Thy mercy, my God, is the theme
of my song. Some have surmised that the Lord
created the world as a grand experiment to see what kind of
responses that men would make, and then, based on the outcome
of that experiment, decided what to do next. Generally, they also
tell us that He is presently doing the same thing. Yet the
scripture indicates that He knows the end from the beginning. The
source of His knowledge is not mere prescience or the ability
to see things before they occur, but rather because He is the
one who directs all things to occur according to the good pleasure
of His will. In order to exalt His Son and magnify the glory
of His grace, the Lord did create this world and all of its inhabitants.
It pleased Him to set a stage upon which Jesus Christ, the
only begotten Son of God, would appear in His appointed time
to secure the redemption of a people which He loved with an everlasting
love and chose in Christ as the objects of that redemption before
the world was ever created. The Lord often teaches His truth
by both comparison and contrast, and such is illustrated throughout
the rich history of the nation of Israel upon the earth. We
see the love and deliverance of the Lord demonstrated for
His people as He time and again fought battles for the children
of Israel and caused them to triumph over their enemies. Over
and again he demonstrated his long-suffering and mercy to their
backslidings and waywardness. Yet it is also pleased the Lord
to show the great contrast between law and grace by his use of this
same nation. National Israel was the people
whom the Lord placed under the coded law when he delivered it
to Moses on Mount Sinai. By doing so, he was not trying
to find out if they would keep it, but would use them to demonstrate
the impossibility of sinful men to adhere to the law and to earn
any benefit thereby. Those promises of blessings which
were conditional upon their obedience to the law were made null and
void by their inability to abide by that code which was delivered
to them, and thus they mirror the weakness of all flesh. Paul
said that the law is holy and the commandment holy and just
and good. It derives its power from him who gave it and cannot
be in any wise destroyed or overturned apart from his decree. As long
as God remains as an absolute sovereign, then all of his decrees
must stand and cannot be altered by anybody himself who changes
not. Paul also said that the law is
weak. How then can that which is fashioned by the very hand
of him who created all things be weak? certainly not in that
it has not accomplished his design for it. The design of the law
was not to prevent sin, but to uncover sin. Paul said, What
shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay,
I had not known sin, but by the law. Paul was a self-righteous
Pharisee who delighted in the law, as religious men are prone
to do. He considered himself to be living a righteous life
according to the law, and by the outward standards of it he
was blameless. Yet he confesses that when he gained a true understanding
of what the law was, and God was pleased to reveal to him
the inward rebellion of his heart, he was utterly slain by it, and
could then see the mass of corruption which he was by nature. The little
word, if, is a huge word. If the promises of God to his
chosen flock, such as, I will never leave thee, nor forsake
thee, are predicated in any way upon an if, then we have no hope. Israel, being under the law and
subject thereto, could not inherit the promise, because they could
not fulfill the provisions necessary to gain it, because of the weakness
of the flesh, which is that which makes the law weak, or unable
to grant favor to fallen men. That which the Lord would do
for the true Israel of God, however, is not in any wise dependent
upon the conformity or obedience of those who are the objects
of His sovereign mercy. All curses which the law might
breathe out are taken away in that which Christ has done for
them, and His obedience has become theirs. There is therefore now
no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk
not after the flesh, but after the spirit. For the law of the
spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law
of sin and death. For what the law could not do,
in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son
in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in
the flesh. He has not overturned the law,
but has fulfilled it in its every jot and tittle in their behalf.
His promises to them are yea and amen, and are in no wise
provisional or conditional. Wherein God, willing more abundantly
to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel,
confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things in which
it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation
who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before
us. which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure
and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil. Whether
the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus made a high priest
forever after the order of Melchizedek. If you would like a free transcript
of this broadcast, email us at forthepoor at windstream.net.