To come to Christ as a saint is very easy work. To trust to a doctor to cure you when you believe you are getting better is very easy. But to trust to your physician when you feel as if the sentence of death were in your body, to bear up when the disease is rising in your skin and when the ulcer is gathering its venom, to believe even then in the efficacy of the medicine--that is faith.--Charles Spurgeon, Faith (Whitaker House 1995), 20-21
And so, when sin gets the master of you, when you feel that the law condemns you--then, even then, especially then--as a sinner, to trust Christ is the most daring feat in all the world. The faith that shook down the walls of Jericho, the faith that raised the dead, the faith that stopped the mouths of lions, was not greater than that of a poor sinner who dares to trust the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ when he is in the jaws of all his sins.
28 August 2013
The Most Daring Feat in All the World
The prince of preachers, bringing us back to the audacity of the gospel.
There are those who have yet to know the enormity of the God Who judges and disciplines, and do not come to Him. And then, there are those who, knowing, avoid Him. But perhaps they do not know, yet, His deepest heart...
ReplyDeleteI open to Psalm 130:3
If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?
4 But with you there is forgiveness,
that you may be feared. Psalms 130:3-4 (ESV)
If “marking iniquities” were His prime motive...none could stand.
“But with you there is forgiveness...”that you may be feared...”
I marvel. The Psalmist speaks, not of the fear inherent in judgment, for that would have been the first part
of the verse, “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities.” In contrast, God offers forgiveness...”that He may be reverenced:”
”But with you there is forgiveness...”
But perhaps, then, He is a distant God...a God Who credits our accounts, yes...but essentially removed from the afflictions
that plague us:
”O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption.” vs. 7
Why...is Israel urged to “hope in the Lord?” That is...What is it, that gives a heart strength, desire, to rouse itself from it’s
sorry habitation, to even be able to “hope in the Lord?”
”With the Lord there is steadfast love.”
Without knowing of the Father’s steadfast love...you will have no desire to approach Him, for, what shelter from the storm
might one find, what tenderness, what understanding, what solace for the soul...would one, could one, ever hope to find?
But is this a “steadfast love” as many contemporaries think, lacking depth and substance, and ability?
No! This is a love...that makes complete satisfaction...for all the needs of a soul:
”....and with Him is plentiful redemption...”
”And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities...”