God is near to His people encircling them in His love. And when the time is ripe He will judge the wicked and cast them into everlasting punishment. For His name is the Almighty One, and He can and does perform the wondrous work of saving His people. But His name is also the Holy God, and He can stand no sin before His eyes. That is why the psalmist writes in Psalm 75:2, 3 , ''When I shall receive the congregation I will judge uprightly. The earth and all the inhabitants thereof are dissolved: I bear up the pillars thereof."
To us it may not look that way at times. Surely in the days when the antichrist shall try to starve us to death, while the wicked have a life far better than man ever had since Adam and Eve were driven out of paradise, it will be hard to believe that God is good to His church and is near her in His love.
But God has set a definite day and minute when He will bring His whole church into glory and will judge the wicked rightly by putting them in everlasting punishment. Therefore we have reason to sing:
Thy righteous judgment Thou hast said,
Shall in due time appear,
And Thou Who didst establish it
Wilt fill the earth with fear.
Then we shall see the goodness of God as we never before saw it. God will bring His church, or as here called, the congregation, the multitude He gathered as the body of Christ, into heavenly glory. Then the earth will be filled with the fear of God.
No, we will not be afraid either of the wicked or of God. Satan and his kingdom shall be "dissolved," that is, removed from this earth. And we will have fear in the sense of respect and awe. For that word ''fear'' is the one used in the Old Testament for faith in God.
In a righteous judgment God delivers us from all our enemies and brings us through Christ out of all our guilt, and free from the power of sin that is now in our flesh. Surely we have every reason to say that He is good. We will do so when we reach that glory; but we have reason to thank Him now and in every circumstance of life.
Read: Revelation 7
Psalter versification: #206:2
Meditations on the Heidelberg Catechism
Song for Meditation: Psalter #110
Why not sing along??
Through the Bible in One Year
Read today:
1 Kings 9
1 Kings 10:1-29
Acts 8:14-40
Psalm 130:1-8
Proverbs 17:2-3
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Quote for Reflection:
"In the infinite wisdom of the Lord of all the earth, each event falls with exact precision into its proper place in the unfolding of His divine plan. Nothing, however small, however strange, occurs without His ordering, or without its particular fitness for its place in the working out of His purpose; and the end of all shall be the manifestation of His GLORY, and the accumulation of His PRAISE." Benjamin B. Warfield
Additional Info
- Date: 12-June
