Psalm 65:4
Before you do a day's work, you have no right to the wages of such work. If you do the work before you were chosen as an employee in that office or factory, you have no right to ask for wages for the work which you performed.
So it is that the basic blessing we need is the forgiveness of our sins, and without it we have no right to any blessing. Christ had to do the work of suffering our punishment and of fulfilling God's law in our stead. And we had to be chosen in Him.
That is why David, moved by God, wrote in Psalm 65:4, "Blessed is the man whom Thou choosest, and causeth to approach unto Thee, that he may dwell in Thy courts: we shall be satisfied with the goodness of Thy house, even of Thy holy temple."
It all depends on God's eternal, sovereign election. God is the one Who chooses those for whom Christ will die. Christ must be The Employee for this work: but we must belong to Him, or His work is not for us. What David writes then means that only those are blessed whom God has chosen as the ones for whom Christ would die.
Iniquities and transgressions bring us into debt before God. When we sin, we fail to perform a work of love that God demands of us.. Such failure does not simply call for a withholding of a blessing, but also the suffering of an everlasting punishment to its end. Christ, the eternal Son of God, can give eternal value to a work He performs in a moment of time.
How blessed then are they who are chosen in Christ. Sing it thus (PRC Psalter):
How blest are they whom Thou dost choose
To come and in Thy courts abide:
Communing in Thy holy house,
With good we shall be satisfied.
What praise then is it not that we owe God! It all depended on Him, and all the praise must be bestowed upon Him.
Read: Ephesians 1
Psalter versification: #166:3
(Words and Music of the Psalter)
Meditations on the Heidelberg Catechism
Song for Meditation: Psalter #331
Why not sing along??
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Through the Bible in One Year
Read today:
Ezekiel 10 ; Ezekiel 11:1-25
Hebrews 6:1-20
Psalm 105:16-36
Proverbs 27:1-2
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Quote for Reflection:
"Abraham was truly the covenant-head of his posterity in the line of Isaac and Jacob, in whose descendants the promises made to him were fulfilled. It was in virtue of this covenant with Abraham, that the Jews inherited their distinguished privileges as a nation ... which brought them into the relation of a ‘peculiar people’ to Jehovah; and hence, in his patriarchal character and acts, he stood forth as the representative or federal head of the nation, so far as all the promises, privileges, and institutions of the Judaical were concerned. He was both their natural progenitor and their covenant-head, by the appointment of God ... Therefore, when Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek as a priest of the most High God, and received a blessing from him, it was a historical fact intentionally introduced by God’s providence, with a view to its becoming a feature of the type (so to speak) which Melchizedek, in his history and functions, was foreordained to present, of the supreme and eternal High Priest." ~ F. S. Sampson
Additional Info
- Date: 4-November
Heys, John A.
Rev. John A. Heys was born on March 16, 1910 in Grand Rapids, MI. He was ordained and installed into the ministry at Hope, Walker, MI in 1941. He later served at Hull, Iowa beginning in 1955. In 1959 he accepted the call to serve the South Holland, IL Protestant Reformed Church. He received and accepted the call to Holland, Michigan Protestant Reformed Church in 1967. He retired from the active ministry in 1980. He entered into glory on February 16, 1998.