Posted on 06/15/2018 5:59:40 AM PDT by Gamecock
A survey by George Gallup Jr. revealed a startling trend in our culture. According to Gallup, the evidence seems to indicate that there are no clear behavioral patterns that distinguish Christians from non-Christians in our society. We all seem to be marching to the same drummer, looking to the shifting standards of contemporary culture for the basis of what is acceptable conduct. What everybody else is doing seems to be our only ethical norm.
This pattern can emerge only in a society or a church wherein the law of God is eclipsed. The very word law seems to have an unpleasant ring to it in our evangelical circles.
Let’s try an experiment. Read the passages from Psalm 119 that accompany this devotion. Try to crawl into the skin of the writer and experience empathy. Try to feel what he felt when he wrote these lines thousands of years ago.
Does this sound like a modern Christian? Do we hear people talk about longing passionately for the law of God? Do we hear our friends expressing joy and delight in God’s commandments?
Coram Deo
Do you long passionately for God’s law? Do you express joy and delight in His commandments?
Passages for Further Study
Psalm 119:97 Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day.
Psalm 119:11 I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. 12 Blessed are you, O Lord; teach me your statutes!
Psalm 119:131 I open my mouth and pant, because I long for your commandments.
The Law Commands and Makes Us Know
Isaac Watts (1709)
1. The Law commands and makes us know
What duties to our God we owe;
But ’tis the Gospel must reveal
Where lies our strength to do His will.
2. The Law discovers guilt and sin
And shows how vile our hearts have been;
The Gospel only can express
Forgiving love and cleansing grace.
3. What curses doth the Law denounce
Against the man that fails but once!
But in the Gospel Christ appears,
Pard’ning the guilt of numerous years.
4. My soul, no more attempt to draw
Thy life and comfort from the Law.
Fly to the hope the Gospel gives;
The man that trusts the promise lives.
Ping
Amen gamecock. ROMANS 7 gives great insight into Pauls struggles and understanding on this. I too long for Gods law as it is right to do so but I cling to His everlasting grace for mortal fearthat without it only hell awaits
Love me some Isaac watts.
I love Psalm 119.
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