3/26/2014
THE ETERNAL GOD
GOAFS II: #87
THE ETERNAL GOD
3.26.14
This bookmark
might well be the famous last words of Moses. Near the end of his life, having
led the people of God out of Egyptian captivity, to the Mountain of God where
he gave them the Law of God, and then to the border of the promised land, he
blessed them and said these few, very powerful words:
The Eternal God is your dwelling place and underneath are the
everlasting arms. Dt. 33.27
In the
Orthodox Jewish Bible dwelling place is
the word me’onah. I know only enough
Hebrew to find a delicatessen so this observation is empirical rather than
professorial. Surveying 27 different English translations of this verse I find
a number of different words used for me’onah;
dwelling place (6
times)
refuge (6)
refuge and dwelling place (1)
place of safety (4)
hiding place (1)
shelter (3)
defense (1)
home (1)
habitation (1)
There are three places where “Gods dwelling place” is used. I
am not qualified to get into the nature and complexities of translating Hebrew,
but if you have ever studied Psalms closely you may have noticed quite a wide
variety of expression between various English versions. I would just make a few
observations based on the list above:
1.
With
one exception, all translations precede the noun with a personal pronoun, your dwelling place. Only one speaks of a dwelling place. Both are true but for
the Prophet, these last two chapters of Deuteronomy are a personal message both
from God and from His Prophet, so the possessive “your’ seems best.
2.
Statistically,
dwelling place and refuge dominate the list. I much prefer dwelling place, probably because I have
in the context of the Gospels:
“If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will
love him, and We will come to him and make our abode with him…abide in Me and I
in you.
John 14.23 & 15.4
God is the
infinite/personal Creator of all that is, that ever was, and ever will be.
“Eternal” speaks of His infinity in relation to time. Good is not subject to
time, He is its Creator. “Everlasting arms” speaks of His personality. God is a
person who thinks, feels, and wills, and has made human persons such that they
can relate to Him. He is spirit does not have arms as we would think of them
physically, but metaphorically.
There is
great comfort and hope for the people of God in the attribute His eternity. In Discourses Upon The Existence and Attributes
of God, Stephen Charnock (1628–1680),
an English Puritan Presbyterian clergyman born at the St Katherine
Cree parish of London, wrote in the consolations of this attribute. Daniel
Chamberlin summarized Charnock’s discourses for the 21st century
with these notes:
· “Because God is eternal, His covenant
is eternal. He confirmed His promise, swearing by Himself, that is, by His very
life, which is eternal life (Heb. 6.13). Before the foundation of the world,
God promised eternal life to His people (Titus 1.2) This promise is good
because He himself is eternal in Himself. He holds eternity in His hand and
thus his covenant promises are steadfast and sure.
· In covenant mercy, God becomes our God
as an eternal possession. “This God is our God forever and ever” (Ps. 48.14).
He is ours during this life, through death, in the resurrection, and throughout
all the ages to come. The pleasures of God for His people are as unending as
God Himself. Our happiness cannot perish as long as God lives…This will be
heaven—to enjoy an infinite and eternal God, who is not like a cistern that may
run dry, but like a fountain which continually springs.”
· In all our earthly distresses, the
eternity of God should encourage us. Just as the revelation of I AM was given to strengthen Israel in
their hour of need in Egypt, so the knowledge of this attribute should
strengthen us. He is the great I AM
to His people today…we need fear nothing that is merely temporal.
Jerry
Sweers
GROWING OLD AIN’T FOR SISSIES
Sailing directions for
Pilgrims of the Heart.
Remembrances, reflections and
rants
of an endangered species;
Curmudgensis Americanus Bibliophilius
site: crmudgeon.blogspot.com
email: cmudgeon@windstream.net
3/19/2014
I AM HE...
GOAFS II: #86
I AM HE
3.19.14
Even to your old age I am He,
and to grey hairs I will carry you. I have made you, and I will bear you; I
will carry you and wll save you.
|
T
|
his week’s bookmark (Isaiah
46.4) was given to Joan and me by our daughter Carolyn as an encouragement when
Joan was facing open-heart surgery in March, 2009. I had read the prophecy of
Isaiah often in the past, and even taught it once, but this particular verse
had never stood out to me before. It is a word of great encouragement to the
people of God in what was a sad and discouraging time.
|
D
|
amascus, and the Northern
Kingdom of Israel with it, had been defeated by the Assyrians in 722 B.C. In
597 B.C. King Nebuchadnezzer of Babylon captured Jerusalem, sacked the temple,
and deported King Jehoiakin of Judah, along with the cream of the
establishment, to Babylon. Not long after that, in 589 B.C., with the rebellion
of King Zedekiah, the next to the last king of Judah, the Babylonians sacked
Jerusalem and deported a significant remainder of the Hebrew people as well.
The experience of one of
these exiles returning later to what was left of Jerusalem is recorded Psalm
137.1-4:
By the waters of Babylon,
there we sat down and wept,
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
we hung up our lyres.
For there our captors
required of us songs,
and our tormentors, mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How shall we sing the Lord's song
in a foreign land?
|
T
|
he Prophet Isaiah spoke
primarily to the Northern Kingdom
but in the later chapters he speaks
prophetically of the future of the Hebrew people. The verse that ended up on my
bookmark comes near the end of 5 chapters of heavy encouragment. It is a fine
reminder to the people of God today that He is in charge and it matters to Him
what happens to those who trust Him.
We have every reason to sing
the Lord’s song in the foreign land
America is becoming.
Jerry
Sweers
GROWING OLD AIN’T FOR SISSIES
Sailing directions for
Pilgrims of the Heart.
Remembrances, reflections and
rants
of an endangered species;
Curmudgensis Americanus Bibliophilius
site: crmudgeon.blogspot.com
email: cmudgeon@windstream.net
3/12/2014
CREED
GOAFS II: #85
CREED
3.12.14
This bookmark was first made in June of 1984. It of
two truths. The first being the spirit of a section of the Sermon on the Mount,
Matthew 6.25-34, simmed up in verse 34:
“So
do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself.”
The seond comes from Morita
Therapy, an early Japanese precursor of of cognitive therapy first described by
Dr Shoma Morita (1874-1938), a psychiatrist and department chair at Jikei University School of Medicine in Tokyo. His personal training in
Zen Buddhism influenced his
teachings, yet Morita therapy is not a Zen practice. Boiled down to a simple
statement, Morita therapy amounts to this:
“Morita
Therapy directs one's attention receptively to what reality brings in each moment - a focus on the present,
avoiding intellectualising. Simple acceptance of what is, allows for active
responding to what needs doing.”
Here is the short poem I
wrote that became our favorite and very helpful bookmark thirty years ago:
Yesterday
is a memory.
Tomorrow
is a dream.
We
will live today with full attention
To
the reality God brings us,
Fitting
ourselves to it
By
doing what needs to be done.
Note: this is good for the
individual, the couple, and the community of believers.
My wife and I start our day
with this prayer to the Great Good Shepherd of our souls.
The spider who built the web
in the illustration spent a long, busy night hanging her creation from the big
Maple tree in our front yard. When I came out in the morning she was having a
big breakfast of what had been snared by this 4 foot wide net.
I took the picture while it
was still backlit by the morning sun. Later in the morning a breeze came up and
by noon there was little left of the web. It occurred to me then that the
spider was never anxious about tomorrow—she lived one day at a time, doing what
needed to be done.
Jerry
Sweers
GROWING OLD AIN’T FOR SISSIES
Sailing directions for
Pilgrims of the Heart.
Remembrances, reflections and
rants
of an endangered species;
Curmudgensis Americanus Bibliophilius
site: crmudgeon.blogspot.com
email: cmudgeon@windstream.net
