Life, Stephen commented tonight, is rather like a pack of cards. When you play a card game such as poker, certain phrases from the game have become so widespread as to have a significance outside the game itself: having a ‘poker face‘ means to have an impassive expression on one’s face, not revealing one’s true feelings (useful since poker is as much about bluff as the value of the cards you hold); ‘keeping your cards close to your chest’ means to keep your intended actions private (whereas literally in a card game, it’s a tactic to avoid letting others see what cards you hold!) So often in life we may complain about the cards we have been dealt, feeling life is treating us unfairly or we keep our cards close to our chest, refusing to let others or God into our lives.

Gen 3:8 reminds us that Adam and Eve hid from God after they had disobeyed Him. We often try to hide from God what we have done, pretending that everything in life is going well or hiding our shame and guilt from God. Luke 22:56-57 reminds us that it is easy to deny God, even if we have previously been so passionate about Him: Peter, when challenged about being one of Jesus’s followers, denied even knowing Him.

A better way than holding our cards close to our chest and hiding from God or than trying to tackle life on our own is to spread out all the cards of our lives before God, rather like Hezekiah did with the threatening letter he received from his enemies (2 Kings 19:14). We can lay all our cards before God, allowing Him access into every area of our lives. Heb 4:13 reminds us, after all, that ‘nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight; everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.’ There is no point hiding anything from God or pretending we can cope with all life deals us on our own. Instead, we should bring our whole lives before God and invite Him to make something of every hand we hold. After all, He can bring good from every situation, turning the most useless of ‘hands’ into something useful and winning. He can make us more than conquerors if we will only let Him in.

Garry spoke this morning on the subject of confrontation. Some people relish confrontation, but the majority of us probably shy away from confrontantion, feeling intimidated and threatened by it. Business gurus tell us many strategies for dealing with confrontation (such as being prepared in advance, choosing carefully the time and the place, not reacting in the heat of the moment, not procrastinating, being prepared to listen to the other person’s needs and allowing them time to respond), but the Bible teaches us much more about this subjuect.

In Is 6:1-7, we see a confrontation between Isaiah and God. God announces things in advance, revealing to mankind the problem sin causes and talking of His solution to sin. He zeroes in to the problem, but always gives people time to respond to His words. Another example of confrontation is between Saul and God in Acts 9:1-9, when God confronts Saul over his murderous persecution of the church and transforms him into the apostle Paul.

God confronts people, but always gives them the choice on how to respond. In Matt 4:18-19, we see Jesus calling his first disciples, who heeded the call, but in Matt 19:21-22, we see an example of someone (the rich young ruler) who decides not to follow Jesus. God wants all people to repent (Acts 17:30-31) and uses us to be His messengers. He confronts us in order to bring us to conversion, but continues to confront us to change us and develop us, challenging us with a calling to service (Isaiah 6:8). We can choose to comply with God’s calling or we can say no.

In sports, the number of players involved is far smaller than the number of spectators; in the UK last year, the average size of a football crowd was 35,822, with only 22 players influencing any game at a particular time, for example. But church is not a spectator sport. We are all called to be involved and to serve God.

God’s general calling is to worship, witness, pray and have fellowship with other believers. But He also calls specific people to different kinds of service (this may change over the years, but what matters is that we do His will in His way and in His timing.)

God has created good works for us to do in advance (Eph 2:10); there is a ‘you-shaped’ job for each one of us to do in God’s service. Michael Card’s song ‘The Poem Of Your Life’ reminds us that God can craft amazing things from our lives. All He requires is our ‘yes’!

Dot-to-dot puzzles are a great way to teach children hand-eye coordination and numbering sequences. By joining the dots, a child draws the outline to a picture which can then be coloured in. It’s a great learning tool that provides hours of fun.

These pictures initially look very confusing, but gradually the picture becomes more defined as more dots are joined together. Life is rather like a dot-to-dot puzzle, I feel. So often, we feel confused about our lives, where we’re heading, what’s happening to us, and we often need the benefit of hindsight (that perfect 20/20 vision!) to see what God has been doing in those periods when it didn’t look like He was doing anything.

One of the purposes of studying the Bible is to try to ‘connect the dots’. We don’t understand Scripture in isolation; Scripture interprets Scripture (particularly true in the case of Ps 110, where the New Testament writers refer to it so frequently to give us further clarity and understanding on the role of Messiah and His willing troops.) In that psalm, we see a variety of dots which the New Testament expound at length, namely that Jesus is:

• Lord (see Phil 2:6-11)
• King (see Rev 19:11)
• the Great High Priest (see Heb 4:14-10:18)
• the Judge (see Acts 17:31)

We also see from the psalm something of our role as God’s servants (‘willing troops’, called to carry on the Father’s mission (see Matt 28:18-20), holding out the message of reconciliation as God’s ambassadors). It’s good to have the dots connected for us!

In classical antiquity, an oracle was a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions of the future, inspired by the gods. Later, an oracle became associated with the words such people gave; the word in English comes from the Latin ‘orare’, to say.

It is good for us to acknowledge wisdom and counsel, but the Bible makes it plain that the words of God, spoken by God, are powerful beyond any human words. God spoke creation into being (Genesis 1); Ps 33:6 and 9 say, ‘By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth… For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.’  Jesus is referred to as ‘the Word’ (Jn 1:1); Heb 1:1-2 says ‘In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.’ We need to pay careful attention to all God says.

In Ps 110, we are twice told that God speaks: Ps 110:1 (‘The LORD says to my Lord’) and Ps 110:4 (‘the Lord has sworn and will not change his mind.’) Our responsibility as God’s people is to have ears that hear, rather like the character in Ezra Pound’s poem who wishes to know everything: ‘I guzzle with outstretched ears’. Listening to God is no easy task (it is all too easy to be like the people in Isaiah’s prophecy, ‘ever hearing, but never understanding.’ (Is 6:9)), but God is looking for people who will ponder and weigh all He says and has said. Ps 110 reminds us that God is a God who speaks, a God who wishes to communicate with us. Jesus frequently spoke about having ears that hear (Matt 11:15, Matt 13:9, 43; Mark 4:9, 23; Luke 6:47), about hearing leading to action (see Matt 7:24-27). The question is not so much ‘does God speak?’ as ‘are we listening, really listening?’ (Matt 11:15, The Message)

There were few things I liked about maths when I was at school, but one of the things I found relatively easy to grasp was the idea of symbols. Mathematical symbols to me represented a form of shorthand. = was a very easy way of saying ‘equals to’. x wasn’t an alegebraic letter to me, but a way of saying ‘multiplied by’. I had no problem learning these symbols, and so came to understand > (greater than) and < (less than) as a way of shorthand that was extremely useful.

(This led to complications with textspeak as I grew older, however, as I<3 was read as ‘1 less than 3’ which was so obvious as to leave me frowning over the message, only to be told by my son that the <3 was meant to be looked at at an angle to represent a love heart, and simply meant ‘I love you’. Clearly, mathematical symbols were not part of that language!)

In terms of symbols, however J>M. In our Bible studies on the Messianic Psalms, we’ve been looking at Psalm 110, and one of the truths there is that the Messiah would be ‘a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek’. (Ps 110:4) Melchizedek is one of those Old Testament characters who appears briefly (Genesis 14) and then disappears, but as this psalm makes clear, and the writer to the Hebrews expounds at some length, Melchizedek is a type of Christ, a foreshadow of the Messiah who would not only be king but an eternal priest. Once again, the Jews were familiar with the idea of a Messiah who would be king and rule in justice and with truth, but the Levitical priesthood was so familiar to them that the idea of a priest coming from the tribe of Judah (as Jesus did) would have been unthinkable (see also 2 Chron 26). Hebrews 7 makes it plain, however, that this reference from Ps 110 illustrates the truth that the Messiah really is a priest and that this superior priesthood paves the way for our reconciliation to God. Jesus is the guarantor of a better covenant (Heb 7:22), establishing a permanent, eternal priesthood. (Heb 7:23-25) His sinlessness meant there was no need for endless sacrifices: ‘But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool.’ (Heb 10:12-13, see also Heb 7:27 & Ps 110:1).

There are some who feel that Melchizedek represents a theophany, a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ on earth. What is definite is that the Messiah’s role as priest, interceding before God (Heb 7:25) and offering that perfect sacrifice (Heb 10:9-10), gives us confidence to approach God (Heb 4:16) and ultimately provides the basis for a better hope (Heb 7:19).

In our Bible studies, we have been looking at Messianic Psalms, and this week turned our attention to Psalm 110, the most quoted psalm in the whole of the New Testament (one of those Bible facts which tend to be more obscure than we might otherwise think!) It is quoted 8 times and alluded to even more; as Eugene Peterson says, ‘No other psalm comes close. The community of first-century Christians pondered, discussed, memorized and meditated on Psalm 110. When they opened their prayer book, the Psalms, the prayer that they were drawn to and that shaped their common life was Psalm 110.’ (‘Where Your Treasure Is’, P 37)

One reason that the psalm was so important to early Christians is its reference to the divine nature of the Messiah. Ps 110:1 (‘the LORD says to my Lord’, where the first reference is to Yahweh, a clear pointer that this is God speaking with all the creative force His words always bring) points us to a Messiah who is more than a human descendant of David; He too is Lord (Adonai). Jesus asked the Pharisees to interpret this verse (Matthew 22:44; Mark 12:36; Luke 20:42, 43), and their failure to respond to His question reminds us that whilst they accepted David’s authorship of the psalm, its inspiration by God and its references to the Messiah, they could not make the next logical step to admitting that the Messiah would be both divine as well as human. The nature of Christ – fully God and fully man – continues to be a major stumbling-block for people today, with most cults going astray at this point, and as always, we need to be clear about the identity of Jesus as this is a foundational truth at the heart of the gospel.

Ps 110 makes it plain that the Messiah would be a king, ruling in the midst of enemies, holding out a royal sceptre, judging and reigning with truth, even if we wait for the ultimate demonstration of that (see also 1 Cor 15:20-29). His position at the right hand of God is assured (Ps 110:1), a view echoed in the New Testament (Eph 1:20, Heb 8:1, Col 3:1, 1 Pet 3:22, Heb 1:3). The psalm celebrates the exaltation of Christ in His resurrection and ascension (see Acts 2:29-36), reminding us that the Messiah will reign forever, demonstrating also an eternal priesthood which will never end. The fact that the Messiah is King forever should fill us with hope and courage, even as we presently wait for his enemies to be made his footstool. We are so often in a hurry for this, but Christ shows no impatience. We too need to learn to wait patiently for God, secure in His sovereignty.