FEBRUARY 29, 2024
“Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.” (Acts 2:23)
None has known the sufferings of His child, and the griefs accompanied with those sufferings more than the Lord of Glory Himself. These sufferings are the most intimate sufferings known between any two parties. The Eternal Son of God is the beloved Son of the Eternal Father! The love of one for another is a perfect, and eternal, love! In other words, this relationship found in the Godhead is the closest relationship known from all eternity. The sufferings of Christ were most intimately known by the Father and most certainly grieved Him. Yet, throughout all of the sufferings of His Son and the attending griefs, our Heavenly Father never compromised His word; not even an iota, not even a dot!
It is one thing to be faithful to God’s word when hard circumstances touch not our lives. By the grace of God, we have great strength in such times and stand boldly upon the unerring word of God. In our mountain-top experiences, we declare to the world that God’s ways are perfect and loving. In other words, we declare faithfully that God’s word can be trusted and MUST be trusted. But our faith is put to the test when hard circumstances touch our immediate lives; the closer the circumstance, the greater the difficulty. It is in those times where we are so often humbled by the Sovereign Hand of the Living God. We are humbled because it is in those times that we become more acquainted with our own unbelief; we become more acquainted with our sinful nature and our lack of ability to make things happen.
This drives us in one of two directions. We are, in one instance, driven to God’s word, in which we become more acquainted with the Lord and His ways. In doing so, we become more acquainted with grace because we behold the faithfulness of our God even in the valleys. We are delivered from our self-trust and more firmly established upon grace! This produces a greater boldness in the soul, and we declare with an even louder voice, that God’s ways are perfect and loving; we declare that you can, and MUST, trust God!
Or, we are driven to counsels outside of God’s word. Instead of being driven to the faith delivered to us once and for all, we turn to our own counsels or those of mankind. In doing so, we prove the kind of faith that we have, and we declare that we do not believe God’s ways are perfect and loving! We may keep our profession of faith, but we do nothing different than every other religion that professes to follow Christ while turning away from Him. We speak like the Jews in the apostle’s day, “Yes! They are saved by Christ, but they must also be circumcised to be saved!” A religion that drifts away from Christ, yet keeps its profession, always states that salvation is by Christ “and” (whatever they add to Christ). In other words, there is always an addition to Christ. In doing so, we say that Christ is not enough.
While the intimate circumstances test our faith and cause us to endure hard trials, we must look to our God and be comforted by Him. We must look to our God and be directed by Him. No one has known harder trials than our Lord and we see that He never compromised the word of God throughout all of those trials. Let us not turn to our own counsel when in the valleys, or to those of men, but rather, let us turn to Christ who sympathizes with our weaknesses. You must know that God is good and so are His commandments and statutes! The only One that you can trust is God! He is both the God of the hills and the valleys!
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