THE DECREES OF GOD

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Isaiah 14:24, 27 “(vs.24) The Lord Almighty has sworn, ‘Surely, as I have planned, so it will be, and as I have purposed, so it will happen’. (vs27) For the Lord Almighty has purposed, and who can thwart him? His hand is stretched out, and who can turn it back?”

This is known as a decree of God. The Westminster Shorter Catechism states, ‘The decrees of God are his eternal purpose, according to the counsel of his will, whereby, for his own glory, he hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.’

We must be careful to state that while God is the Orderer and Controller of sin, He is not the Author of it in the same way that He is the Author of good. Sin could not proceed from a holy God by positive and direct creation, but only by decretive permission and negative action. His decrees predetermine all events, thus not only confirming that they will exist but also when and how they will happen. With God there are no random events, for all things that come to pass are the product of His infinite wisdom and are in keeping with His righteous, just and holy character.

In Eph.1:11 it says about us, “In him we were also chosen having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will”. O what a glorious truth, what a glorious assurance! His sovereign will orders all things in our lives as He sees fit.

May we humbly submit to the all-controlling hand of God.

BLESSED HOPE

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Isaiah 57:1-2 “The righteous perish, and no one takes it to heart; the devout are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil. Those who walk uprightly enter into peace; they find rest as they lie in death.”
Death is not a pleasant topic to discuss, especially as morning devotion! But the fact is death will come to each of us one day in some way or the other. But in Christ we no longer need to fear it, for as it says in Heb.2:14-15, “Since the children have flesh and blood, he (Christ) too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death”. “Gone too soon” is the cry of loved ones left behind when death strikes. But those who belong to Him know deep down inside that in His infinite wisdom and abounding love God always does things at the right time, not too soon and not too late. In His mercy God ushers His people, away from further suffering and effects of sin, through the doors of death directly into the throne room of His presence where there is peace, rest and no more mourning, crying or pain. God has purpose for us in this life, to complete the work He has set before us in order that we may glorify Him and be a blessing to others. But while we carry out His purposes in this life and yet reflect on death, may we never fear it but rather live in that paradoxical state that Paul experienced and expressed with these words, “I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body” (Philippians 1:23-24). Live for Him yet die to gain Him!

LET US SETTLE THE MATTER

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Isaiah 1:18-19 “Come now, let us settle the matter’ says the Lord. ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the good things of the land;”

The fact that an utterly holy God is conciliative enough to even propose a sit down, in order that He may explain the way of repentance and redemption to His rebellious nation Israel, is amazing in itself. Let us sit together and let me explain things to you, says God to sinful Israel! What God says to them is that all their wicked sinfulness can be removed from them leading to their being blessed, but only if they were ready to be willing and obedient. But what is even more amazing is that this same utterly holy God has reached out to us, we who were not His people, who were not part of Israel, and said “come now, let us settle the matter”. God sat down with us and reasoned with us by means of His Word. Rom.10:17 says, “Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ”. He so worked in us as to make our hearts respond willingly in obedience to the Word about Christ. We who were stained with sin and beset with a bent towards wickedness, were made white as snow and pure as wool!

The God that we did not seek sought us and made us His people, holy, righteous and blessed with every spiritual blessing. Is that not amazing enough to praise Him and bless Him every single day of our lives?

Today may our hearts be filled with gratitude and may they resound with His praises.

SATAN'S STRATEGY AND YOUR DEFENSE

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Resist him, firm in your faith. (1 Peter 5:9)

The two great enemies of our souls are sin and Satan. And sin is the worst enemy, because the only way that Satan can destroy us is by getting us to sin.

God may give him leash enough to rough us up, the way he did Job, or even to kill us, the way he did the saints in Smyrna (Revelation 2:10); but Satan cannot condemn us or rob us of eternal life. The only way he can do us ultimate harm is by influencing us to sin. Which is exactly what he aims to do. So Satan’s main business is to advocate, promote, assist, titillate and confirm our bent to sinning.

We see this in Ephesians 2:1–2: “You were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked . . . according to the prince of the power of the air” (NASB). Sinning “accords” with Satan’s power in the world. When he brings about moral evil, it is through sin. When we sin, we move in his sphere, and come into accord with him. When we sin, we “give place to the devil” (Ephesians 4:27). The only thing that will condemn us at the judgment day is unforgiven sin — not sickness or afflictions or persecutions or intimidations or apparitions or nightmares. Satan knows this. Therefore his great focus is not primarily on how to scare Christians with weird phenomena (though there’s plenty of that), but on how to corrupt Christians with worthless fads and evil thoughts. Satan wants to catch us at a time when our faith is not firm, when it is vulnerable. It makes sense that the very thing Satan wants to destroy would also be the means of our resisting his efforts. That’s why Peter says, “Resist him, firm in your faith.” It is also why Paul says that the “shield of faith” can “extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one” (Ephesians 6:16).

The way to thwart the devil is to strengthen the very thing he is trying most to destroy — your faith.

PREACH TO YOURSELF

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“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” (Psalm 42:11)

We must learn to fight despondency. The fight is a fight of faith in future grace. It is fought by preaching truth to ourselves about God and his promised future. This is what the psalmist does in Psalm 42. The psalmist preaches to his troubled soul. He scolds himself and argues with himself. And his main
argument is future grace: “Hope in God! — Trust in what God will be for you in the future. A day of praise is coming. The presence of the Lord will be all
the help you need. And He has promised to be with us forever.” Preaching truth to ourselves about God’s future grace is all-important in overcoming spiritual depression. Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those
thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking . . . yourself is talking to you!

The battle against despondency is a battle to believe the promises of God. And that belief in God’s future grace comes by hearing the Word. And so preaching to ourselves is at the heart of the battle.

Are you hearing the Word?

MODELS FOR COMBATING DISCOURGEMENT

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“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” (Psalm 73:26)

Literally the verb is simply fail: “My flesh and my heart fail!” I am despondent! I am discouraged! But then immediately he fires a broadside against his despondency: “But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” The psalmist does not yield. He battles unbelief with counterattack. In essence, he says, “In myself I feel very weak and helpless and unable to cope. My body is shot and my heart is almost dead. But whatever the reason for this despondency, I will not yield. I will trust God and not myself. He is my strength and my portion.” The Bible is replete with instances of saints struggling with sunken spirits. Psalm 19:7 says, “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.” This is a clear admission that the soul of the saint sometimes needs to be revived. And if it needs to be revived, in a sense it was “dead.” David says the same thing in Psalm 23:2–3, “He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.” The soul of the “man after [God’s] own heart” (1 Samuel 3:14) needs to be restored. It was dying of thirst and ready to fall exhausted, but God led the soul to water and gave it life again.

God has put these testimonies in the Bible so that we might use them to fight the unbelief of despondency.

REJECTION BECAUSE OF YOUR FAITH

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“Not as Cain, who was of the evil one, and slew his brother. And for what reason did he slay him? Because his deeds were evil, and his brother’s were righteous. Do not marvel, brethren, if the world hates you” (1 John 3:12-13).

Christians are rejected by the world but accepted by God. You can judge a man’s character by who his enemies are. That is also true in the spiritual realm. The world loves its own, but since Christ chose believers out of the world, the world hates them (John 15:19). The world hated Jesus that it killed Him. We, as His followers, can also expect hostility. “If the world hates you,” Jesus said in John 15:18, “you know that it has hated Me before it hated you.” “If they have called the head of the house Beelzebul,” He added in Matthew 10:25, “how much more the members of his household!” From the beginning of history, the unrighteous have hated the righteous. Cain murdered his righteous brother Abel in a fit of jealous rage (1 John 3:12; Gen. 4:1-8). In Acts 7:52 Stephen asked his accusers, “Which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? Peter noted the reason for the world’s hostility to Christians when he wrote, “[Unbelievers] are surprised that you do not run with them into the same excess of dissipation, and they malign you” (1 Peter 4:4). Christians’ lives are a threat because they rebuke unbelievers’ sin and remind them of coming judgment.

Have you experienced the world’s hostility, opposition, prejudice, rejection, or even persecution for your stand for Jesus Christ? If so, that’s evidence that you belong to the One who also suffered rejection by the world.

Let us pray that God would enable us to rejoice in the face of persecution (Acts 5:41).

SAVING FAITH LOVES FORGIVENESS

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Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. (Ephesians 4:32)

Saving faith is not merely believing that you are forgiven. Saving faith looks at the horror of sin, and then looks at the holiness of God, and apprehends spiritually that God’s forgiveness is unspeakably glorious.

Faith in God’s forgiveness does not merely mean a persuasion that I am off the hook. It means savoring the truth that a forgiving God is the most precious reality in the universe. Saving faith cherishes being forgiven by God, and from there rises to cherishing the God who forgives — and all that he is for us in Jesus.

The great act of forgiveness is past — the cross of Christ. By this backward look, we learn of the grace in which we will ever stand (Romans 5:2). We learn that we are now, and always will be, loved and accepted. We learn that the living God is a forgiving God.

But the great experience of being forgiven is all future. Fellowship with the great God who forgives is all future. Freedom for forgiveness flowing from this all-satisfying fellowship with the forgiving God is all future.

I have learned that it is possible to go on holding a grudge if your faith simply means you have looked back to the cross and concluded that you are off the hook. I have been forced to go deeper into what true faith is. It is being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus. It looks back not merely to discover that it is off the hook, but to see and savor the kind of God who
offers us a future of endless reconciled tomorrows in fellowship with him.

HOW CHRIST CONQUERED BITTERNESS

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“When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.” (1 Peter 2:23)

No one was more grievously sinned against than Jesus. Every ounce of animosity against him was fully undeserved. No one has ever lived who was more worthy of honor than Jesus; and no one has been dishonored more. If anyone had a right to get angry and be bitter and vengeful, it was Jesus. How did he control himself when scoundrels, whose very lives he sustained, spit in his face? 1 Peter 2:23 gives the answer.

What this verse means is that Jesus had faith in the future grace of God’s righteous judgment. He did not need to avenge himself for all the indignities he suffered, because he entrusted his cause to God. He left vengeance in God’s hands and prayed for his enemies’ repentance (Luke 23:34).

Peter gives this glimpse into Jesus’ faith so that we would learn how to live this way ourselves. He said, “You have been called [to endure harsh treatment patiently] . . . because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps” (1 Peter 2:21).

If Christ conquered bitterness and vengeance by faith in future grace, how much more should we, since we have far less right to murmur for being mistreated than he did?