THE RULE OF LAW
Suggested Reading: Psalms 48-50
Click scripture link to read online or HERE to listen online (then click the symbol of the audio speaker above the scripture portion).
Israel's flag flies proudly over Mt. Zion. In the distance you can see the Church of the Apostles and the Church of the Dormition. The first-century Christians met on Mt. Zion, where they built a Judaeo-Christian synagogue-church that became known as the Church of the Apostles. Over the centuries a succession of churches were built on the site and later destroyed. These included the great Byzantine Basilica Church of Hagia Sion (Holy Zion), known as the "Mother of all Churches," which covered the entire area now occupied by the Church of the Dormition, the Cenacle and the Tomb of David. Also located on Mt. Zion is the traditional site of the Upper Room, where Jesus instituted the remembrance of His broken body, His shed blood, and where the Holy Spirit came upon the 120 people on the birthday of the Church (Acts 2).
GOOGLE MAPS – To see where the photo was taken, click HERE.
Key Verse: Psalm 49:15
But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave,
For He shall receive me.
The first two verses of today’s reading (Psalm 48) are sung, probably not with the same tune as the sons of Korah, but still in worship of the one and only “LORD” Who is “GREATLY TO BE PRAISED” (click here for a recording and why not sing along).
Psalm 48 is an amazing example of God revealing Himself long before people had much knowledge of God’s plan for resurrection, Heaven, and eternal life. C. S. Lewis states that God chose this approach because He wanted His people to love and serve Him for Himself, and not for the benefits they would receive from Him. True love can never be based on future rewards. Yet God’s people did eagerly seek Him in love, and as is the case of today’s key verse, often receiving glimpses of eternal truth.
In Psalm 50, Asaph brings us to the reality that we must not forget the consequences of forgetting God. As well as being our great King and our Redeemer, we must remember at all times that He is also our Judge & Jury, and because of His holiness and His “Rule of Law,” we will suffer the consequences of breaking His laws. Yes, we have the assurance that our sins are forgiven, but we must never forget that we will continue in this life to reap the results of sinful choices. In our next reading, we have David’s prayer of repentance for adultery. God forgave David, but in this life, the penalty of his sin was terrible.
PRAYER FOR TODAY:
Lord God, I am very aware that in this life I will reap what I have sown. Not only will I be affected by the consequences of my sin, but I bring sorrow and hardship on others, particularly my family members. I ask Your forgiveness Lord, and I have the assurance that You forgive me, but I also know that my body and the circumstances I have created by bad choices do not forgive. Therefore, Lord God, I pray fervently that You will keep me from sinning. Grant me the grace to truly repent of my sin so that I quit sinning and begin living a truly holy life 24/7. In the Name of the One who lived a sinless life, Jesus my Lord! Amen!
100 PERSONAL WORDS:
This blog is posted at 6 a.m. Later this morning I’m scheduled to bring the morning message to the annual convention of members of the Christian Legal Fellowship (click here for information on the CLF). You may know of a lawyer who should join up. Some of the lawyers will read this blog before I speak, so I’ll wait until tomorrow to share with you the core of my message. However, I announced a topic on Thursday evening at the first session of their conference, “Henry the VIII and the Lawyers.” I like to start with something either so beautiful or so ridiculous that those who hear will have a hook for their memories.
Here in the western countries, we have deliberately subjected ourselves to “the rule of law.” Our Queen and other heads of state, along with our governments, police forces, the military, businesses, and individuals must all submit to the laws put in place by our elected governments. If a government is to function as our founders intended, it must submit to the highest law…The Rule of God’s Law! This is why the founders of Canada unanimously voted to make our definitive statement for our existence, “He [God] shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth” (Psalm 72:8 – see photo below). I confess with great sadness that my Canada has sinned against this commitment of our founders. I pray fervently that God will be merciful to Canada and Canadians. I love God, my eternal Saviour, and I fear God, the eternal Judge. The last eight statements in today’s Bible reading (50:16-23) puts the fear of breaking God’s laws into me. “God, be merciful to me a sinner!” AMEN!!!
Yours for living 24/7 under the rule of law, both man’s law and God’s law!!!
David
Psalm 72:8 is engraved into the stone of the main entrance on the centre block of the parliament buildings in Ottawa, Canada's capital city. Rising directly above these foundational words is the magnificent Peace Tower.
The Lord bless you today David with strength for the task,
liberty in the Spirit to speak the message that God
has given to you for this occasion and may the Word
of God fall on receptive hearts, and bring forth lasting
fruit to the glory of God. Amen, Amen!!!
Amen!
Let it be so dear Lord!
Yes Lord I agree and you said any two agreeing it shall be done by our father in heaven Amen
Amen!!
“God be merciful to me a sinner,” indeed!
Strong message in Psalm 50 about not judging and gossiping about those closest to us. A prudent reminder for me, especially, as I fall into this trap. Alas, the ending of the Psalm reassures me that my praise and worship is what strengthens me. Keeping my focus on Jesus!
“Now consider this, you who forget God,
Lest I tear you in pieces,
And there be none to deliver:
Whoever offers praise glorifies Me;
And to him who orders his conduct aright
I will show the salvation of God.” Ps 50:22-23
Thanks for the link, David–great worship song to start the morning. In the House of the Lord, we will sing songs of praise and worship with our hands held high in honour of Your glory, Oh Lord, Most High!
Wishing all saints a precious day!
Amen!
Viewed a movie last night on Grace TV – “Left Behind”. Incredible. Turned for another movie but found nothing worth watching or most were just not in any way pleasing to God. I decided to look at a Christian DVD. Without looking at the title I put one on. It had a picture of Jesus on it so I thought it would be good no matter what the subject was. Would you believe it? It was “Left Behind” in a different cover. I let it play but during the night I awoke with a nightmare type of awakening. I saw a picture and frame fall to the ground. I knew the person in the picture but this morning I can’t remember who it was! Peter and Paul LaLonde made the movies and they are startling. People have to be awakened. I think time is short. I pray that the Lord will speak through you today David M and everyone else too. God bless you all.
That is pretty powerful, Doreen!
2 Peter: 2 talks about the angels who rejected God’s ways and are reserved for eternal punishment and also reminds us not to be like a dog that returns to it’s vomit. Peter said, if we know the truth, then reject it, the end is even worse than if we never knew it. I will now offer my testimony because it is relevant to the promise of Jesus’ salvation of which David Mainse speaks and to what Peter said. I was born again when I was 18. For much of my time, I was not actively trying to live a christian life but did not deny the truth of Jesus and did not seek sinful ways too much: sort of serving two masters but hearing warnings from the Holy Spirit which stopped me from giving in to some ways. Still, I was slowly accepting the world more and more. In the year 2000, I started to become much more sinful for a short time but then got a girlfriend and lived faithful to her but not fully committed to her. We broke up ten months later. By 2004, I was rejecting the truth of Jesus. I had prayed to God many times in my life not to let me go to hell. A strange experience happened in late January 2004. It was like a vision. God gave me a choice. The world or Him. I chose Him. He needed to smite me like a dog over and over for a couple of years to bring me to His way. This is not what God wants from us – to be like dogs that need to be smote but I am grateful that He brought me in His path. In this I also got to overcome the false spirits who pretend to be Him and also some very wicked people who hate God and wanted to make me as them. They are still in the world but they can’t have me. It is like a flood. The world hates Jesus. I am not perfect but I know that God just wants me to try. The harder, the better. I think I was very wise for sincerely praying to God not to let me go to hell. I remain fearful of the warnings against rejecting the truth but in despair, cry up to God.
Yes Lord be merciful to me a sinner
But thank you precious saviour for your grace and love and peace
For the joy of the Lord is my strength
And we all need you as our own personal saviour
GOD BE MERCIFUL TO ME A SINNER
WE LOVE YOU LORD AND THANK YOU FOR YOUR PRECIOUS WORD
GOD BLESS ALL THE READERS AND HELP US ALL BE READY FOR YOUR RETURN AND DRAW ALL WHO DONT KNOW YOU BY YOUR SPIRIT IN JESUS NAME AMEN
Amen!
Amen
A while back I was talking to a non believing family member about my faith and how our Lord is our Savior and his response to me was— if God is so forgiving, he will just live his life the way he wants to now, and on his death bed, he will repent, God will forgive him, thus obtaining the benefit of both worlds.
I don’t know if he was being serious or mocking me, but I didn’t know how to respond to what he said at the time. Scripture does speak many would join the Kingdom at the end of the day and get the same wages as those who toil during the heat,so I suppose death bed conversion is better than none at all. But his statement made me sad nonetheless.
Think back I should have said if you are willing to do things God’s way for all eternity then why not start now? The joy of repentance isn’t getting your ‘get our jail’ free card to escape hell, although that is good, but the joy of repentance is gaining personal relationship with God. Those of us know the Lord and know His presence are witness to that amazing relationship—and the more we fellowship with our Lord and experience the benefit of that relationship, the more we understand that no earthly pleasure sin can offer us can compare to it. The closer we are to Him the less tempting sin becomes for us because sin cannot give us what truly satisfies deepest long, although in our flesh we are never fully immune from sin.
The sadness I felt that day with my relative is the realization that many non-believers mistakenly think God is trying to control them, when He is in fact trying to free them from being control by sin. We were all addicted to our sin nature until God offer us a way to become clean and sober. And like all recovering addicts we live one day at a time in the Grace of God.
Well stated, Donna! It is only through God’s marvelous gift of grace that any of us may live in through Him, why wait?
Some doctrines seem at first Godly but come from Satan to deceive. In modern times, I think of Warren Jeffs who called himself a prophet but was making young girls do sexual things to him. Also, the Quran sounds holy. It talks about repentance but it is just mimicking truth to deceive people.
I am almost done reading “this far by faith” and yes! It is one of the best books I ever read…your life has really been a race for Jesus. Oh how I long to have even half the passion and love you have for Christ:) pray for me, I long to serve and love Him and I want to do it right:) I particularly enjoyed the story of ” you know who” and that of ” your finest member” last night ! It’s amazing how God changes people. May God continue to keep you healthy and alive David! We need people like you with pure faith and love for God, to learn from. God continue to bless you! AMEN
Donna M, a question I will ask someone like that is, ‘how sure are you that you will get the chance to lay on a dying bed before you die? What if yours turns out to be a sudden death? What if you go to sleep and never wake up? ‘ no one knows tomorrow, for it Is only by His grace that we get to see a new day everyday and every new day we see is another chance being given us to make things right! Yes!!! He loves us that much:)
Thanks Patricia for the suggestion. I did mention that to him that day, but didn’t include it in my retelling not to make my post too long. His response was if there was a Judgement he would just repent then and God would forgive him. I told him that there was nothing in Scripture to suggest you could repent on Judgement Day itself, but then he just went into this speech that if God was forgiving he would forgive him then. Sometimes people are just not ready to hear, anyway I will keep planting seeds, trusting the Holy Spirit will grow them in all my non believing family members.
It shall be well sister Donna. I personally believe that it takes the father , the son and the Holy Spirit to convert a sinner completely. The spirit is mostly willing but the flesh is weak, but when you have the 3in1 inside you, there is nothing the devil can do to overcome the flesh. I have been trying really hard to make my entire family an example of a good christian family, but I have come to the conclusion that, I can only pray for for them, believe that at God’s own time it shall be well and continue being a good example of a believer. May our good Lord make us all ready before we take our last breath
Amen
Amen!
http://youtu.be/zcgPcB-_Pzg I love this song so much, you may enjoy it too:)
Dear Patricia,
Can you double-check, I think the link you gave is wrong… it directs us to a Mr. Clean commercial with nothing else afterwards.
Well, we can all use that extra scrubbing action of Mr. Clean, nothing wrong with that!
Sorry about that Carole. Please Go to YouTube and look up ‘God Speaking’ by Maids
Mandisa
Dear Rev David M
Thank you once more for your great teaching. What a truly amazing God we serve and always there right on time, never too late and never too soon! Again today, as I was rushing for a wonderful wedding shower, I was filled by all the comments of all the bloggers, so yes thank You, Jesus for being right there in our midst.
Blessings to everyone!
xxx Carole
God bless us all! Amen!!!!!!
YES, GREAT IS THE LORD AND GREATLY TO BE PRAISED!!!
Blessings to you all for a great week. A real treat tuning in. You are all quite inspiring. Let us all drop our selfish ways and walk more with Jesus’s heart. Hard thing to do. Perseverance. We are so loved!
🙂
M.