September 9, 2018
Scripture:
Hymn 367 - When He cometh, when He cometh
Prayer
When we were up in Rockway recently, you could see lots of stars at night. There are 250 billion stars in our galaxy, and about 100 billion stars in the universe. The Psalm that we’re going to look at today talks about the stars.
Psalm 19
When we lookup in the night sky, the stars declare the glory of God to us. He has given us the stars, sun, and moon to show us His power in creating, so that we can give Him glory. These things didn’t happen by accident, God created them and they exist perfectly without messing up because He controls them. Everyone in the world can see them, and so they will have no excuse for not knowing God. They may have not heard the gospel, but creation is a witness that God exists.
Some of these verses talk about sunrise and sunset. The sun actually stands still as we spin around it, but to us it appears to move. This is more beauty that declares the glory of God. God, in His power and wisdom, has put the sun in place. We can enjoy it, but let’s also realize who made it. Psalm 147:4 tells us that the Lord has named every star. We have also given names to many constellations, or groups of stars. A brother named Mr.Hayward (who has now passed away) wrote about how the twelve main constellations can be used to show the gospel.
The Psalmist then uses a bunch of words to describe the Word of God: perfect, sure, right, pure, clean, true, and righteous all describe the Bible. God has given us creation, but he has also given us His word so that we can know Him and understand Him better. These are all good things, better than gold and sweet honey.
It’s always nice to get an award. Here we see that we will be awarded a blessing for reading and obeying the Word of God. It can save us, give us wisdom, rejoice our hearts, and show us the path to follow. Without the word we would make wrong choices, but by following the word we will be blessed.
David then asked the Lord for grace. We can ask for protection for the words of our mouth—which are important, because they can either bless or curse—and the meditations of our hearts—which is where our actions come from. They should be pleasing in the sight of our Lord and Saviour. May the Bible keep us in the right path.
So may we give God glory, not just for what we see in the sky, but for all of creation. God has created it all in His power and wisdom, and has given us His word to guide and direct us and keep us in the right way.
John 5:17-35
In this chapter we can see the harmony between the Father and the Son. Jesus is either your Saviour or Judge.
1 Peter 1:17
The Son is the Judge according to verse twenty-nine of our chapter. Everyone is involved in the resurrection whether to life or death. The verse in Peter has to do with works, while our passage has to do with beliefs. We “have not yet seen all thing under His [Jesus] feet” In Peter we have to do with the Father.
Verse twenty-four is important. It brings in the assurance of salvation. “I say unto you” makes it personal. He singles everyone out. When someone asks, “How do you know?” you can says that God said and point them to this verse. There are other verses as well. It is important to base our salvation on the Word of God.
“Believeth” means it’s by faith not just on Jesus, but also on Him who sent Him. The Lord will be either Saviour or Judge for every person. There once was a man riding in a carriage pulled by a horse. Something frightened the horse and it became out of control. The young man’s life was in danger when another man step out from the side of the road and calmed the horse down. The man was a local judge. Sometime later the young man got in trouble with the law, and ended up in court. When he had a chance to speak he expressed how happy he was he had this judge and told how he saved him. The man told him, “Son, I was your saviour that day. Today I’m your judge”. Those are two different roles. We can say we’ve accepted our Judge as our Saviour. Our debt was paid at Calvary.
John 3:17, Romans 8:1
The Lord brings us from spiritual death to spiritual life.
“In Him was life” (v.26) Eternal judgement is an awful thing. In verse twenty-four only some heard His Word, but everyone in the graves will hear His voice when He calls. We know from verse twenty-nine that not every one hears at the same time. There is a second resurrection after the millennium. These verses make us see how important it is to hear and believe on the Son of God.
Hymn 216 How good is the God we adore
Prayer