What Satan dangled before our eyes seems to be good. His first lie to mankind reveals that. He told Eve that disobeying God would enrich man's life. Man would become a god! And by every temptation he denies that God gives us a good and perfect gift.
But listen to what God tells us through the apostle James. In James 1:18 we read, "Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures."
The sad thing is that Satan made us to be the firstfruits of his evil work here on this earth. By causing Adam and Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Satan begot them to be the firstfruits of his fallen earthly creatures.
And today Satan, in many clever and appealing ways, tries to get us to be the earthly firstfruits of his evil works. Think of the ridiculous, godless theory of evolution, which cannot explain how man could get a better mind and will than the lower creatures from which they claim man came. But today there are so many devilish, false doctrines about Christ and His cross. Man is tempted to believe that we can become spiritually alive by "accepting" Christ, before we really have any spiritual life, since we all died spiritually in Adam.
No, God's will begets us, making us spiritually alive, so that we can desire the salvation Christ has earned for us. Through His Son and His cross He saves us, not through our acceptance of an offer.
Reject evolution, but also all the false doctrines which make our salvation depend upon our doing something, before God has caused us already to be born again. He begat us with the word of truth, not because we accepted Christ. He made us firstfruits. We did not first do something for which the almighty God had to wait. We are HIS firstfruits. Thank Him for that! Boast not of what you did.
Read: John 3:1-17
Meditations on the Heidelberg Catechism
Through the Bible in One Year
Read today:
II Kings 9:14-37
II Kings 10:1-31
Acts 17
Psalm 144:1-15
Proverbs 17:27-28
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Quote for Reflection:
"The old nature, with its carnal lusts, remains until we breathe our last. And it is exactly those Christians that are spiritually most sensitive and that have advanced farthest on the way of sanctification that will most deeply bemoan their imperfect state , and confess that they have but a small beginning of new obedience. It is they that feel the need of the constant prayer, ‘Deliver us from evil.’." – Herman Hoeksema in The Triple Knowledge (pg. 632)
Additional Info
- Date: 26-June
