From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
daily devotional
Evening...
Revelation 4:4
And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw
four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment.
These representatives of the saints in heaven are said to be around the
throne. In the passage in Canticles, where Solomon sings of the King sitting at
his table, some render it "a round table." From this, some expositors, I think,
without straining the text, have said, "There is an equality among the saints."
That idea is conveyed by the equal nearness of the four and twenty elders. The
condition of glorified spirits in heaven is that of nearness to Christ, clear
vision of His glory, constant access to His court, and familiar fellowship with
His person: nor is there any difference in this respect between one saint and
another, but all the people of God, apostles, martyrs, ministers, or private
and obscure Christians, shall all be seated near the throne, where they shall
for ever gaze upon their exalted Lord, and be satisfied with His love. They
shall all be near to Christ, all ravished with His love, all eating and
drinking at the same table with Him, all equally beloved as His favourites and
friends even if not all equally rewarded as servants. Let believers on earth
imitate the saints in heaven in their nearness to Christ. Let us on earth be as
the elders are in heaven, sitting around the throne. May Christ be the object
of our thoughts, the centre of our lives. How can we endure to live at such a
distance from our Beloved? Lord Jesus, draw us nearer to Thyself. Say unto us,
"Abide in Me, and I in you"; and permit us to sing, "His left hand is under my
head, and His right hand doth embrace me."
O lift me higher, nearer Thee,
And as I rise more pure and meet,
O let my soul's humility
Make me lie lower at Thy feet;
Less trusting self, the more I prove
The blessed comfort of Thy love.
Romans 3:19-21
(19) Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them
who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may
become guilty before God. (20) Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no
flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. (21)
But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed
by the law and the prophets;
Some ministers would like us to believe that justification and salvation
by grace through faith just suddenly appeared when the Son of God lived and
died in the first century. They imply that God changed His approach to saving
men-that He was either losing the battle to Satan, or the way He had given man
was just too hard. It also implies that men under the Old Covenant were saved
by keeping the law.
Once a person has sinned, they are under the penalty of the law, and
their righteousness is not sufficient to justify them before God. Since all
have sinned, the whole world is guilty before God. It takes a righteousness
apart from lawkeeping to do this.
Then Paul says that this righteousness is revealed in the Old Testament
Law and Prophets! The teaching has been there all along, all through the
centuries from Moses to Christ and down to our time! God never changed His
course. In the first century, He only openly revealed the means, Christ,
through whom would come the righteousness that will justify one before God.
Men have always been justified and saved by grace through faith. People
who were saved during Old Testament times looked forward in faith to this being
accomplished. We look backward at it as a promise and as fulfilled prophecy.
John W. Ritenbaugh
From Is God a False Minister?
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
daily devotional
Evening...
Psalm 101:1
I will sing of mercy and judgment.
Faith triumphs in trial. When reason is thrust into the inner prison, with
her feet made fast in the stocks, faith makes the dungeon walls ring with her
merry notes as she I cries, "I will sing of mercy and of judgment. Unto thee, O
Lord, will I sing." Faith pulls the black mask from the face of trouble, and
discovers the angel beneath. Faith looks up at the cloud, and sees that
'Tis big with mercy and shall break
In blessings on her head."
There is a subject for song even in the judgments of God towards us. For,
first, the trial is not so heavy as it might have been; next, the trouble is
not so severe as we deserved to have borne; and our affliction is not so
crushing as the burden which others have to carry. Faith sees that in her worst
sorrow there is nothing penal; there is not a drop of God's wrath in it; it is
all sent in love. Faith discerns love gleaming like a jewel on the breast of an
angry God. Faith says of her grief, "This is a badge of honour, for the child
must feel the rod"; and then she sings of the sweet result of her sorrows,
because they work her spiritual good. Nay, more, says Faith, "These light
afflictions, which are but for a moment, work out for me a far more exceeding
and eternal weight of glory." So Faith rides forth on the black horse,
conquering an! d to conquer, trampling down carnal reason and fleshly sense,
and chanting notes of victory amid the thickest of the fray.
"All I meet I find assists me
In my path to heavenly joy:
Where, though trials now attend me,
Trials never more annoy.
"Blest there with a weight of glory,
Still the path I'll ne'er forget,
But, exulting, cry, it led me
To my blessed Saviour's seat."
2 Corinthians 5:10
(10) For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that
every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath
done, whether it be good or bad.
It does not matter how much prophecy we know, whether we can recite
from memory large portions of Scripture, or know perfectly every doctrine's
technicalities ( I Corinthians 13:11-3). In terms of judgment, what matters is
whether we are striving to live what we know to be the way God lives because it
is how those in His Kingdom will live. His way is the way of love, and love is
something we do.
Humanly, the opposite of love is hate. This is because we judge
things largely according to the senses. Love, therefore, is a strong feeling
for a person or thing; hate is a strong feeling against. However, this
definition is not biblical. Biblically, the opposite of love is sin. Like love,
sin is also something we do. According to I John 5:3, love is keeping God's
commandments, and sin, then, is the breaking of His commandments. Though
feeling is certainly involved in biblical love, the will of God and truth play
a far larger part.
Seriously consider this: If we sin, then biblically, we do not love
God, our fellow man, or for that matter, ourselves, because sinning means we
have taken steps toward committing spiritual suicide! If we do this, it also
means that we do not appreciate that God has given us life and has given His
life so that we can claim His awesome promise of living eternally with Him.
Stripped of all possible nuances that might affect God's judgment,
this is the stark reality of what faces us once God has opened our eyes and
revealed His purpose to us. It brings to the fore that, if we love what He has
revealed, then we must hate sin because it destroys everything God's wonderful
revelation stands for.
John W. Ritenbaugh
From The Elements of Motivation (Part Seven): Fear of Judgment
