Text: “Wait on the Lord: be of good
courage and He shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.”
Psalm 27:14.
Good morning, waiting Christian! Let us ask ourselves the question this
morning, beloved international Bible Class – ‘Just what are you and I waiting
for at present?’
When one asks plenty of questions, one is assured of
receiving plenty of answers. If one is
afraid to ask the vital questions, one will never receive the knowledge of
truth that one desperately needs to know.
“Ask, and ye shall receive…”
(Matthew 7:7)
True Christians should always be ‘waiting Christians’;
not sitting around waiting in that common sense of the word, but waiting, as in
servants waiting upon tables in the service of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are to be waiters for Jesus consistently.
However, too often we hear of genuine Christian
believers, who have undoubtedly been brought to the Cross of Christ, granted
faith to believe, and been gloriously redeemed by the Blood of the Lamb – yet,
who seem to have grown tired of ‘waiting’ for the return of our Lord Jesus, and
have gone off to heap up worldly honours; applause from men; material
possessions; and financial riches. They
seem to have completely forgotten God’s instruction: “Ye cannot serve God and
mammon…”
“No man/woman can serve two masters; for either he/she
will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and
despise the other. Ye cannot serve God
and mammon.” (Matthew 6:24)
Dictionary
Definition: Mammon – (Noun) riches regarded as the root of
evil; (with capitals) the god of riches; devoted to ‘money-getting’ and gain.
(The Chambers Dictionary, page 974)
Verse 7. “And now, Lord, what
wait I for? In
Psalm 39 we find king David sitting, as it were, taking a very deep reality
check of exactly where he is with serving God; what his daily focuses are on;
where his most sincere thoughts are taking him; and how he is spending his
allotted time. And it is ‘NOW’, the very
present time, that he is placing under the magnifying glass of his
meditations. This should be a constant
exercise for any genuine Christian servant of Christ Jesus today.
In other words, the Psalmist, David, is taking stock
of his relationship and fellowship with the Living Lord God – as you and I should
consistently be doing day by day. He is
checking up on himself, on his heart’s desires; on his ambitions; on his
prayer-life; on his practical and Spiritual service to the Lord God.
Had he continued to be so diligent in this positive
exercise in later days, he would have undoubtedly not allowed himself to get
too comfortable on the rooftop of his palace, and permitted his eyes to wander
down to watch the beautiful Bathsheba bathing; allowed lust to control him to
grievous sin; then arrange with Joab for Bathsheba’s husband, Urriah, the
faithful soldier, to be sent to his death in battle!
What a litany of serious sin would have been averted
had David continued to take these serious ‘reality checks’ on his life as an anointed
servant of Jehovah God!
What primary lesson does these facts from Scripture
hold for you and for me? What futile
fantasies and activities are you and I allowing to clog up our minds, disabling
us from serving Christ Jesus as our hearts already know that we should be doing?
George Rogers (1874)
states: “The World’s Trinity consists: 1. In fruitless honours:
What appears to them to be substantial honours are but a vain show. 2. In needless cares. They are disquieted in vain. Imaginary cares are substituted for real
ones. 3. In useless riches; such
as yield no lasting satisfaction to themselves, or in their descent to others.”
Of such temporal, unimportant, fantasies and
activities in this world, William
Shakespeare (1564-1616) wrote: “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps
in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; and
all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,
that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is
a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
So. What should be important in this life to you
and to me and to all genuinely redeemed, ‘born again’ regenerated;
Bible-believing Christian man or woman?
We should, surely, be more interested in Eternal
values than mere temporal ones. We
should conduct very genuine ‘reality checks’ on our Spiritual state more
consistently – and, when we find that we have slipped down from the standard of
Christlikeness and personal holiness demanded of all followers of the risen
Christ Jesus, we must go more promptly to God’s throne of grace in prayer,
confessing our sins; and forsaking them once more; seeking a new filling of God
the Spirit; and pleading with Him to ‘possess our reins for Christ Jesus
afresh’. We must be progressively
sanctified for service to God, if we are in fact, ‘…waiting for Christ’s soon
return in glory…’
Verse 7. “…My hope is in Thee. If our
true and genuine hope is in Christ alone, then we need to get serious afresh as
to how we are living today before the eyes of mere men. We have no other real ‘hope’, only in the
Cross of Christ. Therefore, let us try
to be more like Him day by day right NOW?
Thought: ‘Lord, help me to be more like Thee, and much
less like me, daily.’
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