The church under God's reign
“The LORD reigns, let the peoples tremble; He is enthroned above the cherubim, let the earth shake! The LORD is great in Zion, And He is exalted above all the peoples. Let them praise Your great and awesome name; Holy is He. The strength of the King loves justice; You have established equity; You have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob. Exalt the LORD our God And worship at His footstool; Holy is He. Moses and Aaron were among His priests, And Samuel was among those who called on His name; They called upon the LORD and He answered them. He spoke to them in the pillar of cloud; They kept His testimonies And the statute that He gave them. O LORD our God, You answered them; You were a forgiving God to them, And yet an avenger of their evil deeds. Exalt the LORD our God And worship at His holy hill, For holy is the LORD our God.” (Psalms 99)
At a Morning Prayer meeting, I meditated on Psalms 126:5-6: “Those who sow in tears shall reap with joyful shouting. He who goes to and fro weeping, carrying his bag of seed, Shall indeed come again with a shout of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.” When the Israelites were captivated in Babylonia, they shed tears and struggled to keep their faith. At that time, God gave them the grace of salvation and brought them back to Jerusalem. God gave the Israelites the gift of the joy of salvation. Hence, the Israelites who returned to Jerusalem confessed, “We were like those who dream” (v. 1). The reason was because the Israelites experienced God's work of salvation that could not have been expected or imagined. As I meditated on these words, I reconsidered the importance of hope. We, the Christians, should dream as we look to our Lord who is our hope even when we are in difficulties and want to give up, even when we are discouraged and despaired. We must dream in the Lord, meditating on the fact that if we give up ourselves, our homes, our jobs and our business, our churches, our society, and so on, God will never give up on us. So we pray, expect, and wait.
I received this Psalms 126, especially when I personally think of our church. In other words, I am thinking of our church, praying, expecting and waiting. I want to dream in the Lord whatever difficulties and despair our church may go though. I want to continue to dream of raising the 300 soldiers of Christ and send them out into this world to expand the kingdom of God. This reminds me the hymn “There’s Dream That I Dream”: “There's a dream that I dream, of my Savior divine, And I know that my dream will come true; At the morn, in the night, comes the vision of light, With a promise eternally new. O this wonderful dream is a secret of grace, And I would that this secret you knew; For I dream that last I shall look on His face And I know that my dream will come true.” d
As I meditated on Psalms 99:1-9, I thought about what church our church should be. And my prayer for our church is ‘May God reign over our church.’ I would like to be instructed in three ways about what kind of church is under God's reign under the title “The church under God's reign.”
First, there is trembling, praise, and worship in the church under God's reign.
Look at Psalms 98:1, 3, 5, 9: “The LORD reigns, let the peoples tremble; He is enthroned above the cherubim, let the earth shake! … Let them praise Your great and awesome name; Holy is He. ... Exalt the LORD our God And worship at His footstool; Holy is He. … Exalt the LORD our God And worship at His holy hill, For holy is the LORD our God.” The psalmist says that God will reign, and all people will tremble, and the earth will shake. This is because of the great and awesome name of the Lord. That is, because God is holy (3x), we must praise and worship Him with fear and trembling. This is the church that exalts God. The three main goals of our church are (1) the church that worships the Lord, (2) the church that imitates the Lord, and (3) the church that exalts the Lord. Here, in order for us to exalt the Lord, we must praise and worship God with fear and trembling before the Holy God. We, the creatures, must praise and worship God because we fear the holy and high God, the Creator. This is what we, the creatures, should do.
But this time in which we live, people are exchanging the truth of God for a lie and are worshiping and serving created things rather than the Creator (Rom. 1:25). There is no fear of God at all. There is no fear of a holy God. Therefore, we are guilty of worshiping created things by exchanging the God's truth for a lie. This sinful world, which rejects God's reign, commits great sin against the holy God without fear and trembling. The same is true of religious groups that reject God's reign. People are committing great sins against God by deifying their religious leaders as gods and are worshiping them. Although creation must worship and exalt the Creator God, the sin of exalting and worshiping ourselves should not be done in the church. In other words, since the church is reign by God, we must exalt and worship God only with fear and trembling.
Second, the strength of the church under God's reign is to love justice.
Look at Psalm 99:4 – “The strength of the King loves justice; You have established equity; You have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.” The psalmist said, “The strength of the King loves justice.” This word teaches us the precious idea that justice is strength (Park). If this principle is applied to the church, the strength of the church under God's reign is to love justice. The reason why the church of this age is reflected in the world without strength and incapacity is because we don’t love justice, don’t establish justice, and don’t do justice. If we live in this distorted world and don’t do the righteousness and justice, then we have already lost our strength as Christians. Therefore, we can never affect the good influence of this world. This loss of influence is because we don’t love God's justice and aren’t doing it.
Our Lord has something to ask our church. Look at Micah 6:8 – “He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?” God who reigns over us told us to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God. Especially based on Psalms 99:4, we must love God's justice and do it. Therefore, I pray that in our church and through our church the Lord will establish fairness.
Third, the church under God's reign prays.
Look at Bible Psalm 99:6 – “Moses and Aaron were among His priests, And Samuel was among those who called on His name; They called upon the LORD and He answered them.” Here the psalmist introduces three exemplary figures representing the Old Testament Church, Moses, Aaron, and Samuel, describing God's work through them (Park). And the principle is nothing but prayer. Moses, Aaron, and Samuel were the people who prayed for the church. They were men of prayer. And they were people who were answered by God in prayer (Exod. 17:11; Num. 16:43; 1 Sam 7:8, 9; 9:12) (Park). One interesting point is that in Psalms 99:7-8, the psalmist speaks of two things about the proper qualification to receive answer of prayer:
(1) In order to receive answer to prayer, we must obey the Word of God.
Look at Psalms 99:7 – “He spoke to them in the pillar of cloud; They kept His testimonies And the statute that He gave them.” The saints under God’s reign hear the word of God. And they obey that word. That’s why they can use fair judgment and do justice. The psalmist teaches us that God will answer these saints' prayers.
(2) We must receive forgiveness of sins in order to receive answer of our prayer.
Look at Psalms 99:8 – “O LORD our God, You answered them; You were a forgiving God to them, And yet an avenger of their evil deeds.” Our God is just God. That is why our God disciplines our sins. And our God is God of love. So when we repent of our sins, our God forgives us.
Our church must be a church under God's reign. Therefore, we must devote ourselves to prayer. God's work in the church is accomplished through those who devote themselves to prayer. The Lord builds up His body, the Church, through people of prayer like Moses, Aaron, and Samuel. And those who pray are forgiven of their sins and keep the word of God. May the Lord raise us to be these prayers and build His church through us. There is trembling, praise, and worship in the church under God's reign. And the strength of the church under God's reign is to love justice. And the church under God's reign prays. I dream that our church will become like the church under God’s reign.