don’t live rightly.
These days I think there’s a perception that living good and obedient lives isn’t really that important. People seem to believe that Jesus freed us to do what we want. I remember in school people saying they would just continue to live as they wanted, and then just before they died they would apologise to Jesus and he’d be cool with it – for them Jesus was just a ‘Get out of hell free’ card. Rather than having a concern for the authority of God, and pursuing righteousliving, our society has developed a strong, ‘Just Do It’ attitude. The world tells us we’re free to do as we want, to indulge in whatever we like, to be our own person. It says we’re free to sleep around, just so long as we don’t do any physical damage. It says we’re free to get drunk, to take drugs, to climb the career ladder, and the social ladder. Worldly freedom is having money to spend as we please. And too often Christians fall for this “freedom.” But if that’s the freedom we’re living for, we’re selling ourselves short…
You see, many of us have missed the joy that comes from following God, and being obedient to his ways! We’ve just read that for David it was his sheer joy to have the law, which was a sure guide of what God wanted of him. I don’t believe he liked it just because he liked rules… He liked it because it was the word of God, and he found freedom in knowing God. In God, David found clear purpose and direction, and he had real hope! The people of the nations around him didn’t know God, and so they made gods of their own, to try and give their lives meaning and purpose. And that’s why people are doing the same thing today! Instead of looking to God for our meaning and purpose, we’re looking to careers, relationships, money, etc…
We do have the “freedom” to do what we want, but it’s not real freedom… Real freedom comes in knowing our heavenly Father, and Jesus has made this relationship possible. He freed us from sin. It’s therefore our joy in this freedom-giving relationship to be obedient to God, to do his will – that’s our joy! For David the laws were a gift, and pointed to freedom. In Jesus wehave freedom, and so all the more we should want to obey him! Jesus sums up what it means to obey in Matthew 25:37-39: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” The ability to love God and to love others – that’s freedom. Our relationship with God, where we pursue him daily, should be freeing us to live incredibly loving lives! Our friendship with Jesus should release us from being too concerned for ourselves, to a devoted and joyful obedience to him, which we actually find isn't oppressive and wearisome, but life-giving and ultimately freeing! Our love of God should free us to let loose! If you know Jesus and the freedom he has given, pursue him and love his ways! If you don’t know Jesus, get to know him – in him there is real freedom.
