40 Days of Prayer, Day 40
Day 40, Thursday, September 29
This is the final day of the 40 Days of Prayer! Thank you so much for your participation in this focused time of praying for each other, the church and the world. May God bless the prayers of His people. May He hear us and mercifully answer in ways that maximize His glory and maximizes our joy.
27 All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations will worship before You. 28 For the kingdom is the LORD’S and He rules over the nations. 29 All the prosperous of the earth will eat and worship, all those who go down to the dust will bow before Him, even he who cannot keep his soul alive. 30 Posterity will serve Him; It will be told of the Lord to the coming generation. 31 They will come and will declare His righteousness to a people who will be born, that He has performed it. Psalm 22:27-31
The Contrite Heart and the Joy of the Nations
God is a God of relationships. This is primarily expressed in God’s relationship with individuals. However, the Bible also describes God’s relationship to families, nations and people groups. From the beginning, the Book of Genesis presents the interactions between God and individuals. However, God’s redemptive plan involves not just individuals but also His chosen people, the nation of Israel. When Abraham appears on the scene in Genesis 12, it comes on the heels of the Tower of Babel when God scatters the peoples and confuses their languages. Unified as a single language and a single people, the people at Babel created an environment of arrogant rebellion against God. God’s merciful solution was to separate people and languages in order to reduce the organized sin that took place at Babel. Despite this divine judgment at Babel, a few chapters later as God revealed to Abraham the unfolding of His great plan of redemption God said this, “...Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation, and in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed.” Genesis 18:18 Within a few chapters of the Tower of Babel, God now speaks of His blessing on all the nations. God reiterates this promise in Genesis 22 and repeats the blessing again later in the book of Genesis to Abraham’s offspring. The promise of blessing to the nations was a promise of the coming Messiah. Through Abraham and His offspring God would bring forth One in whom the blessings of God would be granted to the nations. When Jesus had risen from the dead, He gathered His disciples for a final commissioning, saying to them, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:18-20 What Abraham was promised, Christ fulfilled. The resurrection of Jesus Christ provided the way for the nations to experience the blessing promised to Abraham. Four thousand years later we are the benefactors of that Abrahamic promise. Two thousand years after the resurrection of Jesus we are the benefactors of that commissioning of Christ’s disciples.
The completion of the work of God in the nations of the world is still yet future. One day, before the throne of God, all nations and all peoples will be represented as we worship Him. Consider the joyful fulfillment of the Great Commission of Matthew’s Gospel as presented in the Book of Revelation. “And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are You…for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth.” Revelation 5:9-10 And “On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. There will no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve Him.” Revelation 22:2-3 This hopeful conclusion comes at the beginning of the newly formed the eternal kingdom. This scene depicts the healing and restoration of the nations, with people from every tribe, language and nation at the throne of Christ, worshiping Him together.
In Psalm 22, which has so many Messianic themes, we see this worldwide vision of God’s deliverance. “All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations will worship before You. For the kingdom is the LORD’S and He rules over the nations.” Psalm 22:27-28 This psalm began with a cry for help from someone who felt completely abandoned. “My God why have you forsaken me?” Now, we see the contrast between the suffering and abandoned one with that of the corporate, joyful worship of God. This worship of God because of His work in salvation goes beyond the individual and even beyond the nation of Israel. Consider this paragraph from the New International Commentary on the Old Testament on this text. “These verses remind us that even God’s act to save the afflicted one has world-wide impact…the nations come to the Lord, not because of sheer power or force, but they stream to God because of God’s justice and equity among the peoples. God is the God of the universe because God is the God of this one abandoned, left alone and shamed…What is clear here is that all will praise God because of this, and all of God’s acts go even beyond the nations that we can see in the present. Both the healthy ones will praise along with those nearing the grave, and even beyond all of them, the story will grow and go on to the new generations, to those not even yet born. Given the scope of Psalm 22, it is no surprise that it was seen by the New Testament writers as applicable to the death of Jesus. The cry of the one who loves the Lord, who is afflicted and shamed and surrounded by enemies, is still heard by God, and God’s act of deliverance of this one has world-wide, earth-shattering consequences.” Those with a contrite heart love God. Those with a contrite heart also love God’s plan for the nations. There is coming a day when the brokenhearted will gather before their forgiving and gracious God where we will worship Him in joyful song. They will worship Him because of His saving grace offered freely through this Abandoned One on our behalf. On that day, we will look around to see the gathering of the nations, people from every nation, language and tribe. This is what God promised Abraham. This is what is presented in Psalm 22. This is what God provided in Christ Jesus. This is what Christ commissioned the initial followers. This is what Christ still calls on us today. His message of grace to the nations of the world. May our hearts be moved for the nations, that they may know Him, the One Abandoned by God on their behalf. May they know Him, the One Abandoned by God but now resurrected for their salvation.
Prayer Focus
God, thank You for this sustaining promise. I believe You are coming again. I believe we will get to be in Your presence forever. I believe Your joy will fill my soul forever. Thank You for banishing all this misery that our own hands have made. Thank You for bringing the message of Christ to the nations. Move within me to seek the good of others by taking this word to every people, nation, tribe and language group. I love You! Thank You for loving me and bringing me into such an amazing, everlasting family. Amen.
From Bunyan’s The Acceptable Sacrifice
Another reason why a broken heart is to God such an excellent thing is this, a broken heart prizes Christ, and has a high esteem for him. The whole have no need of a physician, but the sick; this sick man is the broken-hearted in the text; for God makes men sick by smiting of them, by breaking of their hearts. Hence sickness and wounds are put together; for that the one is a true effect of the other (Mark 2:17; Micah 6:13; Hosea 5:13). Can any think that God should be pleased, when men despise his Son, saying, He has no form nor attraction, and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him? And yet so say they of him whose hearts God has not mollified; yea, the elect themselves confess, that before their hearts were broken, they set light by him also. He is, say they, 'despised and rejected of men, - and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not' (Isa 53:2, 3). He is indeed the great deliverer; but what is a deliverer to them that never saw themselves in bondage? But what is that to them that never saw beauty, and that never tasted anything but sweetness in sin? It is he that holds by his intercession the hands of God, and that causes him to forbear to cut off the drunkard, the liar, and unclean person, even when they are in the very act and work of their abomination; but their hard heart, their stupefied heart, has no sense of such kindness as this, and therefore they take no notice of it. How many times has God said to this dresser of his vineyard, 'Cut down the barren fig-tree, ' while he yet, by his intercession, has prevailed for a reprieve for another year! But no notice is taken of this, no thanks is from them returned to him for such kindness of Christ. Wherefore such ungrateful, unthankful, inconsiderate wretches as these must needs be a continual eye-sore, as I may say, and great provocation to God; and yet thus men will do before their hearts are broken (Luke 13:6-9).