“O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever!  ²Let Israel say, “His steadfast love endures forever.” Psalm 118:1ff

Love and be loved. That is the invitation of this Psalm; an open-ended prayer of praise and petition to give thanks and to love for all generations. “O give thanks to the Lord for he is good” — this is contextually relevant to every generation who recognizes G-d has created everything – and in the eyes of G-d everything was good. G-d loved everything and everyone. G-d’s love is present in the past, present and into the future, and this love will endure. All the saints have sung this song and will sing it well into the future. This is a prayer to be prayed in days of thanks, in days of fear, praying to encounter the G-d of love whose transformative love, mercy and grace is not just visible but accessible to all of us, forever and ever. Our only appropriate response is to give thanks always. When was the last time you prayed a sincere prayer of thanksgiving? Let’s be careful not to move too quickly from the empty tomb of Easter to the Easter egg hunt, before we stop and give thanks.

On Easter we join the prayers of generations, giving thanks for personal deliverance, for universal deliverance, and for universal salvation. “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.”

Psalm 118 was sung as the final word of the Passover festival. Jesus may have prayed it with his disciples just hours before his betrayal and death. Today, we need to engage this prayer with our minds, hearts, souls and bodies, living into the reality that the Lord is “Good all the Time, and All the Time the Lord is Good.”

Pastor Dave 

^“When they had brought them, they had them stand before the council. The high priest questioned them, ²⁸saying, “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you are determined to bring this man’s blood on us.” ²⁹But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than any human authority. ³⁰The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. ³¹God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. ³²And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.” Acts 5:27-32

“We must obey G-d rather than any human authority.” This is what Peter answered when the council of Jerusalem accuses them of teaching in the name of Jesus. The Holy Spirit had come to the disciples in Acts 2, on the day of Pentecost, and they were just beginning to teach and to preach in the name of the Jesus, empowered by the Holy Spirit. But their friends and family must have thought they had really gone mad at this point. Jesus was dead. Their teacher was crucified. The stories of Jesus’ appearances surely must have been fabricated. Shouldn’t they go back to their previous lives?

I want to share with you something Kyle Fever wrote in his Commentary on Acts 5:

“In 1980 Ozzy Osbourne released a song called “Crazy Train.”  The chorus of the song is ridiculously simple, but very evocative: “I’m going off the rails on a crazy train.”  What the apostles were doing must have seemed like this to much of the surrounding world. The Pharisees and leaders certainly seem to think this. Drawing attention to the public proclamation of Jesus as Lord was indeed crazy. This crazy train, Peter is clear to note, does not have a human conductor, and God is taking it right off of the rails. This is not to condone going off of the rails for its own sake or irresponsible witness to Jesus Christ. Much depends on how one evaluates the rails in the first place.  What to the authorities of the time seemed like going off the rails was accurate? But that’s because from the perspective of Acts, the current rails on which the human train journeyed were no longer bringing God’s forgiveness and renewal, but actually hindering it.”

Beginning with April, and for the rest of your faith life, are you willing to go “off the rails”, like Peter and the other disciples, in your devotion and ministry for the Gospel of Jesus?  When we are empowered with the Holy Spirit, there is no limit for where the gospel will take us.

Pastor Dave