Word of Salvation – Vol. 43 No. 40 – October 1998

 

The Divine Vine and His Line

 

A Sermon by Rev. S. Bajema on Psalm 144:12

Scripture Reading: Colossians 3:18 – 4:6; Psalm 144

Suggested Hymns: BoW 144:1, 2, 4; 435; 238; 78a; 331

 

Congregation…

What do you see when you pray?

Perhaps the boys and girls will be thinking: “But you’re supposed to pray with your eyes shut!”  You’re quite right, of course.  Keeping our eyes shut physically usually helps us to concentrate better while we’re praying.

But, now, you think about what you’re praying.  Are you really thinking about it?  Is it a vivid part of your life – can you virtually picture it as you pray for it?  That’s what I mean by the question: ‘What do you see when you pray?’  Because if you don’t see anything, if your prayer is just the same old tired words used over and over again, we don’t see it, we don’t think about it happening at all.  Our prayer is then, actually, quite blind!  In this way, how we pray isn’t that much different than those other things which are important in our lives.  Because we want to do that thing so much and to do it so well, it takes over our whole imagination.

Perhaps, for our boys and girls, it’s playing a particular sport, or playing with your friends.  For our young adults it may be that girl or boy you’re keen on.  And for those older still, maybe a promotion, getting that contract, doing a rewarding work in the school or church or the senior citizen’s home, seeing that plan come to fruition; these are when your ideas become a reality.  It’s that thing which means a lot to you at the moment.

And I don’t think there could be a better illustration where we picture what may happen, than what we have with the thoughts of parents and family and friends around the cradle of a newborn child.  Somehow birth itself is a beginning to all our dreams about love and life.  Take away children, and you take away hope.

For example, if you were to talk with someone from a church which has a membership of almost exclusively older members you would soon notice it.  There’s something missing – and you’ll see what it is, especially if any youngsters visit them for a Sunday service.  Somehow, somewhere, they’re missing a generation.

So, as David, in this psalm, looks to what the future holds, he starts first with what really matters most – humanly speaking.  Because it’s actually humans – God’s covenant people who do matter most in His plan for the future.  And as any believer is concerned now for the future of the church, and thus the continued proclamation of the gospel in hearts and lives that profess the Saviour God, so David prays the same.

Do you see, brothers and sisters:

THE HOPE WILL BE SEEN IN THE HOME?

Now, this may not seem so odd in and of itself.  We know and love the ultimate value of covenant education, I trust.  But let’s use our minds to try and picture it for them.

Here we have the man who would be king.  The context of this psalm isn’t too clear.  In its similarity to Psalm 18, it’s something thought to be from the time just before David became king, but already after he’d been anointed by Samuel to be the future king.

But whether it was then or later, David’s abilities as a warrior have already been demonstrated – I mean, who would ever forget the defeat of Goliath?  David has already said as much with acknowledging the LORD in verse 1 as the one who trains his hands for war and his fingers for the battle; in verse 2, the LORD is the One who subdued people under him; in verse 10, God is the One who’s given him victories, and the One who continues to be able to make David victorious.

Now, here is a man of war, a soldier, the leader so skilled and focussed that strategically he was brilliant.  Under his rule Israel became a mighty empire.  So, after having asked the LORD to save him from his enemies what do you think he would want to ask for next?

That’s why our text can seem such a sudden change.  Some commentators wonder if it was part of the original psalm at all.  They would find it more logical if David started looking toward expanding his kingdom, enlarging his palace, or whatever a king’s mind becomes taken with.

Ah, but that depends on how that king’s mind was trained up in the first place, doesn’t it?  And going back to David’s childhood, it’s clear that his parents raised their children in the way of the LORD.

One only needs to recall the genealogy that family line – with which David was linked.  Jesse, after all, was a grandson of Ruth, the godly Moabite woman.  For the love of the LORD and His people, Ruth chose to go with Naomi when she returned to Israel.

David, who knew well enough the Law of Moses, looked to the future, wearing those spectacles of God’s Word.  Psalm 119 is one example, although a long one, of how David loved the Word of the LORD.  As much as he may have failed to raise his children in the way of Deuteronomy 6, it didn’t change his knowledge that he knew this to be the way of the LORD.

THE HOPE WILL BE SEEN IN THE HOME.

When David speaks of sons in their youth being like well-nurtured plants, there’s an echo of his own adolescence in Psalm 71: “For your have been my hope, O Sovereign LORD, my confidence since my youth.  From birth I have relied on you; you brought me forth from my mother’s womb…”  And further on, “Since my youth, O God, you have taught me, and to this day I declare your marvellous deeds.  Even when I am old and gray, don’t forsake me, O God, till I declare your power to the next generation, your might to those who are to come…!” (vss.5, 6, 17, 18)

David knows how the covenant is to be continued, even if in later years he fails as a parent on that very score.

And there’s something else he, by God’s Spirit, brings into our focus in this verse.  There is the conviction we’ve considered, that… THE HOPE WILL BE SEEN IN THE HOME…, but there is further…  THE PEACE IN EACH ONE’S PLACE.

Congregation, we have noticed how David would have spoken the description about the sons growing up this way from his own adolescence.  And with David the LORD was pleased to use it for His purposes.

It was certainly something, we know from Psalm 71, which gave him great strength and direction later on.  Yes, David, did turn out to be like a well-nurtured plant, so well established in the LORD and His Word that it could be said of David, “He was a man after the LORD’s own heart.”  So, let’s reflect a little more on these two vivid word pictures in the text, and how it may bring the same grace into our lives.

There is, first, the sons who “will be like well-nurtured plants.”  Those who love the LORD have been described like this elsewhere in the psalms.  Psalm 92, as one example, paints the same scene in a wider way: “The righteous will flourish like a palm tree, they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon; planted in the house of the LORD, they will flourish in the courts of our God.  They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green, proclaiming ‘The LORD is upright; he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him’.” (vss.12.ff)

And who could forget the first psalm of all, with its description of the blessed man, “…his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.  He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.  Whatever he does prospers.” (vss,2f)

Congregation, do we have husbands and fathers and brothers like this?  Are we men, no matter which age, still feeding upon, and growing through, God’s Word?

Our children must see us lead by example, willing always to move forward with the LORD by first going down on our knees in prayer.

For the description here is not simply an appropriate turn of phrase this is no mere poetical device this is about where we come from, where we’re going, and what we’re doing now!

If our sons in the future aren’t well-nurtured plants – if the biblical faith just withers and dies – there will be no covenantal families, let alone be a church through which the glorious Gospel is proclaimed!

“Teach your children well…” goes a song from some years ago, and it’s your own life which will be their biggest lesson.

So, what do we show our sons?  Is it perhaps how to save their money well, build a successful career, to let sport be just as important as church, and to be so busy there never seems to be enough time to just have some time together?

Is this being too hard on the men?

Moving on to the second word picture confirms how vitally important male leadership is in the home and in the church.

Mind you, hearing this second word picture might not strike us that way; at least not at a first glance.  For when we hear “and our daughters will be like pillars carved to adorn a palace…” we could well be left with the impression that believing women have a strength which is foundational in the family, and so also in the church.

In some translations the phrase ‘corner pillars’ is used, giving the impression of holding everything together.  And that’s how it can sometimes seem in certain families and in certain churches.  It has been said that many churches in Holland wouldn’t be still open today if it weren’t for the women, because the men have just copped out altogether!

F Delitzsch, after researching what the architecture of Syria and Palestine was like at the time of David and in more recent times, and considering the original language used, prefers this translation: “Our daughters are as corners adorned in varied colours after the architecture of palaces.”  A beautiful description.  Solomon, in his song, describes his beloved in a similar way: “Your neck is like an ivory tower.  Your eyes are the pools of Heshbon by the gate of Bath Rabbim.  Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon looking toward Damascus…” (SoS.7:4)

This all suggests that there is more in the text of a complimentary nature than of there being a separate source of strength.  The daughters will compliment the sons, so that each one has their own appropriate place in the covenant family, which results in the blessing that flows.

We could produce figures to show how families with a clear and positive husband and father generally means that more of the children will themselves follow the LORD later in life.  And we could trace the demise of those churches where male leadership has been abrogated.

But there are always exceptions where the LORD has been gracious, and through such a direction turned things around later in time.  Then, though, isn’t it the LORD who uses the crooked stick to make straight?  The last thing He would want to see from His people is to go that way.  For example, should we take up visiting mediums because the LORD happened to use one to expose the pathetic Saul near the end of his kingship?

Congregation, if there isn’t the partnership between man and woman in the gospel, with the respect for their equality in Christ, but also for their differences in role, there won’t be the continued blessing in the covenant.

David is but one example in the way he raised – or rather, failed to raise – his children.  David didn’t punish his son Amnon the right way when he raped his sister Tamar, and there we have the seeds of the rebellion of Absalom, another son of David.  That David, and later Solomon especially, took so many wives and concubines, was an allowance for the weakness of their flesh, rather than a wholehearted commitment to the way of the LORD.

That doesn’t take away from the personal faith they had – we aren’t in any position to judge that – but the LORD’s way of blessing is clear.  God had already set out the differences between blessings and curses in a most decisive way in the sermon of Moses to His people about to enter the Promised Land the sermon we know now as the Book of Deuteronomy.

And today that shadow has become the very Light Himself because God has come among us in His Son, and has left us His Spirit to guide each believer in the way of His Word.  It’s through the coming of Christ that we have the supreme example how to live lives of love.

The apostle Paul wrote, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.”

Then the woman is most beautiful, isn’t she?  There in the place she’s meant to be.  As beautiful as a pillar carved to adorn nothing less than a palace itself.  And the woman is called to respect her husband.  The respect which realises in practice what he’s meant to be.

Dear friend, when you pray, is this what you see?  Can you think upon the way the Lord’s blessing is meant to be?

How true it is – we already begin answering our prayers, even in the way we pray them.  To use the title of Richard Pratt’s book, you need to Pray With Your Eyes Open.

Boys and girls, you know what that means now, don’t you?  It’s still good to keep your eyes shut when you pray, but it’s even better that we pray for what the LORD wants, because we want it, too!  We want it that much we can almost start to see it happening.  And, then, we’ll find we’re ready for it to happen, too.

When David offered up this psalm, he meant it as a prayer from his heart.  He actively looked for the blessing of the LORD.  And he got it!

Dear believer, though the blessing of the LORD then was shown physically, let’s not expect anything less spiritually.  The same God who promised David that there would always be a king on his throne was the One who came down in His own Son Jesus Christ to sit forever on that throne.  Right now this great King of kings – Jesus Christ – is ruling in believing hearts by His Holy Spirit.

Forget the temple in Jerusalem, there’s one in your heart now – the way through which we may see those biblical blessings we have in Jesus come to us – now and forever!

Amen.