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Sunday: Living for the Audience of One

Do we live in such a way that reflects that the Lord’s opinion of us is all that matters?  Will it be enough to here those words, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Come and share your master’s happiness”?  Or do we want more than that?  Do we also need the approval of others as well?  Or will we play only to the audience of One?

Personally, I’ve found the the most accurate test for this, to see if we play only to the audience of One, is when we’re falsely accused.  I’ve been going to church long enough to know that in difficult times, I’m supposed to pray.  And most often I do.  I’ll usually switch between praying the abject “why is this happening to me?” prayer and the “protect me, save me” prayer.

But my action rarely stops there.  I don’t just take it up to God in prayer.  I take it up to other people too.  I want God and a bunch of someone elses to understand.  And so, I try to get other people on my side.  I scramble around, trying to get anybody to listen to my side of the story.  Often I’ll paint a picture where my accusers look like the bad guys with the hope that I’d look like the good guy.

Now, contrast that with what David did in our reading last week when he was also falsely accused in 1 Samuel 24:1-9.  David falls from favor because Saul sees him as a threat to his throne.  In response, Saul chases after David with several thousand men.  All the while, Saul’s told that David is “bent on harming” him.  An outright lie.  David then has the opportunity to kill Saul in a cave.  But he only cuts a piece of Saul’s robe and spares Saul’s life.

If we simply look at the story in 1 Samuel we’d know the facts, the events in history that occurred but we wouldn’t know what David was thinking, what he was feeling at the time.  And that’s where the Psalms come in.  It’s believed that David wrote songs, Psalms during this time.  I’ll highlight a couple.

In Psalm 140, up to the first three Selahs from verse 1 to 8, it sounds familiar to us.  They’re “protect me, save me” prayers.  But starting from verse 9, the tone shifts significantly.  Suddenly, David wields prayer less like a shield and more like a sword.  He goes on the offensive in his prayer.  And while this doesn’t sound all that great character-wise, let me put this in perspective.  When I go on the offensive, I try to right the wrongs done to me myself.  I go around trying to set the record straight.  I make the rounds bad mouthing my accusers.  When David goes on the offensive, he goes to the Lord to right the wrongs on his behalf.  It’s not that time healed all wounds for David.  It’s not that David came to the place where we didn’t care if Saul got his in the end.  It’s that David trusted that the Lord would act as the judge and dole out the consequences for the wrong done.

And that goes into the other Psalm, Psalm 56.  We see a lot of the same themes that we saw in Psalm 140, but what we see even more clearly in Psalm 56 is that theme of trusting in the Lord.  In this particular Psalm we see that the opinion that the Lord has of David is sufficient for him.  David lives for the audience of only One.  While word spreads that David is guilty of treason, seeking after the king’s life, David doesn’t feel the compulsion to go around the country on a campaign setting the record straight.  “In God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?”  David only has eyes for the Lord.  David came to the place where all that mattered was what the Lord thought of him and he carried that with him for the rest of his life.

Is what He thinks of you all that matters?  Because it’s true, He is more than enough.  As David later wrote, “Taste and see that the Lord is good” and “Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.”

Sunday: All Our Baals, All Our Ashtoreths

I have a soft spot for people who are pointed out in Sunday School lessons as being the people we’re not supposed to be like.  The Pharisees.  The rich young ruler.  The people of Israel during the time of the judges.  I have a soft spot for them because I feel like they’ve been portrayed unfairly.  We distance ourselves from them to the point where they’re no longer people but examples, props to show us what we’re not supposed to be like.  We can easily point out their faults, but we never take the next step by pausing in reflection to see how we might be similar.

I think that’s what happens when we come across Samuel’s call to the Israelites in 1 Samuel 7:2-6.  We see that the Israelites had Baals and Ashtoreths and we assume that they have once again turned away from the Lord and turned to these other gods, the gods of their surroundings.  But if we take a closer look at the passage, we’ll notice that the Scripture mentions nothing about forgetting or turning away from the Lord.  In fact, what it does say is that publicly, the people of Israel sought after the Lord but at the same time, at home, they had these other gods.

And isn’t that so often the case with us?  Don’t we declare Jesus as our Lord and Savior yet at the same time worship the gods of our surroundings?  Don’t we frequently pursue the desires of Christ yet at the same time pursue the desires of our surroundings, our culture?  Don’t we listen to multiple voices in terms of how we live, not just the voice of Christ?

In this season of my life, I’ve found two gods to be particularly prominent.  And as I pause in reflection I see that these two gods are two gods that are very much at home here in the South Bay.  They are the gods of my surroundings.

One of those gods is the god of consumerism.  The right or need to constantly buy more goods.  A recent example of this is with my family cars.  Our family of four currently owns two cars.  One of them hit the 10 year old mark and so, with that milestone we started talking about what kind of car to get.

But do we need two cars?  To put it to the test, we lent out of our cars to a friend of ours indefinitely just to see if we could hack it with one car.  And it turns out that we could.  The crazy thing is that we didn’t really realize it until we went through this exercise.  We realized that owning two cars isn’t a need but a luxury.  And this tendency to blur the line between luxury and need, this feeling that I need something that’s really a luxury, this need to constantly have more is fueled but this god of my surroundings called consumerism.

Now, I want to be clear that I’m not advocating asceticism.  We don’t have to rid ourselves of all luxury and live a life of abject poverty for the sake of Christ.  Asceticism would just be replacing the god of consumerism with a god of a philosophy of lifestyle not Christ Himself.  Instead, as a follower of Christ, I need to seek the Lord on the matter.  And when I first started thinking about getting a new car, I never once asked the Lord what He wanted.  I just thought that I needed a new car.  What I need is I need to listen to the Lord on the matter, not the god of consumerism.

The other god is the god of what I think would be best for my kids.  The most significant decision that my kids have had a say in, is in where we live.  About a year ago, my family started looking to move.  And we really only had one criterion for future housing: The address had to be in the district lines of the Cupertino Union School District.  The reason being that there’s a school that we really like and want to send our kids to.  It helped that the neighborhoods serviced by the school district are safe.  Most everything else was optional in our search for housing.  I just wanted to provide my kids with a good education and a safe place to live.

The problem was that they were the only voices I was listening to on the matter.  When I was convicted of this, I put the housing search on hold so that I could ask the Lord if He wanted us to move in the first place and what He wanted us to look for in new housing.  And as I prayed and sought the Lord, my criterion for future housing changed.  A good education and a safe place to live became optional.  The only essential thing was the Lord’s calling for us to live in that neighborhood.  When we first found out about the place we ended up moving into, I took my son with me to the property and we prayed asking the Lord, “Are you calling us to this particular neighborhood?”  And we waited for His response.

To put it plainly, in Christ’s words, we serve multiple masters.  We’re listening to multiple voices not just the voice of Christ.  And Jesus was very direct about people like us.

“No servant can serve two masters.  Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.”

Whom will we serve?  We must choose.  We must commit to one.  We can’t go around believing that we can serve two masters because we will hate the one and love the other, or we will be devoted to the one and despise the other.  Will we follow the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone?  Let’s put away our Baals and our Ashtoreths, confess them to the Lord, and recommit ourselves to following Him and Him alone.