Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Resetting the Board | The Writings | Psalm 99

Episode Date: August 22, 2024

How can Christians find peace in a chaotic election season? Is this the most important election ever? Is God in control? In today's episode, Patrick looks at Psalm 99, reminding us that nations rise and fall but the Kingdom of God will reign forever. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Psalm 99

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. As I'm recording this episode, the United States is in yet another presidential election year. Unfortunately, this means another season of divisions and broken relationships. And that's largely because our political pundits and politicians want us to believe that this election is an apocalyptic election. They tell us it's the most important election in history. It's an existential election, and the life of a nation hangs in the balance.

This isn't unique to the United States. There's a good chance that no matter where you live, if you live in a democratic nation, your politicians do the same thing in their own elections. But that means this is also the time for followers of Jesus to step back from the political fray. Not because we are apolitical, nor because we don't care about politics, the political process is part of how we love our neighbors. It's part of how we care for the week and take a stand for justice and the just implementation of just laws. The reason we need to step aside is to make sure that our political priorities are straight

and we're seeing the world straightly with clear eyes. Let me use a metaphor. Imagine a chessboard. When you enter a political season, you are entering a room with a chess board already in play. Ponds and knights have already been taken. Queens and bishops are already in position. So you walk into the room and you're asked to play the game. You'll naturally pick a side and try to play the best you can to win with the board that's already set.

But I think there's an alternative option. What if you walk in and say, I'll play, but it's only fair to reset the board. And if you're going to reset the board, you'll need to know the proper position of all the pieces. Only the Bible can give us the proper order of all things. Only it can tell us how to properly order our political lives and then carry forward and offensive. not for the sake of a political party, but an offensive for the sake of God's kingdom. One reason I love Psalm 99 is that it resets the board. Imagine its original context.

This is a song for ancient Israelites who lived in a weak and relatively powerless nation. They were surrounded by empires and powers that seemed invincible and eternal. No one could imagine Assyria or Babylon or Persia falling. no one could imagine a power greater than their kings and mighty militaries, and yet someone could. The Israelite poets and prophets. And when they looked at the world, they saw a greater power than the Assyrian king Sinakereb and the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar and the Persian king Xerxes. That power was none other than Yahweh, the divine king of Israel. And not just Israel, he is the divine king of all reality. We read in Psalm 9th.

The Lord reigns. Let the nations tremble. He sits enthroned between the cherubim. Let the earth shake. Great is the Lord in Zion. He is exalted over all the nations. Let them praise your great and awesome name. He is holy. The king is mighty. He loves justice. You have established equity. In Jacob, you have done what is just and right. Exalt the Lord our God and worship at his footstool. He is holy. Now, this poetry would have made the citizens of the empires laugh. No one trembles before Yahweh, they would say. They tremble before our kings and our conquerors and our military. But the poets turned out to be right. Assyria fell, Babylon fell, Persia fell. No empire has proven to be an eternal force. Only one force has proven himself timeless. And that is the

God of Israel, Yahweh, and his incarnate self, Jesus. Of course, Jesus, Jesus conquers the world not by killing his opponents and enacting justice by the edge of the sword. Instead, he conquers by dying for his opponents and allowing the sword to pierce him. And that death created such a chasm in history that even atheists think Christianly about the world today. That might sound a little bit strange to you, but let me prove the point. I'll use a graphic example. When the Roman Emperor Constantine conquered Britain, he commissioned a statue of himself quite literally raping and pillaging the people that he conquered. Now, today, both Christians and atheists would find such iconography horrifying. Why? Well, it's because of the Jesus Revolution. Jesus is the one who taught us that

all people are made in God's image. He taught us that women are beloved daughters of God who should be treated with the utmost respect and dignity. He taught us that the weak are not to be trampled upon, but cared for and loved. This was the opposite of how all empires empowers thought. And yet, the empire's way of seeing women, it didn't conquer the world. No, Jesus's way of seeing the world has conquered even the minds of those who deny him. So the psalmist is right. The Lord reigns. Let the nations tremble. Do you see how this resets your chessboard? No election is apocalyptic. No election is existential in the eternal sense. Why? Because the Lord of the universe already sits on the throne of the universe. He reigns. He will conquer all. He will have the final say.

The Oval Office would be a demotion for King Jesus. And that's why we refuse to play the games of those vying for the Oval Office. We refuse to be co-opted by their urgency because we remember the unchanging truth that the Lord reigns. That frees us to enter the political process as non-anxious presences. We know that the arc of history bends towards justice. This truth also frees us to enter the political process as partisans, not of the left or the right, not of the donkey or the elephant, but as partisans of the lamb, partisans of the kingdom. So today, reset your chessboard. Ask God to assure you of his good rule and reign. Thank him that he's a forgiving king who welcomes sinners like you and me into his kingdom. As the psalmist says in verse 8, you were to

Israel a forgiving God, though you punished their misdeeds. God is forgiving, and God holds us to account, and he holds governments to account. And this is good news for all of us who live in a world of terrible tyrants and dysfunctional democracies. The Lord still reigns, and this cannot change.