Psalms of God's Presence
Notes
Transcript
Desiring God’s presence has been a significant theme throughout history.
We see this theme in the Old Testament as various prophets despair that God is no longer present.
King David, who wrote many of the Psalms particularly speaks of desiring God’s presence.
In Christianity there have been entire periods marketed by a desire for God’s presence.
There are a few of these periods that I have always found somewhat concerning for their excesses.
So for your enlightenment allow me to tell a few stories that have stuck in my mind from church history lectures many years ago.
There was a period known as the monastic period in Church history, which was started by a fellow known as Anthony the Great around 300AD.
There are two types of Monastic life.
The type where you live in community with others and the community is dedicated to prayer, service, studying God’s word, and while it might seem rather strange to us it has throughout church history been seen as a valid expression of faith.
Then there is the really different kind of monastic life which produced some really wierd characters.
This mainly occured following the time of Anthony the Great and copied his ideal of living in solitude usually in the mountains somewhere out in the desert.
We call this asceticism.
Now one particular ascetic character was Simeon Stylites who in the early 400s decided that his thing would be to live on a platform on top of a pole.
He stayed there for 36 years until he died.
Another fellow named Daniel the Stylite made it to 33 years and in this time only came down once.
You can only imagine what that would have been like.
People would bring supplies and they would be hauled up onto the platform.
Waste, of all types, would be thrown down.
Others lived in caves.
Under trees.
In all sorts of places.
Problem is that many of these people became celebrities.
They would go out, have all of these wild spiritual encounters and people would come out to seek their spiritual insights.
Now I don’t know how much of their visions and spiritual encounters were the result of encountering God’s presence and how much was delirium, as a result of starvation and dehydration, but the whole movement eventually sort of died a natural death.
It is a bit hard to have spiritual solitude and encounter God if people keep coming to visit and ask questions.
Living in a monastic community, with rules and set times for prayer and times for work, in a building with walls to stop people using you as a bit of a sideshow is a much more productive approach.
This is why a variety of monastic traditions sprang up which carry on to this day.
They are a way to seek God’s presence.
Another way that people sort God’s presence occured in many of the frontier towns of the USA through the 1800 during what were known as camp meetings.
Now these were sometimes wild events, held over several days with near continuous preaching from a makeshift platform, in a clearing in a forest or field, where people would camp around the edges.
A bit like a modern music festival but with the preaching as the central attaction.
The preacher would focus on the need for repentance with a focus on a spiritual encounter with Christ.
It was real frontier stuff and it was pretty easy to work people up in this setting.
The physical manifestation of the Holy Spirit was at times very evident.
One writer described what he called various “exercises” that those who encountered God would experience.
The running exercise where people would become terrified of facing God’s judgement and would run, then the Holy Spirit would come upon them and they would fall to the ground.
The bending “exercise” where people would be overwhelmed with an emotional response to their spiritual condition and would bend forwards and backwards crying out for God’s forgiveness.
The most famous meeting was held in 1801 at Cane Ridge in Bourbon County, Kentucky and was attended by 25 000 people.
These camp meetings were the forrunners of the great crusades of the late 1800s and 1900s.
And our modern Christian conventions and festivals are a descendent of this sort of approach.
So if you have ever been to a Christian convention at somewhere like Mount Tamborine, or Easterfest at Toowomba then you have been to a modern form of a camp meeting.
The danger with all of these approaches, wether it be ascetic monasticism, old style revival meetings, or more recent movements such as the Toronto blessing, or the latest fad of travelling preachers being labelled as prophets and apostles is this.
People become focussed on somehow encountering God’s presence.
They chase the presence, or the blessing. or the prophetic word which will change their life.
The festival event, the crusade, or the “special preacher” becomes the celebrity encounter to be chased.
For me that verges on idolatry, especially when the theology of some of these events is questionable.
People lose sight of this one simple truth.
The presence of God is found in relationship with Christ.
Now I am not saying that there is no place for the “Mountain Top” encounter at a special event or throught the ministry of a gifted individual.
Of course there is a place for that and many of us have benefitted from this.
But the everyday presence of God is not maintained through these times.
Because if we take that approach we become seekers of the experience, rather than seekers of Christ.
We place the experience above God, we worship the idol.
Let’s look at this truth from Psalm 24:1-2
1 The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to him. 2 For he laid the earth’s foundation on the seas and built it on the ocean depths.
Simple fact, it all belongs to God.
Do you get the starting point of how we need to think.
The focus is on God.
Not an event, not a celebrity preacher or musician.
We start with God.
Then Psalm 24: 3 asks a question
3 Who may climb the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place?
It is the question which has haunted humanity since the time of the fall.
How do we get to God?
Interestingly Psalm 24:3 really addresses the human striving for God’s presence.
Who can climb the mountain?
Who can, by their own effort get to God?
It is the fatal mistake of fallen human thinking.
The answer is obvious.
We can’t.
For Psalm 24:4 gives an answer
4 Only those whose hands and hearts are pure, who do not worship idols and never tell lies.
Can anyone of us truly claim that of our own efforts that are hands are pure, that we have never worshipped anything as an idol, that we have never lied?
Let’s be honest here, none of us can really say that of our own effort we are truly pure.
As Romans 3 tells us on multiple occassions.
“We have all sinned.”
“No one is righteous - not even one”
The presence of God is found in relationship with Christ which is accessed through God’s grace
Not through our good works, not through our own striving, not though the blessings or prophetic word of someone else.
Not through a mountain top high
But through God’s grace which in Christ has made us clean.
Romans 5:1–2 (NLT)
1 Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. 2 Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory.
Ephesians 2:18 makes the same point, “Now all of us can come to the Father through the same Holy Spirit because of what Christ has done for us.”
It is not of us.
It is of Christ!
Ephesians 3:12 is very clear on this fact.
“Because of Christ and our faith in him, we can now come boldly and confidently into God’s presence.”
God’s presence is through relationship with Christ
If we want to receive God’s blessing, if we want that right relationship with God that Psalm 24:5-6 speaks of
Psalm 24:5–6 (NLT)
5 They will receive the Lord’s blessing and have a right relationship with God their savior. 6 Such people may seek you and worship in your presence, O God of Jacob.
Then it is only truly found in relationship with Christ.
Now let’s not make the mistake, as many often do, of thinking this is an automatic thing.
That somehow coming to faith in Christ just makes everything right.
No, while it is not of our own effort we do have a responsibility in this relationship.
You actually have to put the effort into your relationship with God just as you have to to build any relationship.
It takes time.
It has to be intentional.
You have to invest in the relationship.
No marriage ever thrived through neglect.
That is the path to stagnation and death.
Psalm 24 is a beautiful Psalm of God’s presence.
There are many others like it.
Each one speaks of relationship, purity of heart, a desire to worship God.
Each one ultimately leads us to this truth.
God’s presence is only found in relationship with Christ