In honour of Father’s Day last Sunday, all this week we’re looking at Christian parenting. But not just for parents – for everyone. Our text is Psalm 78:1-8, which is the introduction to a very long Psalm that recites the great deeds of God in Israel’s history. But the introduction itself tells us a lot about teaching future generations about God. We’re using John Piper’s six key ideas as our “window” into the Psalm:

(1) God, the central reality in our lives, (2) has given us a fixed deposit of his truth (3) which we are to teach (4) so that our children might know that truth (5) and therefore put their trust in God (6) enabling them to live lives of loyal obedience.

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Yesterday was Father’s Day in Australia. Now to those of you who aren’t fathers, or don’t have children, or don’t get on with your father, or get sick of churches banging on about families to the exclusion of people who are single… don’t tune out! Because this week – yes, in honour of Father’s Day – we’re looking at Christian parenting from the perspective of everyone in a community of believers. Not just parents.

It takes a church

There’s a proverb that says: it takes a village to raise a child. But it takes an arsonist to raze a village. I think the second bit wasn’t original. But the first part is often cited as a truth that contemporary, Western society has overlooked in our increasingly disconnected, isolated family units. Hilary Clinton famously used it as the title for a book, looking at the ways in which society helps parents raise children. Many Christian conservatives in the US took issue with the book, firing back that it doesn’t take a village to raise a child, it takes a family to raise a child.

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So far in Psalm 99 we’ve seen that God is holy because he is sovereign over all peoples.  Yesterday, we were reminded that he is holy because he loves justice. Today, we look at the third aspect of God’s holiness provided by this psalm – his work in salvation.

In vv6-7 we see a few people in Israel’s history who prayed to God on behalf of the people and God acted to save them:

These verses recall three figures from Israel’s history who prayed on behalf of Israel – asking God to forgive their sin:

The Israelites rebelled while Moses was up on the mountain getting the 10 commandments (Exodus 32). They melted down their gold into a calf in order to create an idol for themselves. God, understandably, was angry with them. What happened? Moses interceded for the Israelites. And God forgave.

Some time later, Korah and 250 other men rebelled against Moses and Aaron’s leadership (Numbers 16), which was in effect a rebellion against God himself. God caused an earthquake to swallow them up. This led the rest of the Israelites to be angry with Moses and Aaron, and God sent a plague on them, in which 14,700 people died. But at the height of the plague, Aaron made a sacrifice of atonement, and interceded for the people. And God forgave.

A few centuries later, Israel was in the Promised Land. They had come under heavy oppression by the Philistines, as a punishment for their idolatry (1 Samuel 7). So they repented of their idolatry, and turned back to God and his ‘statutes and decrees’. Samuel interceded. And God forgave, delivering them from the Philistines.

All this is why the Psalm says in verse 8:

Just as God was a forgiving God to Israel, so he is a forgiving God to us. We have sinned. But Christ has interceded for us. And God has forgiven us, through the completed work of Jesus. That’s what we celebrate the most as we gather together as God’s people: the God of mercy and forgiveness.

However, the last part of v8 seems a bit jarring in the context of God’s gracious salvation and forgiveness:

Though you punished their misdeeds? Isn’t this part of the Psalm celebrating forgiveness? But this phrase is significant. The theme of the psalm is ‘the holiness of God’ – so when God acts in salvation, he must also uphold his justice if he is indeed to remain holy. God’s mercy and justice go hand in hand – he can’t just overlook sin, or his holiness would be compromised.

The Apostle Paul put it this way:

God has forgiven us. But he has also punished our misdeeds. In some ways, part of the punishment is the temporal consequences of sin. They don’t just disappear when God forgives. But the eternal consequences have been dealt with in Christ. By his sacrifice, our misdeeds have been punished, so that God can forgive us while remaining just and holy.

Spend some time in prayer praising our holy, forgiving God, and thanking him for the sacrifice he provided in Jesus.

(By the way, you don’t have to go to his holy mountain in Israel. Remember, you are now the location of God’s temple, in which he dwells by his Holy Spirit.)

We saw yesterday that God is holy because he is sovereign over all peoples. But it’s not as some kind of egocentric despot. He is holy also because in his sovereignty, he establishes justice:

This is the second reason God is holy – he loves justice, and establishes it throughout the earth.

(A false balance? No, it’s not when the ATM screws up. Dishonest shopkeepers would cheat people by using a second set of weights, hollowed out. They wouldn’t do it to the educated or well-connected; only to the powerless, the poor. To  those who wouldn’t know they’d been cheated, or if they did, wouldn’t have the power to demand justice.)

God loves justice. And this doesn’t just relate to Israel in the Old Testament, or to us in the new, but includes all people everywhere.

Why does God love justice? Why does he delight in seeing all people act in fairness and equity? Because when he sees justice in the world, he sees the image of himself – however tarnished by sin – reflected back. In fact, wherever justice exists – even when executed by people still in rebellion to him – it is the work of God.

This is called ‘common grace’, called so because it is given to all. It is not ‘saving grace’, but is the same grace that makes the sun come up every day on believers and unbelievers, and sends rain to the just and the unjust (Matt 5:45). It is what keeps society from disintegrating into anarchy – holding the world back from premature self-destruction. It’s a testimony to all people of the creative and sustaining work of God. God is holy because he rules the whole world with justice.

And yet the second half of the verse says God has done what is just and right ‘in Jacob’. (Jacob is another way of referring to his people Israel, as Jacob was the father of the twelve sons who formed the twelve  tribes – and later God changed Jacob’s name to Israel). This means that the main focus of God’s justice is in ‘Jacob’ – God’s justice is most obviously evident in his dealings with Israel. His plan was that all nations would see his justice reflected in his protection of Israel from her enemies; in his blessing her with prosperity; and in her obedience to his Law.

Particularly in this last aspect, Israel’s legal system given to Moses on Mt Sinai was to be a witness to the surrounding nations. There are many laws similar to those that existed in these other nations. But even though many of the laws may have been familiar, there is a number which contain significant – often shocking – differences to those of the nations around. Many of these show a concern for the poor, the oppressed, the slave, and the foreigner that was ‘ahead of its time’. For example:

Our society would consider these quite normal since our legal system grew out of Jewish and then Christian law. But at the time, this concern Israel was to show for the weak and oppressed – precisely because God had shown them concern when they were weak and oppressed – was a shining witness to the justice of God.

If we bring this now into the New Testament – our time – how does God demonstrate his justice in the world? Through us. Just like he did through Israel. First and foremost this is through what he has done for us in Christ. The fact that God has offered us a way of salvation (the gospel) demonstrates his justice – his righteousness – to the world through us. That alone should be sufficient witness, and this is our primary testimony and mission.

But just as God expected Israel’s society to reflect his justice in the world, he expects Christians to do likewise. Our concern for the poor, our concern for the outcast, the weak, the foreigner, the drug-addict… should testify to God’s concern for them.

In worshipping God, it’s empty worship indeed to say ‘you are holy, because you love justice’, unless our lives demonstrate that we, too, love justice. How much do we stand up for the poor, the oppressed, the weak in society?

Our God is a God of justice. For this, we should worship him, as the psalm goes on to say:

What is God’s footstool? The Old Testament refers to various things as God’s footstool: the ark, Jerusalem, the earth! I think they all are in view here. You see, the point is that whether it is in God’s people (salvation), or through God’s people (Christian witness), or throughout the whole earth (common grace), God works to establish justice. Because he is holy.

Spend some time in worship now, praising God for his love of justice, and committing yourself to being like your Father in heaven:

Welcome to the second installment of “Psalm putty”, which we’ll be doing in the gaps between series. Next Monday, guest writer Rev Dr. Marc Rader will begin a series in the book of Philippians. But for the rest of this week, we’re focusing on Psalm 99. This Psalm has a very simple message: God is holy: and our response to his holiness should be worship.

God is holy. But what does that actually mean? We often reduce the concept of holiness just to mean ‘moral perfection’ or ‘purity’. But it means far more than that. At it’s most basic, holiness is about separation; about distinction. The holiness of God refers to his ‘otherness’ – what theologians call ‘transcendence’. That is, God is holy because he is not like us. He exists outside our limits of time and space. He goes infinitely beyond our own understanding and capabilities. He is complete within himself, lacking nothing. He is holy.

Psalm 99 looks at three aspects of  God’s holiness – which give us three reasons to worship. Over the coming three days, I pray you’ll be inspired to worship in response to our holy God.

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We finished our series through 1 Samuel 8-17 yesterday. Next week we’ll start something new. For today, a very brief meditation on Psalm 96, which connects in some way with the message of the David and Goliath story. It’s all about proclaiming God’s name – God’s honour and reputation – to the world, in light of what he has done for us.

Read Psalm 96 now.

Sometimes I find it helpful to “update” psalms as a way of praying them myself. Not in terms of the imagery, but in terms of what has happened since then in salvation history – you know, Jesus, Easter, the Holy Spirit and all that…

Here’s a New Testament mediation on Psalm 96. Use it to spark your own prayers:

Yesterday we began our quick look at Psalm 24, an entrance liturgy which Israel sang as she entered God’s presence. We, too, can use it to focus our minds on the God in whose presence we always are. He is firstly the Creator God, who is worthy of worship because he created the world, and everything in it (v1-2).

Drawing near to the God who is holy

The second part of the psalm begins in verse 3. It functions as a “song of ascent” in which worshippers ascend Zion, God’s holy mountain. It’s in the form of a ritual question-and-answer between worshippers and priest, and talks of the requirements of entering into God’s presence.

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