Musings

Recently, I was reading Psalm 8 and I came to this verse.

“Through the praise of children and infants

you have established a stronghold against your enemies,” (NIV)

Immediately I realised that Jesus had used it in the passage below.

Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. And He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’ ”

Then the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them. But when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that He did, and the children crying out in the temple and saying, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant and said to Him, “Do You hear what these are saying?”

And Jesus said to them, “Yes. Have you never read,

‘Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants

You have perfected praise’? ”

Jesus points out two prophecies in passage above. The first prophecy comes from the the book of Jeremiah the second is the one from psalm 8. When I read Jeremiah I expect prophecy because, after all he was a prophet. When I read the psalms I look for different things like encouragement or praising points. I do not think of it as prophetic. I was forced to reconsider, my reading practice, especially when reading Psalm 22. This psalm, predicts the crucifixion right down to the soldiers casting lots for Jesus' clothes.

The Bible is about Jesus and we should read it, expecting to see Him and His story in every page. My intention now, is to read the Bible more expectantly and carefully. Finally,I never cease to be amazed at how specific the prophecies about Jesus are in the Bible.

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Musing number 2

When Jesus offered advice on prayer, to the people of his day, he said: Matthew 6:6 (NKJV) “But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.” To us that will make sense, because we have many rooms in our homes. In Jesus’ time the houses only had one room. This is seen in Jesus’ statement in Matthew 5:15 (NKJV) ‘Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.’ To give light to everyone in the house, the house will have only one room. So what room is Jesus talking about? He is talking about us entering a room in our mind, imagination or thinking, that corresponds to the “Temple not made with hands” that Jesus promised in Mark 14:58. We may be in a crowd, but we can sneak in where nobody sees or hears. Below is a poem I discovered in one my readings.

There is a viewless, cloistered room,

As high as heaven, as fair as day,

Where, though my feet may join the throng,

My soul can enter in and pray.

One harkening, even, cannot know,

When I have crossed the threshold o’er;

But He alone, Who hears my prayer,

Has heard the shutting of the door.

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Musings

In this post Easter time, one of the great verses of the bible to remember is Mark 14:58 (NKJV) “We heard Him say, ‘I will destroy this temple made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands’.

Jesus is very specific about the timeframe. “Within three days”. Therefore three days after the crucifixion we had a new temple. So at the time when the the disciples had found the empty tomb, this new temple had been built ‘without hands’.

This is terrific encouragement to you and I, because it is a temple that we can enter as we think and ponder. Now we can worship without a building or priest or ritual. It is a temple that we can enter where ever we are. Brother Lawrence wrote “for being with God is to be always at church; we make an area in our hearts wherein to retire from time to time, to converse with him. This is meekness, humility and love. Everyone is capable of such familiar conversation with God, some more, some less: He knows what we can do.” The challenge for us is to make a temple, within us and our imagination for the Holy Spirit.

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Musings

Prophecy and the Psalms

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