Saved in a Marvelous Way

Psalm 86:10, 11

As a versification of Psalm 86:10, 11 we sing (PRC Psalter):

    In all thy deeds how great Thou art!
    The one true God Thy way make clear;
    Teach me with undivided heart
    To trust Thy truth, Thy name to fear.

And the Scripture version reads, "For Thou art great, and doest wondrous things: Thou art God alone, Teach me Thy way, O Lord; I will walk in Thy truth: Unite my heart to fear Thy name."

We do well to give serious thought to this truth today. For the greatness of God in the work we considered yesterday is so universally denied.

No one can deny that God chose some to everlasting life and not others. As we noted yesterday from Psalm 33:12, "Blessed is the nation Whose God is the Lord: and the people whom He hath chosen for His own inheritance."  But we must not make this choice one made in time and on the condition that one believes. That is limiting God's greatness and takes away from the wonderful work He has wrought upon us and for us. For it makes God's desire dependent upon man's help. Man must save himself from his unbelief, and then God will save him from his guilt and the curse.

Surely, as we saw three days ago, man is spiritually dead and cannot then fulfill any conditions. Dead men do not make it possible for the living God to do what He wants to have done. If they can, then what the psalmist inPsalm 86:10 wrote is not true.

Let us make the psalmist's prayer in verse 11 ours:

"Teach me Thy way, O Lord; I will walk in Thy truth: unite my heart to fear Thy name." Pray that you may see the way in which God saves us, and that it is a great and marvelous way, a miracle of His grace. Pray that you may walk in that truth that our salvation is a miracle and that we contributed absolutely nothing to it, and owe God all the thanks and praise. Pray that your heart may be united to fear Him as such a sovereign and powerful God, Who wrote our names in the Lamb's book of life before the foundation of the world.

Read: Psalm 86 
Psalter versification: #233:6
(Words and Music of the Psalter)

Daily Meditations on the Heidelberg Catechism

Through the Bible in One Year
Read today:
Joshua 3 ; Joshua 4 
Luke 14:7-35 
Psalm 80:1-19 
Proverbs 12:27-28 
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Quote for Reflection:

Herman Hoeksema: "In our ecumenical age, it is almost like a voice crying in the wilderness when we insist that the church must still exercise its power of the keys. Under the slogan of a wrong interpretation and application of John 17:21, ‘that they may all be one,’ most churches have long discarded the truth of the gospel, abrogated their confessions, and strive to unite into one ecumenical church ... In the light of this ecumenical striving the subject of the keys of the kingdom of heaven has become antiquated. Yet, the true church, however small, may not follow this false ecumenical trend, but must insist on the exercise of the power of the keys" (The Triple Knowledge, vol. 2, p. 693).