It is fitting to thank the LORD, and to sing praises to your name, O sovereign One! It is fitting to proclaim your loyal love in the morning, and your faithfulness during the night, to the accompaniment of a ten-stringed instrument and a lyre, to the accompaniment of the meditative tone of the harp. For you, O LORD, have made me happy by your work. I will sing for joy because of what you have done. How great are your works, O LORD! Your plans are very intricate! The spiritually insensitive do not recognize this; the fool does not understand this. When the wicked sprout up like grass, and all the evildoers glisten, it is so that they may be annihilated. But you, O LORD, reign forever! (Psa 92:1-8)

Do I need to mention that there is a lot of crap in the world? You noticed, huh? It’s not just the big stuff, ya know, the wars, disease, killing, hatred, etc. There’s the little, constantly irritating stuff, too. Things break just when you most need them to work. Traffic is worst right when you need to get somewhere fast. Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, the big shark shows up. Sheesh. All that crap.

King David had it all around him, too. Big crap. Guys trying to kill him and such. Sometimes in the Psalms David just moans and groans about how bad it is. But this Psalm, number 92 in case you missed it, is different. This is the mature David, I think. The David who had been-there-done-that and seen, yes SEEN WITH HIS OWN TWO EYES, just how GREAT God’s deliverance can be. Yep.

So - finally David gets it.

We can bitch and moan about all the crap, or…

We can jump for Joy at God’s handiwork. How about that? Can you do that? I’ll tell ya, it takes practice, and I don’t say I’m as good as David is here in this Psalm. So I need to read things like this from time to time to remind myself.

Joy! After all that crap. Seems impossible, except when you realize, through faith, through experience, through the witness of others, that it ALL went according to plan and served God’s purposes. That type of Joy is possible when we focus our attention on what God has done, is doing, and is going to be doing rather than focusing in on the nit-picky crap of existence in a fallen world.

Now - notice that part about “intricate” plans of God. We don’t usually see the solution until God has entered in and worked His plan to completion. We usually can’t see how all those nasty brutes that generate all that crap can POSSIBLY be part of God’s plan. But not to worry. God sometimes lets the wicked run free for a while just to show that He can handle it even when it looks like nothing but a bunch of crap. Yep.

So the thing to remember is that when God does bring deliverance and knocks the crap out of the nasty brutes, pick up your harp, do a little dance, sing a song of Joy to show God that you saw what He did. And that it is appreciated.

And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. (Luke 6:31)

Ahhh - the Golden Rule. If people would just live by that then the world would be sooo much better. Don’t ya think? Sure. You wouldn’t want someone to steal from you, so don’t steal from them, etc.

But - there is a subtlety here that needs understanding first. What I want, desire, need is not necessarily the same as you. For you to just do for me what you want done for you can actually be quite irritating to me. I like to sit at a sidewalk café, sipping coffe, and thinking about stuff. From time to time someone will see me sitting there apparently doing nothing with no one to talk to and assume I must be lonely and in need of conversation. So, they want to chat me up a bit, ya know. I find that very irritating. I didn’t really want or need to talk to them and their attempt at conversation is an unwanted distraction. They incorrectly projected their own desires and needs onto me and acted in what they thought was a friendly manner.

That’s the subtlety here in the Golden Rule. If you are filled with “self” and see everybody else in terms of yourself you cannot truly live by this rule. It’s not truly love for the other person; it’s love of oneself projected onto somebody else. To truly love means to understand that the other is an individual and may have very different desires and needs than our self’s desires and needs. This means we have to get to know and understand the other as an individual first. That can be quite difficult. The self-centered nature of humans is such that we tend to assume that everyone is somehow like me - otherwise they are probably not OK and need me to make them like me. That’s irritating, isn’t it? That self tends to think it is loving the other when it is really loving the self.

When we look at what Jesus did for us we see something different. He did not need us to die to remove His sin. Thus Jesus was not acting out His own need by projecting it onto us. We needed to have propitiation for our sin and Jesus responded to that need even though it meant His death. To walk in His footsteps to the cross is to recognize the true needs of others and seek to fill that need, even if it is not something we would want and even if it may cost us something dear.

There are some variations on the Golden Rule that people are more likely to live by today. The typical one seems to be “do what you want so long as you don’t harm someone else.” Apart from the failure in that statement to take into account moral absolutes, this also requires an understanding of the other’s need. You may act in a way that you think is not harmful and end up harming the other person unintentionally. There are many examples of this. One example might be that you drink wine and have no problem with alcohol, so you give wine to your guest unaware of his alcoholism. So, it’s not just a matter of “do no harm” - you have to understand what actually harms the other person first and that requries more than concern about the self. The self-centered basis of this alternate to the Golden Rule creates a presumption that self-desires are all important. It really is the attitude that I won’t do something bad to you so that you won’t do something bad to me. That is not the level of love that Jesus calls us to.

Notice also how it is essentially passive whereas the teaching and life of Jesus is active. The teaching of Jesus requires action - “DO unto others” - not just “do not” in order to avoid harm. We who follow Jesus are required to act FOR the benefit of others not just avoid their harm while we enjoy life. Love as an active principle of compassion and self-denial, not an act of self-preservation, is what Jesus commands us to do. That is, after all, what God did. “God so loved the world that He gave…” God’s love for us is that He did not sit back and just “do no harm” but rather intervened directly to create good for us.

God’s direct intervention was to come into the world as the Son - Jesus, and then offer His own life for us. Jesus put God on display in physical form so that we might know Him directly. We see the nature of God’s love for us in the actions of Jesus. He poured out His life so that we might live. That is the direct example of what love means to God and is the model for what we must do.

What usually holds us back from this pouring out for others is our own fear of losing the self. If I do all for others, then what is left for me? That is the stumblingblock in the lives of many saints. We understand we need to love, but cannot do so out of a fear that there will be nothing left. That ultimately leads to the rationalization that reduces the love expressed in the Golden Rule to simply helping others - being kind, genourous, etc, but not really all the way to self-sacrifice. Remember that without the loss of self-centeredness there can be no true compassion for others needs. It won’t work to go half-way. Are we then to just live in misery so that others can benefit? That can become a perverse understanding of the life of service to others. One where we revel in our own misery but proud of the fact that we are loving others. Surely God does not want that, so, what is it that we are to do?

This is where faith comes into the picture. Jesus gave up His life, but with the expectation of ressurrection. His faith was that pouring Himself out completely He would be refilled by the power of God. That is the model for us, and the hope that we have that drives us to love unconditionally and sacrificially. We must have faith that God will continuously refill us so that we can continue to pour out those blessings to others. With that hope, built on our faith in God’s provision, we can be the means of filling the need for love of others.

But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.  (Php 4:19)

For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king. (1Sa 15:23)

Witchcraft! Yikes! EEEK! Hiss, boo. Nasty. WE would NEVER do that.

Oh - wait. I found something interesting:

Since the 13th century the word “witch” has come more and more to denote a woman who has formed a compact with the Devil or with evil spirits, by whose aid she is able to cause all sorts of injury to living beings and to things. The term “witchcraft” means in modern English the arts and practices of such women. Since the ideas we attach to “witch” and “witchcraft” were unknown in Bible times, the words have no right place in our English Bible, and this has been recognized to some extent but not completely by the Revisers of 1884.

That’s from the ISBE article on “Witch;Witchcraft” and according to these scholars the Bible doesn’t actually talk about what we today call “witchcraft.” Do you believe that? Hmmm. I’m not so sure, but they are a bunch of scholars and probably have a good point. What they are really getting at is that when the Old Testament writers talk about “witches” and “sorcerers” and such it is really using Hebrew words that refer to various forms of “divination” and the modern translations usually discard the word “witchcraft” for that reason. For example, the NET Bible (a very recent translation) has this:

For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and presumption is like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has rejected you as king.”  (1Sa 15:23)

So, I checked the commentaries and lexicons I have to see what some other “real smart dudes” had to say and it seems they are all in agreement. OK. Fine. Now what about “divination” and why is this such a bad thing? For that, it’s best to go back to Deuteronomy chapter 18.

There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. (Deu 18:10-11)

So, it’s not just “witches” that are to be avoided but any form of divination, no matter what means is used. In Manners & Customs of the Bible, I found this:

The word divination (Hebrew kosem kesamim, “divining divinations”) may here be taken as a generic term, of which the seven terms following represent the species or types. This might be clearly shown in the KJV by a slight change in the punctuation, and an omission of the word or, which was supplied by the translators; e.g., “that useth divination: an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch,” etc.

By divination, as the term is used in the text, we understand an attempt to penetrate the mysteries of the future by using magical arts, or superstitious incantations, or by the arbitrary interpretation of natural signs. Its practice was prevalent in the times of Moses among all idolatrous nations, as it is even today. Even in our own Christian land, there is much of this going on at the present time.

Ahhh… Makes sense doesn’t it? No? Well, try this then…

Man is always seeking to preserve his own well-being or improve his lot in life and one way of doing that is to get some inside information on the future. If you know what is going to happen, you can better prepare for it and thus avoid calamity and hardship. You can avoid that storm that is coming, or that financial crash, or maybe win a big war if you know what your enemy is up to. So, it is common practice in every society on earth in every generation to practice some form of “fortune telling.” It goes on even to this day.

Today we are much more clever about it, of course. We don’t usually try to read the future in tea leaves or the entrails of an animal. We usually consider “omens” to be just superstition and such and are much, much too rational for all that nonsense. No, we have much better means today. Everyday people pick up the newspaper or turn on the TV and get their “omens” from those sources. Ya know - all the sensationalist stuff about  things that are a real danger to you? The prognostication about what is going to be happening soon if people don’t change? And I don’t mean the Astrology pages either. I see stuff all the time about how if you do this or do that you can increase your chances of success by 20%, 30%, 80%, etc. All those stories of people getting killed is an “omen” of the for-sure moral decay in society. Readers of the news are not just being entertained by what is going on in the world. They are looking for some warning about what might happen next. Should I live in this neighborhood? Should I refinance my home? Should I invest in real estate or pork bellies? People are staring at those stock market charts in the business section in much the same way that the ancient people stared at the liver of a chicken. Maybe there is a discernible trend there if I just squint my eyes a bit…

So what’s wrong with that?

What’s wrong with it is when all the prognosticating and forecasting and future planning becomes the means by which man seeks to control his own destiny without regard to God’s will. It is man rebelling against God by saying, in effect, we will figure it out all by ourselves and don’t need any Deity to tell us what to do. And, even if God wants to do something else, we will ignore that and just hear what we want to hear because it suits our own desires.

That’s what.

And, that’s what Deuteronomy is warning about. That’s what cost Saul his kingship. Ahh, you say. So we are just to walk blindly into the future like a bunch of idiots? Nope. It’s like this:

The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken; (Deu 18:15)

We don’t need all of those various forms of divination to know what we need to prepare for. God cares for us and will send us the knowledge we need when we need it. We are to wait for His guidance and follow His instruction. If we go off trying to spy out the future with our silly little forms of divination we are bound to get it wrong anyway. So, we wait for God to lead and until we hear from Him we just keep going along as He has already told us to do. Being anxious about the future such that we are constantly looking for another source of information about the future is a lack of faith. It puts our own efforts on a level with God.

The difference here is one of attitude. Those who fret and fear are just as bad as those that plan and scheme. It’s all about the little ol’ “me” having to do it all by myself because I am worried about my future. Seeking signs of the future can easily become an obsession, even for those who claim to trust God. We don’t need to be running around worried about it. When God wants us to know, He will let us know.

When we do get a sure word from God we must take it seriously. The tendency is to get so stuck on what we want that we ignore the word God sends us. That is where the “rebellion” and “presumption” sets in and pretty soon we find we are going downhill really fast with no way to stop. Fortunately, God is merciful and if we turn back to Him there is always a solution available, albeit usually with a cost. So, it’s better to wait patiently on God in the first place, don’t you think?

Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. (Jas 4:13-15)

This word from the epistle of James spells it out for us. We live according to God’s will, not our own, and at each step of the journey in life we trust in His leading. With this attitude eventually comes a sense of peace. We don’t have to worry and fret over the future because God has given us His promises to lead us by the Spirit. What we need to do is be prepared at any time to hearken to that leading and follow it. If you try to figure it all out by yourself, or if you don’t listen but rebel against the leading God is giving you, then you are just like someone practicing “witchcraft” and “idolatry.”

And, you wouldn’t want to be doing that, now would you?