Tonight we will begin our 20-week series through the Psalms enti­tled, “Reflec­tions:  See­ing Our­selves and Our Sav­ior in the Psalms.”  We will begin by look­ing at the great con­trast between the right­eous in Psalm 1.  The right­eous is depicted as a firmly rooted tree, while the wicked is depicted as chaff blown away by the wind.  How do you know which you are?  It all depends on where you set your delight.  We hope to see you this evening at 5 pm!

This Sun­day we will begin our new series on the Psalms called, “Reflec­tions:  See­ing Our­selves and Our Sav­ior in the Psalms.”  In this 20-week series, we will exam­ine selected Psalms from each of the five books in the Psalms.  In case you were unaware, the Psalms are divided into five books:   1–41, 42–72, 73–89, 90–106, and 107–150.

There are many good resources avail­able on the Psalms.  Some of these resources are specif­i­cally about the Psalms, oth­ers are about wis­dom lit­er­a­ture in gen­eral, and still oth­ers include mate­r­ial on the entire Old Tes­ta­ment or the entire Bible.  I would encour­age you to lis­ten to or read through some of these as we study Psalms together for the next three months:

1. The Mes­sage of the Old Tes­ta­ment:  Promises Made by Mark Dever.  Dever has a chap­ter on each book of the Old Tes­ta­ment, and he does an excel­lent job with big-picture stud­ies like this one.

2. Mark Dever’s ser­mon, “The Mes­sage of the Psalms:  Wis­dom for Spir­i­tual Peo­ple.”  This is the mes­sage the chap­ter is based on (if you don’t want to buy the book or don’t have time to read the chapter).

3. Reflec­tions on the Psalms by C.S. Lewis.

4. Book 15 and 16 of the Tyn­dale Old Tes­ta­ment Com­men­tary (TOTC) Series.  Both are writ­ten by Derek Kid­ner and will serve as my pri­mary ref­er­ences for this series.

5. John Piper’s ser­mon series, “Think­ing and feel­ing with God.”

6. Redeemer Pres­by­ter­ian Church’s arti­cle, “Pray­ing the Psalms.”

Hope­fully these resources will help you under­stand and apply the Psalms more deeply as we preach through them this sum­mer.   Enjoy!

Chap­ter eight of Liv­ing the Cross Cen­tered Life focuses on the worst tor­ment Jesus expe­ri­enced:  bear­ing the full wrath of God for sins he did not com­mit and being for­saken by God as a result.  This agony far exceeded any­thing Jesus expe­ri­enced in his betrayal, arrest, scourg­ing, and cru­ci­fix­ion.  But, as Mahaney notes, “It isn’t the nails that keep him there [on the cross].  What keeps Him there is what placed Him there – His pas­sion to do the will of His Father, and His love for sin­ners like you and me” (90).

In the midst of expe­ri­enc­ing the full wrath of God poured out on him and the com­plete and total rejec­tion of the Father, Jesus cries out, “My God, my God!  Why have you for­saken me?”  After three years of being rejected by reli­gious lead­ers and then even by his own dis­ci­ples, Jesus was famil­iar with rejec­tion and aban­don­ment.  Still, this rejec­tion, this aban­don­ment was far worse.  Yet he chose to be rejected so that you and I and every­one who trusts in him would be forgiven.

Mahaney con­cludes with this chal­lenge:  “Please don’t ever grow over­fa­mil­iar with for­give­ness.  What a mir­a­cle it is!  What a gift from God!”  Amen.  And what a reminder the week after Easter.  Here are a few ques­tions to help you apply this chap­ter to your life:

1. Have you ever felt aban­doned or com­pletely alone?  If so, when?  If not, what do you believe has kept you from ever feel­ing that way?

2. John Stott has noted, “Until you see the cross as that which is done by you, you will never appre­ci­ate that it is done for you.”  What does he mean?  How does under­stand­ing our role in the Savior’s death cause us to appre­ci­ate the results of the Savior’s death?

3. Do you tend to view for­give­ness as a costly choice or as a feel­ing?  On what do you base your answer?

4. Do you believe you have become overly famil­iar with God’s for­give­ness?  How does this play out in your life?

5. What can you do to grow in appre­ci­a­tion for Christ’s costly death and the for­give­ness his work on the cross earned for you?

Next week we will con­sider the ninth chap­ter, “What God Under­stands: His Pres­ence in Our Suffering.”

Last week, New Life was granted full mem­ber­ship in the Acts 29 Net­work!  Mem­ber­ship in Acts 29 comes with lots of ben­e­fits, includ­ing ongo­ing train­ing, account­abil­ity, and net­work­ing for our pas­tors, part­ner­ship with other church-planting churches, dis­counts at Acts 29 events and Re:Train, and much more.

You can view our church pro­file on the Acts 29 site here, and read the write-up Acts 29 did on me and our church here.

If you know of any­one look­ing for a church home, make sure to send them this link.  If no Acts 29 affil­i­ated churches are in the area, you can also have them search the 9 Marks site for churches that agree with 9 Marks Mis­sion State­ment and the T4G Affir­ma­tions and Denials.

Praise God for what he has done at New Life and for him allow­ing us to be a part of such a  great net­work of churches!

While Christ­mas gets the most atten­tion, Easter is actu­ally the biggest cel­e­bra­tion of the year for Chris­t­ian believ­ers.  While we remem­ber and cel­e­brate Jesus of Nazareth’s res­ur­rec­tion from the dead every day, Easter Sun­day is a spe­cial time for us to remem­ber his sac­ri­fice on our behalf for our sins and his vic­tory over the grave.

If you’ve never vis­ited New Life (or maybe any Chris­t­ian church before), we hope you will join us tonight.  We will study the Old and New Tes­ta­ment to find out why Jesus’ death and res­ur­rec­tion were nec­es­sary for us to be rec­on­ciled to God.  You can find direc­tions to the build­ing here, and a lit­tle about what you can expect when you come here.  You can even watch a video pre­view of the ser­mon before you come.  We hope to see you at 5 pm!