Day 5

Posted on: February 22, 2024
by: Gerrit Dawson, Senior Pastor

DAY 5 THURSDAY

Baptism: Your God Has Anointed You

Imagine standing with Jesus, right next to him, in prayer to his Father. Read this passage of praise aloud. As you do so, consider that you are praying along with Jesus, your two voices becoming one as you bless God.

Bless the LORD, O my soul,

and all that is within me,

bless his holy name!

Bless the LORD, O my soul,

and forget not all his benefits,

who forgives all your iniquity

who heals all your diseases,

who redeems your life from the pit,

who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,

who satisfies you with good

so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. (Psalm 103:1-5)

Psalm 45:1-9

My heart overflows with a pleasing theme;

I address my verses to the king;

my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe.

You are the most handsome of the sons of men;

grace is poured upon your lips;

therefore God has blessed you forever.

Gird your sword on your thigh, O mighty one,

in your splendor and majesty!

In your majesty ride out victoriously

for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness;

let your right hand teach you awesome deeds!

Your arrows are sharp

in the heart of the king’s enemies;

the peoples fall under you.

Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.

The scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of uprightness;

you have loved righteousness and hated wickedness.

Therefore God, your God, has anointed you

with the oil of gladness beyond your companions;

your robes are all fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia.

From ivory palaces stringed instruments make you glad;

daughters of kings are among your ladies of honor;

at your right hand stands the queen in gold of Ophir.

What Is This Psalm About?

This is a song for a royal wedding. Authors of several psalms, the sons of Korah extol the majesty of the king as he prepares to wed. The whole nation rejoiced when a good and righteous king, representing the LORD’s reign of blessing over his people, married a worthy bride. A king who ruled in righteousness created justice throughout the land, and as he rode forth to subdue enemies, the people dwelled in peace. The monarch of Israel had been anointed king by a priest. Therefore, on his wedding day, the very favor of the LORD I AM falls like the finest oil over this king. He is blessed by God himself in whose name he reigns. The beautiful bride portends royal offspring and the hope that the royal line endures.

Though we do not know to which king specifically this psalm was addressed, we do know it is in line with the unconditional promise of the LORD that there would always be an heir of David on the throne of Israel (2 Samuel 7:16). In this way, Psalm 45, even on the first day it was sung, looked forward to the day of the final Messiah when God himself would take his throne to rule on the earth setting all things right.

What Might This Psalm Have Meant to Jesus?

Once more the book of Hebrews confirms the deepest meaning of a psalm to be about Jesus. In fact, Hebrews places the praise of the king on the lips of God the Father!

But of the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever,

the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.

You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness;

therefore God, your God, has anointed you

with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.” (Hebrews 1:8)

When would Jesus have experienced such anointing from his heavenly Father? We return to the event of his baptism. Matthew describes:

And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:6-17)

As John pours water on Jesus, the Father anoints our King with the Spirit. This “oil of gladness” will sustain him in joy through all his trials. Then the Father introduces Jesus publicly as his beloved Son. He summons the world to acknowledge the rule of the Lord. Imagine Jesus reciting this psalm as he contemplates what had happened to him in the Jordan. All these words to the king of Israel were for him!

In the psalm, the singers praise the king for being “the most handsome of the sons of men.” Jesus may have laughed at this since this carpenter’s son from Nazareth was not known for his attractive appearance. In fact, he would also have known Isaiah 53:3 which declared that the suffering servant had “no beauty that that we should desire him.” Jesus may not have been comely according to external norms, but what beauty of love and holiness flowed from within him. What integrity, energy, passion, tenderness and faithfulness he displayed as he sought and saved the lost. How beautiful he looked to those who answered his call!

At his baptism, Jesus accepts his mission. He leaves the waters ready to go forth and reclaim those whose lives had been usurped by the evil one. Steeped in the Word of God, he wields that sword like a holy warrior to liberate his people.

By Jesus’ command, demons will flee, sickness will yield to health, chains of shame will fall away. Sinners will be absolved, the wayward brought home, and multitudes called out of darkness into light.

Jesus is all love. Love refuses to let the loved ones languish under slavery. Jesus rides out from his baptism to engage in a war of salvation, a fight against the principalities and powers of evil in order to redeem the world. His right hand will stretch forth in power to heal. His words, explaining and applying the Scriptures, will convict, piercing right into the heart of the most stubborn refusal.

Singing Psalm 45 after he rises from baptism, Jesus knows himself to be the king, the king of love, who hates the wickedness that ruins his people. He marches forward into ministry to marry his bride, his church, in

redeeming power.

Praying with Jesus

Blessed are those who are invited

To the marriage supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:9).

Mighty King Jesus, how can it be

That you have betrothed yourself to me?

I look upon my hand and see the most dazzling ring:

Your Holy Spirit, the promise of all that is to come.

You have bought for me my wedding dress,

Dazzling pure garments of your own holiness.

My rags washed now in your precious blood.

My impure heart made new.

Every day I prepare for an eternity of reconciled faithfulness.

Grace is poured upon your lips

As you say the sweetest things to me:

“Your sins are forgiven.”

“Fear not, I have called you by name, you are mine.”

“I will come again and take you to myself,

That where I am, you may be also.”

Most glorious King and Husband,

Jesus lover of my soul,

Fan your Spirit in me into flame

That I might make choices today

To adorn our marriage on that Great Day.

Posted in: Lent

Day 4

Posted on: February 21, 2024
by: Gerrit Dawson, Senior Pastor

DAY 4 WEDNESDAY

Baptism: I Delight to Do Your Will

Imagine standing with Jesus, right next to him, in prayer to his Father. Read this passage of praise aloud. As you do so, consider that you are praying along with Jesus, your two voices becoming one as you bless God.

Bless the LORD, O my soul,

and all that is within me,

bless his holy name!

Bless the LORD, O my soul,

and forget not all his benefits,

who forgives all your iniquity

who heals all your diseases,

who redeems your life from the pit,

who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,

who satisfies you with good

so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. (Psalm 103:1-5)

Psalm 40:4-10, 16

Blessed is the man who makes

the LORD his trust,

who does not turn to the proud,

to those who go astray after a lie!

You have multiplied, O LORD my God,

your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us;

none can compare with you!

I will proclaim and tell of them,

yet they are more than can be told.

In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted,

but you have given me an open ear.

Burnt offering and sin offering

you have not required.

Then I said, “Behold, I have come;

in the scroll of the book it is written of me:

I delight to do your will, O my God;

your law is within my heart.”

I have told the glad news of deliverance

in the great congregation;

behold, I have not restrained my lips,

as you know, O LORD.

I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart;

I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation;

I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness

from the great congregation. . . .

But may all who seek you

rejoice and be glad in you;

may those who love your salvation

say continually, “Great is the LORD!”

What Is This Psalm About?

The Hebrew Scriptures abound in requirements for offerings and sacrifices. Blood represented life; the shed blood of an animal substituted for the persons who had sinned. The presentation of a firstborn animal or the first fruits of the harvest symbolized the offering of the worshiper’s whole life. People gave back a portion of what the LORD had given them in rich harvests and multiplying herds.

But these same Scriptures reveal that the actual sacrifices were not in themselves the endgame. They merely represented the giving of our very lives in joyful obedience to the Giver of Life. Rituals in themselves could become meaningless, begrudged, and so of no avail. What God has always wanted is the human heart enacting obedience from a free will inspired by love. Through the years, the LORD has saved his people from slavery, wilderness wanderings, food scarcity, enemies, sinfulness and all its consequences. In return, God desires our thanks and praise for the deepest purpose of humanity is grateful communion with the triune God.

In Psalm 40, David gives thanks for the deliverances of the LORD. He desires to give himself to the One who has given him so much. In his prayer of joyful offering, he realizes the deeper truth in every external act of worship: “Sacrifice and offering you have not desired.” If only understood at face value, that prayer seems not to be true! God surely commanded particular offerings. But there was a deeper meaning: “I desire to do your will, O my God.” The yielded thankful heart would lead to a life of worship and service. David, as we know, could only aspire to such total devotion. It would remain for another to fulfill the true and total requirements of the law.

What Might This Psalm Have Meant to Jesus?

Hebrews 10 places this psalm directly on Jesus’ lips! The setting is “when Christ came into the world” (vs. 5). Overall, this refers to the incarnation. This doing of his Father’s will is the whole journey of the Son of God as the man Jesus. He came as the second Adam, the beginning of a new human race. He came to live from the heart a perfect obedience expressed in giving away his life in love, all the way to his death.

In terms of a particular moment, I love to think of Jesus’ praying Psalm 40 as his cousin John baptizes him in the Jordan River. This is the hour of Christ’s public debut into his mission and ministry.

In the waters of the Jordan, Jesus submits to a sinners’ baptism, even though personally he has no sin. But as John pours water upon him, Jesus repents on our behalf. In baptism, he makes our sins his own and gives us the first look at what his ministry will be about. He will go about taking to himself and healing our diseases and brokenness, our afflictions and oppressions. Then at the last, he will bear the sins of the world upon the cross, being baptized in blood (Mark 10:39).

The ESV translates Psalm 40:6 as “you have given me an open ear,” meaning a receptivity to listening to the will and guidance of his Father. When Hebrews quotes this psalm, however, it uses the Greek translation of the Old Testament as “a body you have prepared for me” (Hebrews 10:5). That gives us a greater sense of how Jesus lived his whole flesh and blood life as a moment-by-moment sacrifice of obedience on our behalf. He joyfully affirms, “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me” (John 6:38).

Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan inaugurates the great promise of the new covenant made in Jeremiah 31:33. The LORD declares, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.” Jesus is the only man who could truly say and live out, “I desire to do your will, O my God.” He reversed our first parents’ choice to do their own will. Jesus was fearfully and wonderfully made as the new Adam who offers himself completely in faithful love to his Father.

So he could proclaim the “glad news of deliverance to the great congregation” he would gather. His first words recorded in Mark’s gospel declare, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15).

Praying with Jesus

Lord Jesus, you came all the way down to us!

You left the harmony of heaven

For the cacophony of my rebel heart.

You went under the waters

Like a filthy sinner needing to be cleansed.

You consecrated yourself to your Father’s mission.

You offered yourself completely.

You lived as the first and only human

Who desired your Father’s will

From the depths of your heart.

You are the new covenant

In which desire to live for God

Is written in the very heart of a new humanity.

You brought this news to the great congregation

Of men, women and children everywhere.

Your joy in seeking your Father wholeheartedly

Overflows to us.

I love your salvation.

This day, I join my voice to yours, as forever

You say, with us and for us,

Great is the LORD!

Posted in: Lent

Day 3

Posted on: February 20, 2024
by: Gerrit Dawson, Senior Pastor

DAY 3 TUESDAY

The Joy of Jesus

Imagine standing with Jesus, right next to him, in prayer to his Father. Read this passage of praise aloud. As you do so, consider that you are praying along with Jesus, your two voices becoming one as you bless God.

Bless the LORD, O my soul,

and all that is within me,

bless his holy name!

Bless the LORD, O my soul,

and forget not all his benefits,

who forgives all your iniquity

who heals all your diseases,

who redeems your life from the pit,

who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,

who satisfies you with good

so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. (Psalm 103:1-5)

Psalm 104:1-2, 19-24; 27-31

Bless the LORD, O my soul!

O LORD my God, you are very great!

You are clothed with splendor and majesty,

covering yourself with light as with a garment,

stretching out the heavens like a tent. . . .

He made the moon to mark the seasons;

the sun knows its time for setting.

You make darkness, and it is night,

when all the beasts of the forest creep about.

The young lions roar for their prey,

seeking their food from God.

When the sun rises, they steal away

and lie down in their dens.

Man goes out to his work

and to his labor until the evening.

O LORD, how manifold are your works!

In wisdom have you made them all;

the earth is full of your creatures. . . .

These all look to you,

to give them their food in due season. . . .

When you give it to them, they gather it up;

when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.

When you hide your face, they are dismayed;

when you take away their breath, they die

and return to their dust.

When you send forth your Spirit, they are created,

and you renew the face of the ground.

May the glory of the LORD endure forever;

may the LORD rejoice in his works.

What Is This Psalm About?

Psalm 104 blesses the LORD I AM for the very rhythms of life on the earth. The psalmist rejoices that, as Calvin would comment centuries later, “[T]he whole world is a theatre for the display of the divine goodness, wisdom, justice, and power” (Commentary on Psalm 104). Similarly, the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins would write, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God” (“God’s Grandeur”). When we look at creation against the backdrop of the Creator’s goodness, order and plan, even the mundane thrills us. So the prophet declares, “He who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns deep darkness into the morning and darkens the day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out on the surface of the earth, the LORD is his name” (Amos 5:8).

God ordered the cosmos with reliable laws, and faith understands that God’s steadfast love undergirds this constancy. Consequently, what seems routine sparkles as extraordinary. Wonder is everywhere: Days and seasons. Earth and sky. Birth and death. Growth and decay. Work and rest. Animals nocturnal and diurnal. Evergreens and leaf-droppers. Rainy seasons and dry. Cold and heat. The very dance of electrons to the slow inexorable glacier flow sing forth the beauty of the Creator. Thomas Chisholm’s beloved hymn “Great is Thy Faithfulness” encapsulates this lovely theme of Psalm 104: “Summer and winter and seedtime and harvest, / Suns, moons and stars in their courses above / Join with all nature in manifold witness / to thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.”

What Might This Psalm Have Meant to Jesus?

Paul writes of the Son of God that “by him all things were created in heaven and on earth . . . all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:6-17). Paul also tells us that “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman” (Galatians 4:4), and “he emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:7). The eternal Son took up a real humanity. As Jesus, he made his way as we do. He had to develop, study, ask questions, reason, work, eat, wash, rest, deepen and explore. Jesus as a human had to become aware of what he had known from eternity as the Son of God—he is his Father’s unique Son.

As a child, Jesus encountered the world as children do—just receiving what is as it is. Spilled milk is not first a mess, but something wet and cool to put a hand in. A dog slurp is first something that makes you laugh, only later something that makes you sticky. He experienced and loved all the ordinary moments of regular days.

In his ministry, Jesus would have to undertake the grim business of engaging evil. He would have to fight against illness, arrogance, oppression, and every manner of brokenness. But I don’t believe he ever lost the joy of life that he experienced as a child.

As we consider his teaching, we see Jesus’ awareness and appreciation of daily life. There is abundant evidence in his illustrations that Jesus had been shaped by Psalm 104 in his prayers:

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. (Matthew 6:28b-29)

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. (Matthew 10:29)The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. (Mark 4:26-27)

When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ (Matthew 16:2-3)

Jesus loves the beautiful adornment of flowers and the birds on the wing. He knows his Father has his eye on the sparrow. He acknowledges the mystery of how seeds sprout and plants grow. He watches the signs of weather and lives close to the change of seasons and the daily sunrise and nightfall.

As Jesus prays Psalm 104, we can imagine his deep contemplation. The song turns from lyrically naming aspects of creation to exploring the very mystery of living and dying. The Hebrew word for “breath,” “wind” and “spirit” is the same. Thus, animals live by the breath, or Spirit, of God. The breath of God gives the breath of life. When that Spirit is withdrawn, creatures perish. We, like the animals, made of dust, rise from the earth and return to it in due time, under the sovereignty of God.

Jesus discerns the hope that follows the psalm’s lines about death. Seemingly out of order, we read how God sends forth his Spirit, his divine breath, to quicken these creatures who have perished. But the Hebrew word can mean “revive” as well as “create.” This gives a sense of resurrection. “[A]nd you renew the face of the earth.” As the years go by and Jesus considers the cross that will be before him, how precious would the joyful hope of this psalm be to him!

Praying with Jesus

You encountered the world from within a real human life.

I love to think of your joy in being alive,

In seeing order, rhythm, design everywhere.

Mary and Joseph told you of the Creator.

So you received everything as a gift from his hand.

As a child, you felt

The vastness of the world,

The power of the waves,

The depths of the waters

And the height of the hills.

You saw animals born and die.

You saw the harvest joy

And the heartbreak of crops that failed.

You anticipated the routine of daily meals,

And regular prayers,

Sabbath rest and hours when toil demanded.

You knew cool nights and hot days.

Always you grew in knowing your Father

As the source and goal, the originator and finisher.

All of this revealed his beauty to you.

With you, Jesus,

I will sing to your Father as long as I live;

I will sing praise to my God and your God,

For the beauty of the earth,

With you, Jesus, I rejoice in the LORD,

Your Father and mine.

Posted in: Lent

Day 2

Posted on: February 19, 2024
by: Gerrit Dawson, Senior Pastor

DAY 2 MONDAY

At the Temple: One Thing I Have Asked

Imagine standing with Jesus, right next to him, in prayer to his Father. Read this passage of praise aloud. As you do so, consider that you are praying along with Jesus, your two voices becoming one as you bless God.

Bless the LORD, O my soul,

and all that is within me,

bless his holy name!

Bless the LORD, O my soul,

and forget not all his benefits,

who forgives all your iniquity

who heals all your diseases,

who redeems your life from the pit,

who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,

who satisfies you with good

so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. (Psalm 103:1-5)

Psalm 27:4-10

One thing have I asked of the LORD,

that will I seek after:

that I may dwell in the house of the LORD

all the days of my life,

to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD

and to inquire in his temple.

For he will hide me in his shelter

in the day of trouble;

he will conceal me under the cover of his tent;

he will lift me high upon a rock.

And now my head shall be lifted up

above my enemies all around me,

and I will offer in his tent

sacrifices with shouts of joy;

I will sing and make melody to the LORD.

Hear, O LORD, when I cry aloud;

be gracious to me and answer me!

You have said, “Seek my face.”

My heart says to you,

“Your face, LORD, do I seek.”

Hide not your face from me.

Turn not your servant away in anger,

O you who have been my help.

Cast me not off; forsake me not,

O God of my salvation!

For my father and my mother have forsaken me,

but the LORD will take me in.

What Is This Psalm About?

In Psalm 27, virulent enemies press David so hard that he feels like they want “to eat up my flesh” (27:2). He counters his anxiety by praising the LORD, describing in prayer a cascade of God’s qualities. The LORD is his light, his salvation, his rock and his refuge. In times of trouble, the LORD both conceals David from his enemies and lifts him high above them. The reality of God reduces the threat of any foe.

David also understands that when we are restless with worry, it is hard to rest in God. When we thrash about with anxiety over others’ hostility, we struggle to release ourselves into God’s peaceful protection. David knows he needs to go to a place where others who trust in the LORD lift up praises and make their needs known. He seeks a “thin place” where the distance between heaven and earth shrinks. God who is everywhere chose to make himself especially known in his “house,” the place of worship where the Ark of the Covenant resided, where sacrifices of atonement and thanks could be made, where songs of faith rose entwined with cries of need.

So David realizes that the deepest desire of his heart is to experience the presence of the LORD who had called him as his son and servant. The Holy Spirit placed in David an impulse to seek the face, the experiential presence, of God. He knows this is the quest of his life. The road of that journey is paved with praise. Such worship puts all of life in perspective. When enemies pursue, or even the closest relatives disappoint, the LORD sustains with steadfast love.

What Might This Psalm Have Meant to Jesus?

In Luke 2:41-51, the author records one episode from Jesus’ boyhood. Jesus’ family takes him to Jerusalem for the sacred festival of Passover. At 12, Jesus is just a year from his bar mitzvah, after which he would be considered a responsible adult. In the courts of the great temple, teachers of the Scriptures gather to discuss, expound and debate the Word of God while others listen. There Jesus realizes his greatest passion: to encounter God through his Word.

From the beginning, Jesus had an extraordinary aptitude for Scripture. I’m sure he loved hearing his rabbi teach every Sabbath. I know Jesus relished the Torah classes held for the boys of his town. But now at the temple, hearing the greatest teachers, spiritual fire blazes in his heart, mind and soul. He yearns to know the LORD more. He knows that his life’s work will be to speak of God from his Word to any who will listen.

In the temple, where the LORD made his name to dwell, Jesus can barely contain his desire to behold the beauty, the full-of-wonder delightfulness of God to whom he feels so close. How this psalm resounds in his soul! “My heart says to you, ‘Your face, LORD, do I seek’” (Psalm 27:8). And suddenly this boy dares to interact with the teachers, asking and answering questions. He loses all track of time. This is what he does day after day, even when his family has started back for Nazareth.

When his parents, worried sick, double back to find him, Jesus can only reply, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49). Jesus realizes that the great God of the glorious Scriptures discussed at the temple is his personal father. He is coming into the truth of his manhood. As close as he has been to his earthly parents, now he knows he must live for his heavenly Father. In this sense, he can pray with David, “My father and mother have forsaken me, but the LORD [my Father!] will take me in.”

Praying with Jesus

Lord Jesus, I thrill to imagine

You at the temple that Passover,

Awakening to your purpose,

Near breathless with deepest desire.

You sought the face of your Father.

Yearning awoke in you to be more and more in his presence.

In the temple, you tasted the sweetness of the Word.

Your soul blazed with ardor to know your Father intimately,

To shout with joy as you offered yourself to do his will.

You answered the Spirit’s prompting in you.

You expressed earnestly your greatest fear as you asked

That the Father would never hide his face from you.

You wanted what no human had received before,

A direct and intimate apprehension of God,

Whom you loved though you had not seen him,

For whom you thirsted, whom you wanted more than anything.

And today as I pray, I’m astonished

That what you sought, you now give to me.

For you are the face of God in a human face!

You are the Father’s presence in skin and bone.

The glory of God shines in your face

Which is ever turned toward me in love.

Open my eyes that I might see

How what you most desired on earth,

What you fought for, bled for, died for,

Has been freely given to me.

Posted in: Lent

Day 1

Posted on: February 18, 2024
by: Gerrit Dawson, Senior Pastor

WEEK 1 INTRODUCTION

BEHOLD, I HAVE COME!

John Everett Millais. Christ in the House of His Parents. 1849-50, Tate Gallery, London.

We’re given very little specific information about Jesus’ first thirty years, but those decades formed what Jesus would become in his ministry. We know he was miraculously conceived by the Holy Spirit. His family fled to Egypt shortly after his birth because jealous King Herod sought his life. His stepfather Joseph worked as a carpenter. Like any good Jewish boy, Jesus would have learned his father’s trade. Jesus learned to relate to his family and neighbors. He studied the Scriptures. He internalized the Jewish forms of worship. He noticed seasons, trees, and animals. Jesus increased in awareness of his heavenly Father and their unique relationship. All this prepared him to burst onto the public scene at his baptism.

Preparing for this week, we can spend a few moments with John Everett Millais’ 1850 painting With Christ in the House of His Parents. This intimate domestic scene is rich with signs of what is to come. The young Jesus has pierced his hand on a protruding nail in Joseph’s workshop. Mary comforts him even as Joseph tenderly examines the wound. We cannot help but think of the coming cross, especially as we note the larger nail in Joseph’s hand. His cousin John brings a bowl of water foreshadowing his role as the baptizer. Even more symbolism can be discovered in articles about this painting.

DAY 1 SUNDAY

The Child Jesus Asks, “Who Am I?”

Imagine standing with Jesus, right next to him, in prayer to his Father. Read this passage of praise aloud. As you do so, consider that you are praying along with Jesus, your two voices becoming one as you bless God.

Bless the LORD, O my soul,

and all that is within me,

bless his holy name!

Bless the LORD, O my soul,

and forget not all his benefits,

who forgives all your iniquity

who heals all your diseases,

who redeems your life from the pit,

who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,

who satisfies you with good

so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. (Psalm 103:1-5)

Psalm 139:1-2, 13-18

O LORD, you have searched me and known me!

You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

you discern my thoughts from afar. . . .

For you formed my inward parts;

you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

my soul knows it very well.

My frame was not hidden from you,

when I was being made in secret,

intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed substance;

in your book were written, every one of them,

the days that were formed for me,

when as yet there was none of them.

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!

How vast is the sum of them!

If I would count them, they are more than the sand.

I awake, and I am still with you.

What Is This Psalm About?

In this psalm, David contemplates the wonder that the LORD of all knows him personally and intimately. God perceives his past and his future. God beholds him inside and out. In the LORD’s awareness, there can be no gap between what David presents and who he really is. God beholds him entirely. He knows him completely.

The heart of this song can be expressed in a simple but profound statement: “I am thought, therefore I am.” Why do I exist? Because God thought of me! And he keeps thinking of me. By his very regard for me, I stay alive. The one whose name is “I Am,” the Triune God who is pure, uncreated being imagined me. Then he created me. He gave me a real existence. So I can joyfully say, “I am! I am me! I live!” But not because I could ever have made myself. Thinking, choosing and doing are all gifts from God.

This psalm shows me that the more I acknowledge the Creator, the more I appreciate the mystery of being alive. My praise of the Maker opens me to joyful gratitude. I rejoice, without pride, in my very life. For all glory goes to the One who conceived me in eternity and then enabled my mother to bring me into this world. I am thought—by God. Therefore, I exist as the particular person I am. Even now, as I draw the next breath, I realize that God maintains my life by his constant thought and care.

What Might This Psalm Have Meant to Jesus?

We know very little of Jesus’ life before his ministry began, and what information we have is precious. We know that in Nazareth “the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom. And the favor of God was upon him” (Luke 2:40). We can well imagine that Psalm 139 was as significant for Jesus as it has ever been for young people.

Jesus did not come out of Mary’s womb as a fully formed little man the way some art shows! Jesus grew up the way we do. That means he had to learn. Like every baby, Jesus learned to distinguish people. He knew the loving embrace of his nursing mother. It was different than the strong embrace of his carpenter father. Jesus could tell the smooth skin of Mary’s cheek from the rough beard of Joseph.

As Jesus realized more and more that he was his own, separate person, he may have wondered, as many children do, where he was before he was here with his parents. Lying on his bed at night, before he fell asleep, he may have looked at his hands in the dim light wondering at how he could just think of moving his fingers and they moved! Jesus may have tried to see how long he could hold his breath or noticed the dazzling brightness in his closed eyes when he rubbed them with his knuckles. Jesus would have puzzled over where he went when he was asleep. As Jesus encountered the death of animals, neighbors or even relatives, he would have wondered if they still lived somewhere else. And so where would he be one day when he died?

All the while Jesus learned about the extraordinary ordinariness of being alive, this psalm would have set everything in the context of the God who made him. How Jesus would have known the fresh joy each morning expressed in this psalm: “I awake, and I am still with you!” Psalm 139 gathered up every thanksgiving at meals, every bedtime prayer, and every song of the synagogue with the reality that Jesus lived because he was created by a God who every moment knew him and related to him.

Praying with Jesus

Jesus the surge of living flowed through you!

You knew the child’s delight of discovery.

I can see you laughing

As Mary blew on your tummy,

As Joseph tossed you into the air.

I love to think about how you first spoke.

Did your parents keep using the funny names

You gave to things?

I love to visualize you on your bed in the dark,

Or in the early morning before the house stirred,

Speaking to your toys, making up little stories.

I love to see you walking outside,

Holding a hand, feeling the sun,

Breathing in the scent of home.

I love to ponder how the awareness

Of your heavenly Father grew year by year,

To imagine you hearing this psalm and

Realizing, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

What love of life you surely had,

How precious were those days at home,

Before the weight of the world bore down

Upon the shoulders of your soul.

Posted in: Lent

Introduction

Posted on: February 17, 2024
by: Gerrit Dawson, Senior Pastor

What if we could pray with Jesus, not just to him about our concerns? What would happen if we stood next to Jesus, offering up the same prayers he made to his Father? What if we joined Jesus in the events of his life, then pressed close to him by sharing in his emotions? What if we spent our prayer time being engaged about what mattered in Christ’s life?

I can tell you what happens to me when I do this. I feel his heart forming more inside my heart. I become energized by the urgency of his mission. Most of all, I grow to love Jesus more than ever. And adoring him brings me so much: Peace. Passion. Hope. Wonder.

As it turns out, getting inside Jesus’ prayer life lights up our prayers. Tucking up close to his heartbeat in the events of his life transforms our hearts. The closer we draw to him, the more Jesus gives life to us.

But how? Is there not an impossible gap between Jesus and me? Aren’t the events of his life lost in the past? We don’t know what he prayed, so how can we join him? I know. It sounds presumptuous and not a little crazy.

But there is a bridge, a reliable, compelling, available bridge built of two interconnected parts: the Psalms and the Gospels. They fit together so we can be joined to Jesus.

The Psalms

For centuries, the Book of Psalms, also known as the Psalter, has been the heartbeat of Jewish and Christian worship. The people of the LORD have offered up psalms as individuals and as a community of believers. Mostly written by the poet-king David, this collection of 150 poems runs the whole range of human experience. From joy to depression, from guilt to release, from anxiety to peace, from envy to gratitude, psalms express the kaleidoscope of our emotions. Nearly all the psalms are prayers, so when we pray the psalms, our human feelings get processed before the LORD. Through the Psalms, we tell God about our situations and the emotions that arise from these circumstances. We consider the cause of our circumstances, and we ask our Creator for specific help, sometimes urgently.

Jesus knew the Psalms by heart. He prayed them, taught from them, quoted from them and understood himself to be the key that unlocks their deepest meaning. They are Christ’s prayerbook. And only he could pray them completely.

The Gospels

Jesus himself withdrew from the earth forty days after his resurrection. But by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he left us the record of what we need to know about what he did and said. The Gospels recount historical events in Jesus’ life, but Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are not mere reports. Something else happens when we read that record in reliance on the Holy Spirit. These events from two thousand years ago become charged with present power. We meet the Jesus who lived then right now. These stories have immediate potency.

Building a Bridge

How can we link the Psalms and the Gospels? First of all, the authors of the Gospels give us several concrete instances where particular psalms intersect with the events of Jesus’ life. For example, we already know that Jesus prayed Psalm 22 from the cross. We’re very sure Jesus prayed Psalm 116 at the Last Supper. We know that people shouted lines from Psalm 118 as Jesus entered Jerusalem. We know that Jesus taught how Psalm 110 relates to himself.

Even without specific references such as these, we can see the bridge being built elsewhere in the Gospels. The Spirit inspired the authors of the Psalms not only in their sacred responses to their immediate circumstances but also in the penning of prayers that Jesus would offer to his Father throughout his life, especially during Passion Week. In effect, the psalmists composed lyrics for Jesus’ life. Making additional links between specific psalms and Jesus’ life events will require some imagination—not wild speculation, but consecrated connection.

What if we consider which particular psalms fit with particular events of Jesus’ life given in the Gospels and pray specific psalms right into those events? What if we imagine Jesus praying that psalm as expressive of the meaning of that event? We know Jesus knew and prayed all the Psalms, and we know every event recorded in the Gospels happened. So the experiment this Lent is to put the two together in contemplation and prayer. We pray the psalms with Jesus in the context of his experiences because, in effect, the Psalms are the soundtrack of Jesus’ life.

That is what I’m inviting you to try this Lent—to pray prayers Jesus prayed with Jesus as we enter the events of his life. Using consecrated imagination, we can draw close to him to understand more of his inner life and driving passion. We have forty-two events and forty-two psalms to link together. I have found making these connections to be life-changing, and I pray you will too.

A Note On the Psalms as Songs

Music can lift our spirits or release our sadness. We love the lyrics of songs because they express what we feel but may not have the words to say. The specific situation described by the songwriter doesn’t limit the song’s ability to connect across regions, ages, and even cultures.

For instance, not many people have actually found themselves “standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona.” But millions have connected for half a century to the relational difficulties in the Eagles’ “Take It Easy.” Also, songs can amplify familiar feelings so we can hear more clearly what we’re experiencing. Bono of U2 sings how he’s got “music to exaggerate my pain and give it a name.” A song in word or tune may be more dramatic than my life in a particular moment. But that very exaggeration helps me understand what I’m experiencing on a smaller scale. We hitch our feelings to the song and feel understood.

Written to be sung by individuals and in corporate worship and celebration, the Psalms are not only a prayerbook, they are a songbook as well.

Curiously, God did not preserve for us any of the tunes to which these psalms were set. Moreover, the Hebrew poetry of the psalms does not use rhyme. However, the lack of melody and rhyme makes the psalms more translatable, relatable and universal. Cultures change constantly, but human emotions and spiritual experiences stay remarkably the same through time and space, and the psalms continue to cross over countries, oceans, and even centuries.

TWENTY MINUTES A DAY

Psalm 103 Every Day: Don’t Skip This!

I invite you to pray aloud every day an excerpt from Psalm 103. Doing this in itself is spiritually formative. But here’s the twist. As you get ready to pray, imagine standing with Jesus. See Jesus make ready to bless his Father through this ancient psalm. Then say it with him. Encourage him in his praise as you say it aloud with Jesus.

Daily Psalm

Each day during this Lenten season, we’ll read a selection from a psalm. Take your time. You might want to read it once silently and once aloud. Notice where you identify with the feelings expressed. Listen for the “nibbles” that tug at you. Consider what you like about this selection or even what you don’t like.

What Is This Psalm About?

I will present a couple of paragraphs just to set the context of the day’s psalm. I’ll highlight for you some particular insights that help to unlock its meaning.

What Might This Psalm Have Meant to Jesus?

Here’s where we’ll make a link between a Jesus-event and the psalm. We’ll be moving consecutively through the life of Jesus, from his childhood through his ministry and passion to his ascension. I’ll be bringing in connections to other Scriptures as well. We’ll see how these prayers would have given Jesus lyrics, or content, for praying about the meaning of the event.

Praying with Jesus

This is where we will strive to internalize the link between events of Jesus’ life and psalms he might have prayed. I’ve offered words through which you can press close to Jesus as you encounter him in both the gospel story and the psalm. Of course, I encourage you to add your own prayers!

So as we pray psalms throughout Lent, we will find connections with our own lives. Moreover, we will find links to Jesus’ inner feelings. We will pray with Jesus and draw close to him in this sacred season.

Acknowledgments

I’m so thankful to work with Katie Robinson on this our 13th Lenten guide to prayer! She’s the layout master! I’m very grateful to welcome back Dr. Jean Rohloff as editor. She’s great at making clear and smooth what is murky and rough.

There are many great books on the psalms. I want to acknowledge just a few seminal sources referenced in these pages. (Other sources used will have footnotes in the text.)

Guite, Malcolm. David’s Crown: Sounding the Psalms. Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2021.

Reardon, Patrick Henry. Christ in the Psalms. Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2000.

Ross, Allen P. Ross. A Commentary on the Psalms, Vol. 1-3. Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2016.*

*Professor Ross’ work has been more valuable to me than I can say. His scholarship and insights are everywhere in these pages.

And, of course, how can I ever adequately render my joyful gratitude that I have the privilege of pastoring such a congregation as you? Your love for the Word who is Jesus and the Word which is written fills me with energy and a passion to go deeper into Christ with you. This is a book I’ve wanted to write for a decade, and now, at last, we get to pray psalms with Jesus together!

With you in Christ,

Gerrit

Lent, 2024

Posted in: Lent