Congregation at Prayer

Catechesis Notes for the Week —Psalm 104:1-15—Psalm of Praise to the Glory of God who Provides Daily Bread—Everything that we need God provides. This is the fundamental teaching of the First Article of the Creed and the Fourth Petition of the Lord’s Prayer. How often are we assaulted by the temptation NOT to trust in the Lord God who is the Creator and Provider of all things needful AND our Savior from sin. The first portion of psalm 104 begins as Psalm 103 began, the psalmists own prayer that his soul would bless the Lord because the Lord is great, clothed with honor and majesty, and as the One who orders both the temporal and the spiritual realm. He created the angels. He laid the foundation of the earth. The creation is ordered and sustained by His will. He provides the water to replenish the earth and sustain all of life. He is the One who sends springs of water, gives every beast of the field to drink, and sustains the birds of the air. Reliance, dependence, confidence, and joy in the Lord is the faith to which Psalm 104 calls us. We need this psalm more than ever as our world rejects the ongoing creative and sustaining work of God in His creation in favor of a godless, man-centered, naturalistic worldview. Let us not be afraid. God will provide us with daily bread. Let us pray that we would learn to believe this and to receive all of our daily bread with thanksgiving, for He brings “forth food from the earth, and wine that makes glad the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread which strengthens man’s heart.”CP201227

Catechesis Notes for the Week —Psalm 103—A Prayer in Praise of the Lord’s Mercy—From the depths of his being, David calls upon his own soul and all that is within him to bless the Lord for the Lord’s mercy and for every benefit that he receives from the grace of God. The Lord forgives all iniquity. He heals all diseases. He redeems one’s life from destruction. He crowns the believer with loving kindness and tender mercies. He satisfies us with good things. He renews our life.  All of this flows from the mercy of God in Christ our Redeemer. In Jesus God has executed righteousness and worked justice for all who were oppressed by sin and death. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in mercy which He so freely and faithfully made known to Moses and the children of Israel. Though He afflicts us, He, nevertheless, lets go of His anger and does not punish us as we deserve. His mercy is as different from the world’s concept of mercy as the heavens are high above the earth. His forgiveness means that He has removed our transgressions from us, like a father who pities his children. The Lord knows that we are made from dust. We will flower but soon wither and fade. But His mercy endures forever, from everlasting to everlasting.  All angelic ministers in heaven and earth bless the Lord and do His pleasure as they proclaim the excellencies of His love in the preaching of the Gospel.

CP201220

Catechesis Notes for the Week —Psalm 102:12-28—A Prayer to Rely Upon the Goodness of the Lord Under Affliction—The Lord does not abandon or forsake the promises He has made to His children, even though He lays affliction on our backs. Sometimes we suffer because of our own sins and bad choices. Sometimes we suffer through no direct fault of our own, but simply because we are part of this fallen world. In every instance, we are called to see our afflictions as an instrument of the Lord through which He intends to draw us closer to Himself, or to teach us the mysteries of His grace that we cannot learn in any other way but through the things under which we suffer. So, a pastoral prayer gives voice to what should be the prayer of every Christian: “Comfort us, O God, with Your Holy Spirit that we may patiently endure our afflictions and acknowledge them as a manifestation of Your fatherly will. Preserve us from faintheartedness and despondency, and help us to seek You, the great physician of our souls.” The second half of Psalm 102 draws us into this understanding of the Christian life, by confessing that the Lord endures forever, and the remembrance of His mercy continues throughout the generations.  He is the One who builds up Zion, the Church. All the nations shall see this. He regards the prayer of the destitute and afflicted. He looks down from the height of His sanctuary to give help to His children. When He weakens our strength or shortens our days upon the earth, He does so for His kind and loving purposes that will serve for our ultimate good. The Lord’s abiding faithfulness to those who belong to Him is expressed at the center of the psalm: “This will be written for the generation to come, that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord” and at the psalm’s conclusion, “You are the same, and your years will have no end. The children of Your servants will continue, and their descendants will be established before You.”  CP201213

Catechesis Notes for the Week —Psalm 102:1-13—A Prayer for Those Weary of Sin — “The 102nd psalm is a psalm of prayer. In it the fathers of old—weary of laws, of sins, and of death—wholeheartedly yearn and call for the kingdom of grace promised in Christ. They ask that God yet again build up Zion and set in place her stones and dust, that He would yet again enter in and let His glory be seen in all kingdoms, that He would rescue His captives from sin and death so that they may come together and thank Him—that is, that they may worship Him in the true Zion—and the Old Testament come to an end.
“For without Christ there is indeed nothing but strength broken in the middle of life and days cut short, that is, a miserable, short, wretched life from which the psalmist is reluctantly removed. But in His kingdom is eternal life, and His time has no end. He is the one who was before He created heaven and earth, and will again change and renew them. Therefore, He is outside of and over all time. His year has no end and there is no dying there. This kingdom we will gladly receive. May such a kingdom, Your kingdom, come! Amen.” From Reading the Psalms with Luther, CPH

CP201206