Does your soul thirst? International Sunday School Lesson for October 31, 2010 by Jed Greenough

Does Your Soul Thirst?

International Sunday School Lesson for

October 31, 2010

by

Jed Greenough

Psalm 63

A psalm of David. When he was in the Desert of Judah.

 ¹ O God, you are my God,
       earnestly I seek you;
       my soul thirsts for you,
       my body longs for you,
       in a dry and weary land
       where there is no water.

 ² I have seen you in the sanctuary
       and beheld your power and your glory.

 ³ Because your love is better than life,
       my lips will glorify you.

 ⁴ I will praise you as long as I live,
       and in your name I will lift up my hands.

 ⁵ My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods;
       with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

 ⁶ On my bed I remember you;
       I think of you through the watches of the night.

 ⁷ Because you are my help,
       I sing in the shadow of your wings.

 ⁸ My soul clings to you;
       your right hand upholds me.

 ⁹ They who seek my life will be destroyed;
       they will go down to the depths of the earth.

 ¹⁰ They will be given over to the sword
       and become food for jackals.

 ¹¹ But the king will rejoice in God;
       all who swear by God's name will praise him,
       while the mouths of liars will be silenced.

I find myself turning more and more to the psalms in my life and specifically those relating to King David because, as I must admit, I draw much comfort, guidance and inspiration from the scriptures that deal with him.

We know that David was, as I often quote, a man after God’s own heart and yet we can see David the father, husband and king who made the mistakes that we can make.  He wasn’t an idyllic father, husband or king in fact the opposite is true.  So when I am disappointed in myself or frustrated I can look at the psalms and read about different stages of David’s life.

Today’s psalm shows us a confident King, an obedient servant.  No, not servant, that doesn’t grasp what he is.  I think of a servant more as someone who does what he has to, not what he wants to. Rather I am picturing an individual who willingly submits as a slave because he worships his master and the more he is in the service or in the presence of his master the more he wants it. 

Have you experienced that desire for God?  I have and this psalm reminded me of another one.  Let’s look at David on another day, a day where he wasn’t in such a bold position.

Psalm 42

  ¹  As the deer pants for streams of water,
       so my soul pants for you, O God.

 ² My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
       When can I go and meet with God?

 ³ My tears have been my food
       day and night,
       while men say to me all day long,
       "Where is your God?"

 ⁴ These things I remember
       as I pour out my soul:
       how I used to go with the multitude,
       leading the procession to the house of God,
       with shouts of joy and thanksgiving
       among the festive throng.

 ⁵ Why are you downcast, O my soul?
       Why so disturbed within me?
       Put your hope in God,
       for I will yet praise him,
       my Savior and ⁶ my God.
       My soul is downcast within me;
       therefore I will remember you
       from the land of the Jordan,
       the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.

 ⁷ Deep calls to deep
       in the roar of your waterfalls;
       all your waves and breakers
       have swept over me.

 ⁸ By day the LORD directs his love,
       at night his song is with me—
       a prayer to the God of my life.

 ⁹ I say to God my Rock,
       "Why have you forgotten me?
       Why must I go about mourning,
       oppressed by the enemy?"

 ¹⁰ My bones suffer mortal agony
       as my foes taunt me,
       saying to me all day long,
       "Where is your God?"

 ¹¹ Why are you downcast, O my soul?
       Why so disturbed within me?
       Put your hope in God,
       for I will yet praise him,
       my Savior and my God.

Here David still thirsts for God but instead of confidence we have tears and a downcast soul.  Sound familiar to you from your own life?

I hope so.  The reason I hope this is because life is full of these ups and downs and we cannot long for God in the heights of our confidence and not remember Him when we are at our lowest points as well.

Like David, we will experience the “dry and weary land” that we may sometimes encounter, especially going forward spiritually which bring me to state that for the third week in a row I am moved to take a turn to the prophetic.

David says in verse 1, “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”

When I read that I had the following scripture leap into my mind:

Amos 8:11-12 

 ¹¹ "The days are coming," declares the Sovereign LORD,
       "when I will send a famine through the land—
       not a famine of food or a thirst for water,
       but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD.

 ¹² Men will stagger from sea to sea
       and wander from north to east,
       searching for the word of the LORD,
       but they will not find it.

More and more Christians that long for God will find disappointment that what they are hearing being taught is not the sound teaching that they hunger and thirst for because:

1 Timothy 4:1

The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.

And:

2 Thessalonians 2:1-12

The Man of Lawlessness

 ¹Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers, ²not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by some prophecy, report or letter supposed to have come from us, saying that the day of the Lord has already come. ³Don't let anyone deceive you in any way, for (that day will not come) until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. ⁴He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God's temple, proclaiming himself to be God.

 ⁵Don't you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things? ⁶And now you know what is holding him back, so that he may be revealed at the proper time. ⁷For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. ⁸And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming. ⁹The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders, ¹⁰and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. ¹¹For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie ¹²and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.

At that time, whenever that happens to be, if you are here and your soul thirsts for God you may have to be quenched ever increasingly by yourself. 

I feel that the word of God will be outlawed and many will only have the word that they have locked away in their heart but when John was talking of Jesus in John 1:1 he said, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

So the more you hear, read, study and speak the word of God now, the more you will have of Him in your heart later.  And though some may seek to destroy your life as David’s was in verse 9 from today’s psalm, it is they who “will be silenced” they will be on bended knee and they will know that Jesus is LORD!

(as an aside to today’s lesson, I have already started preparing for next week’s International Sunday School Lesson and I don’t see any prophecies in our future LOL)

For Discussion:

1. Do you thirst and long for God?  If not, why not?  If so, does it show?
2. From verse 2, what does David mean by, “I have seen you in the sancturary”?
3. David talks about thinking about God through the night.  In my blog http://workofthegospel.blogspot.com/ on the 18^th I wrote, “What is the last thing you thought about last night before you went to sleep and what was the first thing you thought of this morning when you woke up?  I have heard and I agree, that it tells a lot about who we are”.  How would you answer the question?
4. What kind of imagery come to your mind when you read verses 7 and 8?
5. Discuss the character of David.

Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Clap Your Hands, All Ye People...International Sunday School Lesson for October 24, 2010

Clap Your Hands, All Ye People…

International Sunday School Lesson for October 24, 2010

By

Jed Greenough

Psalm 47

 O clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto God with the voice of triumph.

 For the LORD most high is terrible; he is a great King over all the earth.

 He shall subdue the people under us, and the nations under our feet.

 He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom he loved. Selah.

 God is gone up with a shout, the LORD with the sound of a trumpet.

 Sing praises to God, sing praises: sing praises unto our King, sing praises.

 For God is the King of all the earth: sing ye praises with understanding.

 God reigneth over the heathen: God sitteth upon the throne of his holiness.

 The princes of the people are gathered together, even the people of the God of Abraham: for the shields of the earth belong unto God: he is greatly exalted.

For today’s lesson I chose the KJV for the International Sunday School Scripture because it was the version that inspired a great song from my youth and I hope yours.  When I think back upon the time of my life when I sang it and consider myself then and I think of the intervening years since, I realize how much has changed.  Even the number of times that old song gets sung has changed, but like God’s word, God Himself never changes.

We grow old and the experiences our lives are made of change us both for good and bad.   The people we become are different from how we started out, but God remains LORD most high upon “the throne of His holiness.”

When Israel originally sang this psalm of praise they sat in a position of supremacy, of splendor, of success.  Israel was close to God for they had built His temple as He had designed it.

They followed His instructions and they received His blessings.  He did in fact subdue the people and nations that would oppose Israel and so it was certainly worthy that they should praise Him.

Unfortunately, with time things, as I said change, and that is what Israel did.  Their kings and their priests forgot God or rather chose to ignore Him.  As the leaders went so went the people.

There was a brief renewal with King Josiah (2 Kings 22 and 23) during which God was again praised corporately but with Israel’s success came an arrogance a turning away.

Today as I read this psalm I think of America, a country blessed by God more than any other and certainly one that could have sung this same psalm in our history.

For this country he subdued people and nations just like Israel and in the past we have praised Him from our leaders down to our citizens.  But are we repeating the same sins and taking the same things for granted and forgetting God just as they did?  And this nation is not alone.

When Israel turned from God He turned from them, never again did they have this great reason for singing songs of triumph, they became the subdued, for as they sang, “He shall choose our inheritance for us.”

So what can be done?

I am not unlike anyone else that has a message they want heard, and I want you to come back to me, but I cannot sugar coat where I think we are headed.

In 2 Kings 23:8 the high priest in speaking to Josiah’s secretary said, “I have found the Book of the Law in the temple of the Lord.”

The high priest found it….the words are staggering to me.

When King Josiah “heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his robes.” 

They had drifted that far, they had to find the Book and they were so far from what it said that the king was beside himself with grief.

The king did all he could to return Israel to God and as a result God though He was swiftly going to bring disaster upon Israel kept Israel in peace until Josiah died.

After Josiah, we are told in 2 Kings 23:25 that there was never another king who turned his heart to the Lord as he had.

The result was, “Nevertheless, the Lord did not turn away from the heat of His fierce anger, which burned against Judah because of all that Manasseh had done to provoke Him to anger.  So the Lord said, “I will remove Judah from my presence as I removed Israel, and I will reject Jerusalem, the city I chose, and this temple, about which I said, “There shall my name be.”

We can remember God and His word individually, as families and in our churches.  We can choose leaders that follow Him and honor Him and perhaps the inheritance He chooses for us will be one of peace until we die.

But it might be that the Lord who did not turn away from the heat of His fierce anger before will not now even for a little while.  What then?

Like the psalm for the October 17^th International Sunday School Lesson, I see the prophetic in both today’s Psalm 47 and Psalm 48 and they were originally meant to be seen as a unit and therefore they should be studied that way.

As in the case of last week’s Psalm 46, Psalm 47 and Psalm 48 were relevant to the time they were originally inspired as well as to ours if our time is the time of the end.

As 46 was a prophecy about the terrible things about to fall upon the earth, Psalm 47 and 48 tell of the victory we can look forward to and the reason Psalm 46 told us that God would be our refuge.

If you are not acquainted, or need a refresher with the scriptures that parallel these three psalms that deal with the subduing and assembly of all the nations read some of those scriptures in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, Zephaniah, Zechariah, Matthew, and Revelation.

All nations were not subdued at the original time of this psalm but in the time of the end they will be; all nations, all kings and all people will exalt Him!

For Discussion:

1. Find a recording of the song based on Psalm 47 and bring it to your class.
2. Is verse 5 a prophecy concerning Jesus, does it mean something else or are there multiple meanings?
3. Read Psalm 46 and Psalm 48 with today’s psalm.
4. One of the easiest of the prophetic aspects of today’s psalm to study with a concordance is “nations”.
5. In studying different versions of the Bible some versions with regard to verse 7 simply repeat the idea of singing praises or psalms, whereas others translate it “skillful psalm” or “praises with understanding”.  Consider how or why this is significant.

International Sunday School Lesson for October 17, 2010

Not All Will Find Comfort

By

Jed Greenough

Psalm 46:1-7

God is our refuge and strength,
       an ever-present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
       and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,

though its waters roar and foam
       and the mountains quake with their surging.
       Selah

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
       the holy place where the Most High dwells.

God is within her, she will not fall;
       God will help her at break of day.

Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;
       he lifts his voice, the earth melts.

The LORD Almighty is with us;
       the God of Jacob is our fortress.
       Selah

A psalm such as this is one that many have drawn strength from over the years.  People read the extreme example of mountains falling into the heart of the sea and they are strengthened by these words when they consider the calamity that they might be facing in their lives.

This is true for me as well, but I also feel guilt when I haven’t had the faith already and fear has controlled me.

In Matthew 8:23-27 we read,” Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him. Without warning, a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him, saying, "Lord, save us! We're going to drown!"

 He replied, "You of little faith, why are you so afraid?" Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm.

 The men were amazed and asked, "What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!"

After reading that, just as in the psalm above, I am strengthened.  The reason I find strength or encouragement, is because even though the disciples were with Him they still pleaded with Jesus.  True, they like the wind and waves were rebuked for their small faith but he heard their pleas and took care of them.

We didn’t actually walk with Christ as they did but we are blessed with much more information about Him then what they had.  At least we have the luxury of His word if we will only use it so that as Ephesians 4:14 says,” Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.”

But it isn’t sea scenarios or faith that I want to concentrate on today as much as the images God has brought into my mind through my reading of the psalm for today’s lesson.

Obviously one cannot help but ponder faith, but what really was shouting out to me was that this is a prophecy not just a psalm of praise. You see God did that sometimes, He inspired scripture that meant one thing at that time and yet in hindsight we can easily see it as prophecy; a couple examples which leap to mind are Psalm 22 and Psalm 110.

In Psalm 46 I daresay there won’t be many commentaries for today’s International Sunday School Lesson that will take a prophetic note, but who knows, we will see.

If we view this psalm as only for the moment when we face some fear, the examples given would certainly be extreme, but if we view it in an eschatological sense the images given are not extreme but spot-on with other scriptures that talk about the time of the end.

“There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells.”  Okay I hope you all can see that Jerusalem is in sight here but (drum roll please) Jerusalem has no river!

No river in antiquity, no river today, but one day there will be a river, but we will come back to that if I now have your attention!

I want you to draw from this psalm what it is that God intended it to be for you—encouragement. Encouragement in what will be fatal and frightening times, the times of the end.  At some point in what could be the near future when you start to recognize the signs, a psalm like this will be a comfort and a reminder, so write an asterisk in your Bible for this psalm.

It starts out by saying “God is our refuge and strength an ever present help in trouble.”

But from what? Verse 2 and 3 speak of the earth giving a way, mountains falling into the sea, the waters roaring and foaming and the mountains quaking.

Without adding my words to them let me give you some scriptures:

Revelation 8:8 

 The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned into blood,

Luke 21:25 

 "There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea.

Revelation 16:18 

Then there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder and a severe earthquake. No earthquake like it has ever occurred since man has been on earth, so tremendous was the quake.

Earlier we talked about Jerusalem not having a river but verse 4 spoke of one.  Well there is a Jerusalem that will have a river—New Jerusalem.

Revelation 22:1-6 

The River of Life

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever. The angel said to me, "These words are trustworthy and true. The Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent his angel to show his servants the things that must soon take place."

In part of verse 6 from today’s psalm we read, “He lifts His voice, the earth melts.”

2 Peter 3:10 

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.

The scriptures that concern prophecies yet to be fulfilled are found from the beginning to the end of the Bible including right here in this psalm.  The ones I gave above are just a few that deal with the signs of the end of the age.  There are many places that cover the earthquakes and the signs in the sky that will appear and as when I was talking about verse 1 I said the psalm starts as an encouragement and though not included in today’s lesson the 10^th verse of the psalm does the same thing, “Be still, and know that I am God;”

This psalm is read countless times a day by people as a source of strength but soon a day is coming when the world will be raging and the people of the world will find no comfort but those of us not of the world can at that point “be still.”

Revelation 22:7 

Jesus Is Coming

 "Behold, I am coming soon! Blessed is he who keeps the words of the prophecy in this book."

For Discussion:

1. Why is it, do you think, that God inspired scriptures that meant one thing to the recipients of that day and yet another to us?
2. Do a study and discuss the results with your class concerning the myriad of scriptures that harmoniously talk of the signs of the end.
3. Has your church had a Bible Study covering Revelation?
4. Discuss with the class their individual thoughts concerning the Day of the LORD
5. http://matthew24.com
6. Encourage the class to share scripture that has been a refuge or source of strength for them.
7. Examples of faith that can encourage us both in and out of the Bible

Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

International Sunday School Lesson for October 10, 2010

 

Rules for Life

By

Jed Greenough

Psalm 19:7-14

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 forever.
       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.

  Who can discern his errors?
       Forgive my hidden faults.

  Keep your servant also from willful sins;
       may they not rule over me.
       Then will I 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.

At the time that this was written King David was ruler of Israel and ultimately responsible for the people and that they followed the “law of the Lord”.  Like water in a lake that freezes from the top down so will a people follow their leader. 

When Israel had a leader such as David, they knew that in him they had someone as I said in my blog http://workofthegospel.blogspot.com/ that was a man after God’s heart.

And when Israel didn’t have leaders like that they “forsook the LORD, the God of “their “fathers, and did not walk in the way of the LORD” and leaders such as this “did evil in the eyes of the LORD.”

Now although “the law of the LORD as referred to here has been “nailed to the cross” the example of the law of the LORD is perfect for us and His word still is perfect for us today, so let’s examine each of these verses from today’s International Sunday School Lesson.

I personally love to study a passage of scripture and the way I come to know it best is by reading it all the way through the first time and then contemplating, even listening if you will, what it is that God would have me hear.  Sometimes that will mean researching where perhaps the scripture has been used elsewhere in the Bible other times it might just bring to my mind another verse, other times the search finds me peeling away layer after layer and that particular one we will have to forsake or we will have a book and not a posting!

In the first verse we cannot help but think about the 23^rd Psalm that we all know so well because just as the 23^rd Psalm reads He restores our soul so does the law of the Lord revive our soul.  Since Jesus is called the Word and I in reading today’s psalm consider the “law of the Lord” to be interchangeable with the word, these two verses are in harmony and even Christmas or Easter only Christians when they need a reviving or a restoring of their soul they seek it from God’s Word.

As I look at the second half of verse 7, I am reminded of how my wife and I like to say we have been married for 52 years.  I think that we have been saying that since around our 10^th anniversary, but like some people who have really been married for 52 years might do, we tend to repeat things.  One of those things was how these ordinances make perfect sense today with all we know about healthy and helpful living, rules that if followed even the simple would benefit from if they just followed them.

Some good examples of this can be found by perusing Leviticus to see how they were instructed to deal with infectious skin diseases or perhaps what constituted unlawful sexual relations. 

A man thought wise could have an affair with his brother’s wife and enter a life of folly and a simple man could see from God’s statutes to be faithful and keep two people happy all their lives.

Verse 8 follows well combining God’s precepts with rightness and joy obviously whether it be faithfulness or treating a neighbor well gives us stability and not angst, we have joy and not sorrow.

And who cannot read, “The commands of the LORD are radiant, giving light to the eyes.”, and not think of Psalm 119:105 “Your word is a lamp to my feet and light for my path.”?

Verse 9 is a hard one for many people today and for me one of the easiest.  I draw strength from having a fear of the LORD and I read a verse such as this and I wouldn’t even pause and consider it if I wasn’t writing about it because a fear of the LORD is as much a part of me as breathing.  Why do people today give this a negative connotation?

My own gut feeling is that it is because they want God on their terms and not His.  To me they are just going through the motions and are fools if they think they are drawing near to God for I firmly believe Proverb 9:10a that “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom…”

You just found out something about me with that one, I am blunt and I don’t think we have the time to be anything else!

The second half of verse 9 goes with verse 10 and sometimes there isn’t much to say when you look at a verse.  Sometimes all you can do is say, “yes” or “I agree” and to these true words I would only add that as uncertain as our own thoughts or man’s ordinances are, God’s words can be trusted to be sure, for as we know from the scriptures no man is righteous but God is and that is why we can treasure His ordinances.

Verse 11 instantly brought one thing to mind and that is that this is one way to sum up the entirety of God’s word the servant Adam was warned in the very beginning and we as servants are warned throughout but in keeping His ordinances we see the great reward of spending eternity with Him.

Verse 12 and 13 really got to me and I pray that I will not forget them and it also my prayer that you don’t either.  They point out to me that I can be aware of my sins that are obvious to me but I can have other sins that I am either ignorant of or I have “put on” so often they are like a comfortable sweater I grab every evening of winter but to God sin is sin and it should be our sincere desire to be aware that this types of sin exists and can rule over us just like David.

Finally we conclude with the words of verse 14, words that I have underlined in my Bible on some previous study, “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my redeemer.”  On this verse I will not comment but just ask that you underline them in your Bible as well.

For Discussion:

1. Can you give me an example of how God or His word may have revived or restored you?
2. Do you think someone could red the verses of this psalm and disagree with what we read there?
3. Discuss fear of the LORD
4. Discuss how god’s laws, precepts, word is perfect, right, radiant etc.
5. In verse 7 it says the statutes of the LORD make the wise simple, how?  Read and discuss 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:16
6. Consider verses 12-13 with regard to your own life.  How after doing so can you discuss in a way that might help the class?
7. Ask the class if the words of their mouth and the meditations of their hearts 24/7 are pleasing to God and what impact that might have on their relationship with God.

Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.