Psalms 119:137-140 ESV
“Righteous are you, O Lord,
and right are your rules.
138 You have appointed your testimonies in righteousness
and in all faithfulness.
139 My zeal consumes me,
because my foes forget your words.
140 Your promise is well tried,
and your servant loves it.”
I think there is a lot of confusion within the church over
this whole transition the Jews who believed in Jesus went through when the Lord
took them away from the Old Covenant and he brought them into the New Covenant which
he has now with his people who have died with Christ to sin and who are now
living to him and to his righteousness. For the word “law” is used to describe
both the Old Covenant ceremonial laws and the law of the gospel of Christ,
which is “the law of liberty” for Jesus set us free from slavery to sin.
And so many people have come to believe that their salvation
from sin is lawless and thus they do not have to obey the Lord or forsake their
sins or submit to Christ as Lord. They believe no works are required of them at
all since we are not saved by our own works. But works are not absent of our
salvation. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works
which God prepared in advance that we should walk in them. And we must obey our
Lord in practice or we will not inherit eternal life with God.
[1 Pet 2:24; Jas 1:22-25; Rom 6:1-23; Rom 8:1-14; Eph
2:8-10; 1 Jn 1:5-10; 1 Jn 2:3-6; 1 Jn 3:4-10; Acts 5:32; Lu 9:23-26; Matt
7:21-23]
So, although we who believe in Jesus do not live under the
Old Covenant, we are not lawless. We still have rules to follow. They are God’s
moral laws which Jesus summed up into two, which are to love God with our whole
being and to love our neighbors as ourselves. For love does no willful harm to
a neighbor. And so love is the fulfillment of the law. But love is of God and God
is love, and so love is righteous, godly, upright, morally pure, honest, and
trustworthy, which we should be if we love God and other humans.
And his moral laws, his boundaries which he gave to us, are
for our good to help us to live holy and godly and pure lives to the glory of
God. And we are taught in Scripture that if we do not obey our Lord’s commands
(New Covenant), in practice, that we don’t love God and we don’t know God and
he does not know us, and his Spirit does not dwell within us. So obedience to
our Lord’s commands is required for salvation from sin and for eternal life
with God as is also dying with Christ to sin, not just once, but daily.
And my zeal does consume me because the Lord’s foes, who
then become my foes, forget the words of the Lord willfully, and deliberately
and habitually they live in sin, and they are on a sinful course, and
consistently they deny the Lord and refuse to obey the Lord even though many of
them profess to know Jesus and are convinced their sins are forgiven and that
heaven is guaranteed them even though they know the Scriptures that teach that
those who do not obey the Lord will not inherit eternal life with God.
And this just breaks my heart! I grieve over this. I grieve
over the knowledge that so many professers of faith in Jesus Christ are relying
on a lie and a false promise of heaven when they die and that one day they are
going to stand before God and proclaim him as Lord with their lips, and they
will enumerate the many things they did on this earth in his name, and he is
going to tell them plainly, “I never knew you! Depart from me you workers of
lawless” (see Matthew 7:21-23) because they did not obey God.
Psalms 119:141-144 ESV
“I am small and despised,
yet I do not forget your precepts.
142 Your righteousness is righteous forever,
and your law is true.
143 Trouble and anguish have found me out,
but your commandments are my delight.
144 Your testimonies are righteous forever;
give me understanding that I may live.”
Jesus Christ, when he walked this earth, was despised and
rejected, a man of sorrows who was acquainted with grief (see Isaiah 53). And
if we are his followers, and if we are dying with him to sin and living to his
righteousness, then we should be despised and rejected of other humans, too. We
should be treated like Jesus was treated. We should have people falsely
accusing us of evil we did not do, and we should have people trying to trip us
up, and we should have people taunting us and playing mind games with us, too.
And we should have people opposing what we are teaching and
fighting against us and attacking us because we are speaking the truth of the
Scriptures. And we should have Satan attacking our minds and emotions, trying
to get us to be afraid, and trying to get us to give up and to retreat. For
that is his goal to try to defeat us so we will stop sharing the truth of the
gospel, and so we will stop talking about sin and slavery to sin and of our
need to repent of our sins and to walk in obedience to our Lord.
But we must hold on to the truth that we know and not be
intimidated by those who want to take us out. And that truth is not our truth
but the truth of the Scriptures. And this is a spiritual battle to be fought
with spiritual weapons of warfare and not in our flesh. And the battle we are
speaking of here is against Christ and his gospel, and so if we are teaching
the gospel and we are calling sinners to repentance, then Satan will be against
us, too, and he will try to stop us for he doesn’t want the truth to be heard.
And in times like these we need to call on God and pray for
godly wisdom and understanding, for some of these situations can be troubling
to our minds when we don’t understand them. And so we need to pray for
understanding, but also be willing to accept that we are not going to
understand everything, and so we just have to turn these situations over to the
Lord Jesus and just rest in him and trust in his counsel and wisdom. And then
we can move forward in peace, letting Christ rule our hearts.
[Matt 5:10-16; Matt 10:16-25;
Matt 24:9-14; Matt 28:18-20; Lu 6:22-23; Lu 21:12-19;
John 15:1-21; Jn 16:33; Acts 1:8; Acts 14:22; Acts 26:18; Rom 5:3-5; Rom 12:1-8; 1 Co 12:1-31; 2 Co 1:3-11; Eph
4:1-16; Eph 5:17-27; Phil 3:7-11; Col 3:16; 1 Thess 3:1-5; Jas 1:2-4; Heb 3:13;
Heb 12:3-12; 1 Pet 1:6-7; 1 Pet 2:9; 1 Pet 4:12-17]
Oh,
to Be Like Thee, Blessed Redeemer
Lyrics
by Thomas O. Chisholm, 1897
Music
by W. J. Kirkpatrick, 1897
Oh, to be like Thee! blessèd Redeemer,
This is my constant longing and prayer;
Gladly I’ll forfeit all of earth’s
treasures,
Jesus, Thy perfect likeness to wear.
Oh, to be like Thee! full of
compassion,
Loving, forgiving, tender and kind,
Helping the helpless, cheering the
fainting,
Seeking the wandering sinner to find.
O to be like Thee! lowly in spirit,
Holy and harmless, patient and brave;
Meekly enduring cruel reproaches,
Willing to suffer others to save.
O to be like Thee! while I am pleading,
Pour out Thy Spirit, fill with Thy
love;
Make me a temple meet for Thy dwelling,
Fit me for life and Heaven above.
Oh, to be like Thee! Oh, to be like Thee,
Blessèd Redeemer, pure as Thou art;
Come in Thy sweetness, come in Thy
fullness;
Stamp Thine own image deep on my heart.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrYhiK2nQBg
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