Peter Misselbrook's Blog

Apr 14 2019 - Psalm 42-43 – As the deer pants

Psalms 42 and 43 really constitute a single psalm as is indicated by the refrain in 42:5, 11 and 43:5.

We take clean drinkable water for granted; we just have to turn on the tap and it gushes out. But in Israel the rains only came at certain times of year and many rivers would dry up at other times. As the sun beat down upon the dry land plants would wither and die. Animals such as deer would become desperate to find food and water – if they did not manage to do so they would die.

This is the picture used by the author of this psalm to express the intensity of his longing for God:

As the deer pants for streams of water,
    so my soul pants for you, my God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
    When can I go and meet with God?

The psalm is a lament written by someone who seems to have found himself cut off from the people of God and, he feels, cut off from God himself. He longs for a real sense of God's presence and the joy of experiencing God's love. If he cannot find God he will die.

God made us for fellowship with him; without such fellowship we feel that we are lacking some essential part of our life. But we have been locked out of Paradise to be alone in the world.

This surely is the experience of many in our world. They may gleefully deny the existence of God and declare that mankind has come of age but they cannot totally erase that longing for something more – for a sense that life means something and for a glimpse of some transcendent reality.

God sent his Son into the world to reveal his love for us and to call us back into fellowship with him. Jesus, through his death and resurrection, has torn the curtain that separates God from humankind. He is the one who speaks of himself as the source of living water, the one who can supply the refreshment of God's gracious presence to the dry and thirsty soul.

Yet even we who have come to know the living God through the Lord Jesus Christ have to confess that there are times when he seems far off from us. In such times we long for the sense of God's nearness that we have enjoyed in the past (42:4). The hymn writer William Cowper often suffered from spiritual depression and went through periods when God seemed absent from his experience. In one of his hymns he writes:

Where is the blessedness I knew, when first I saw the Lord?
Where is the soul refreshing view of Jesus, and His Word?
What peaceful hours I once enjoyed! How sweet their memory still!
But they have left an aching void the world can never fill.

At such times it is God's Spirit within us who stirs up a longing for God that no one and nothing else can satisfy – the longing expressed in this psalm; "deep calls to deep…" (42:7). Then we also need to counsel ourselves. We need to remember God's love for us in the Lord Jesus and his promise that he will never leave us or forsake us. We need to rebuke our own despair and to place our hope afresh in the God who has saved us through his Son and will yet save us (42:5, 11 and 43:5).

Lord, increase my longing for communion with you and then in your goodness respond to my cry by making me to know your presence and your love. Give me then a spirit of praise and enable me to testify to others that you are the one who satisfies the thirsty soul.

Apr 14 2020 - 1 Corinthians 11:17-34 – Proclaiming Christ’s death

The Lord’s Supper had been turned into a bun fight at Corinth. It would seem that the church met in the home or homes of some of the richer members. They would ensure that their friends arrived first and secured key places at their table. They would have quite a feast together, eating their fill and even getting a little tipsy while leaving little space and even less food and drink for the poorer members and slaves who arrived later. This, says Paul, is not the Lord’s Supper. Your meetings do more harm than good. The focus of the Lord’s Supper is to be on Christ’s sacrifice; he gave himself for others. You cannot celebrate Christ’s death in a selfish manner. Neither can you remember his broken body and shed blood while neglecting your fellow Christians, failing to recognise that they too are the body of Christ.

It’s easy for us to recognise the abuses going on at Corinth and to join Paul in passing judgment upon them. But are there times when we are guilty of similar abuses? Have we been guilty of seeking to celebrate Christ and his sacrifice for us while neglecting some of our brothers and sisters in Christ? Have we broken bread while continuing to break his body? Have some of our meetings done more harm than good?

Our celebration of the Lord’s Supper is to “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26). By it we proclaim to ourselves and to one another that Christ died to bring us to God. By taking the bread and eating it together we celebrate that we have a part in his sacrificial death – he died for us, each one of us. By drinking the wine together we know that he shed his blood for us, each one of us, and that through his shed blood he has sealed for all eternity the covenant by which God has bound himself to us and us to him. And we do all of this in anticipation of the day when Christ shall return and we shall feast together with him at the great marriage supper of the Lamb. It is an anticipation of the age to come.

But there is even more to it than this. We not only proclaim these things to one another, we proclaim them to the world. We proclaim to the world that Christ has died, Christ is risen and Christ shall come again not simply by celebrating communion together but by living the crucified and risen life together in communion with Christ – in active and demonstrable fellowship him. The Lord’s Supper is nothing but an empty ceremony if it is not reflected and lived out in our daily lives with one another and before the world: “it is not the Lord’s Supper that you eat” (11:20).

Let’s celebrate Christ’s sacrifice for us by eating the Lord’s Supper together, but let us celebrate it also by offering ourselves to him as living sacrifices and as servants to one another. Let’s take care to “discern the body of Christ” and to make it visible to the world around us as we “proclaim his death until he comes.”

Lord Jesus, you loved me and gave yourself for me. Help me to love you in return and to love each one of your people as you have loved them – as you have loved me. And Lord, we pray for your church which is so often troubled by divisive arguments and conduct. Forgive us Lord. Rob us of our pride and help us to live as those who have died to all that this world holds dear and who live only to you and to make known your dying love and risen power.

Peter Misselbrook