Here is my favorite pic of my beautiful fiancee. Her parents have this picture and one of my wearing her pink vest on their fridge. It's a little embarassing. Hopefully i'll have some pictures of her not holding dead animals soon.
I just returned from month-long travels. I want to give a special thanks to Mike and Katie and Shep for hanging out and letting me crash at their place. Also to Woodlands Church in Stevens Point for being so welcoming.
My least favorite part of the trip was looking for Mike and Katie's cat for an hour from 2:30-3:30 in the morning because i thought i accidentally let her out and she ran away. Turns out she was in the house the whole time. I think i drove around the block 10 times in a sleepless stupor looking for that thing, and then got up 3 hours later and headed to Stevens Point.
My favorite part of the trip were the weddings. I got to attend two wonderful weddings for Aaron and Michelle Larsen and Eric and Alaina Lashbrook. It got me thinking about covenants, specifically God's covenant of grace with His people. Oh I hope everyone reading this will be under that covenant! Spurgeon's morning devotion this morning was on the text from Psalm 103- "bless the LORD, oh my soul, and forget not all His benefits." It is a wonderful thing Christ has done for us, making full atonement for our sin and bringing us into a covenant relationship with God that can never be broken. We have been brought from death to life, the most miraculous act, but more than that, we have been given a standing with God and a relationship with the Most High that sustains us and will guide us safely to our eternal home. "When we've been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun." I am excited to see how these two marriages bear witness to God's covenant with His Church. What do you praise God for when you think of the verse "forget not all His benefits?"
8 comments:
"It is a wonderful thing Christ has done for us, making full atonement for our sin and bringing us into a covenant relationship with God that can never be broken."
If the covenant was established in Luke 22 and Judas was a partaker of it, didn't he break the covenant?
Anonymous: The big "IF" in your question is that of Judas's part in the covenant. The real question is ... was Judas truly a believer? As fallen people, even those of us in Christ commit sins, however the covenant has been sealed by Christ's obedience, not our's. God is the covenant keeper. Left up to us, we are covenant breakers as Israel demonstrated throughout history. Christ fulfilled the law thereby securing the covenant on our behalf. A true believer is held by Christ's perfect work forever. When all other teaching from the Scriptures is considered, we have to conclude that Judas never knew Jesus as the eleven disciples knew Him, therefore He could never have entered into that covenant relationship.
Monika,
Thanks for your thoughts.
But why can't we consider a "covenant relationship" to be different from being saved? If Israel from the Old Testament typifies the Church of the New we can draw the conclusion that one can be a part of the covenant without being saved. One can fall under covenant benefits (i.e. going to church, partaking of the sacraments, fellowship with believers, etc) without actually be saved. This is what I propose of Judas-who was part of the covenant. He drank from the cup and ate of the bread, he partook of Christ for three years. But he was not saved, he was not part of the elect.
What I guess I am just trying to point out is that the covenant is breakable. One can be in covenant relation with Christ and still be unsaved.
Nice picture of your "graceful doe"! I'm always impressed by a female holding dead animals...you've got a keeper.
Bro, I love Psalm 103! It has been such a source of blessing to me the first half of this year.
To answer your question, "What do you praise God for when you think of the verse 'forget not all His benefits?'"...I would have to go to verses 8-10 which say, "The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins nor repay us according to our iniquities."
WOW!! Praise God that He has not dealt with me according to my sins! And praise Him that he did not keep His anger forever, but poured out His wrath (which I deserved) on His precious Son.
As I was sitting with some friends last night and sharing a cold beverage I began sharing my testimony and praised God so much for rescuing me from the wrath that I deserved.
I've heard it said that God saved us from Himself, for Himself and by Himself!
When I think about Psalm 103 my mind is immediately directed towards Christ's active obedience. It was not simply that in the atonement of Christ our sins were forgiven. If this were the case we would only be restored to Adam's original position. But rather, Christ's atonement secured for us an eternal redemption in that his righteousness was given to us when our sin was given to him (2 Cor 5:21). The benefits of Christ can be seen in his active obedience being given to us that we might be secured in our justification.
Dear Anonymous,
Thanks for your input. I think you are mostly right. As we talked about in our doctrines study this year, we do break covenant. But God never breaks it. It is an everlasting covenant, however. As is marriage, which mirrors it. Here's food for thought. I don't think the covenant is necessarily nullified because of one party's breaking of it. It may heap up sin upon sin for that party beacuse they broke the covenant they were bound in. That is part of the reason divorce is so bad. The union through covenant is not nullified though the convenant be broken. I'll stop now to keep this shorter. Thanks for your catch, though. I can always count on you to read things closely!
Monika,
I realy like what you were writing as well. I think John 17:12 is of much use in this case. Judas is a special scenario in regards to salvation, however i think we do need to draw some distinctions between salvation and being in the covenant. It's a sticky topic, but i've found Louis Berkhoff's systematic theology or manual of Christian doctrine of much help on the topic.
I praise God for fabulous children, even when they use big words.
I turn to Peter, specifically 2 Peter 3:8-9, when thinking about the promise. God doesn't want anyone to perish, even after they've decided that's better than being part of the kingdom. Knowing the triune God, accepting what He has done for us, and living to further the kindgom are three separate acts, only two of which culminate in the joy of eternal life in the presence of the throne of Grace. Some plant, some water, some get to see the results: 20, 50 and 80 percent growth. Everyone's response in thankfulness to the offer is different.
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