A Necessary Prayer

Psalm 43:1

    It is obvious that man has come a long way since the day of David. All our labor-saving devices, medical advances, means of transportation, bodily comforts and conveniences make life in the Old Testament look dull and monotonous. But we must not overlook the fact that man has also come a long way in sin! And that includes attacks upon the truth of God's word. Therefore when in Psalm 43:1 David wrote, "Judge me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation: O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man," we have a prayer that we ourselves are in great need of presenting to God.

    Although we do not have ''an ungodly nation'' from which we need physical and bodily deliverance, we are surrounded by deceitful and unjust men who twist the Scriptures and attack us with heretical teachings. We are attacked and also our children, as far as our spiritual lives are concerned, and are assaulted with sharp arrows of the lie and with crafty approaches that appeal to our flesh. We, too, should pray (PRC Psalter):

    Judge me, God of my salvation,
    Plead my cause, for Thee I trust;
    Hear my earnest supplication,
    Save me from my foes unjust.

    The sad and alarming fact today is that men do not take as seriously the attack of Satan and the men he uses to attack us with false doctrines, as they do the fear of a nuclear war that will bring material loss and painful death. Men fear other men far more than they fear Satan and his innumerable host that tries to turn us away from Christ, and to seek the things below rather than the things above in Christ's kingdom.

    But remember that not only is the antichrist coming soon to have control of the whole earth and all men upon it, but as we read in I John 2:18, there are already many antichrists who are working hard to deceive us and our children, seeking to get us to seek the world and look for the Antichrist rather than seek the things above and look for Christ to come.

    We have very much need to pray that God will save His church from the antichrists which try to turn us away from Christ and the salvation from sin and from the lie which He will bring.

Read: Psalm 43 
Psalter versification: #120:1

Meditations on the Heidelberg Catechism

Song for Meditation: Psalter #55
Why not sing along??

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Through the Bible in One Year
Read today:
1 Chronicles 16:37-43 ; I Chronicles 17 ; I Chronicles 18:1-17 
Romans 2:1-24 
Psalm 10:16-18 
Proverbs 19:8-9 
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Quote for Reflection:

“Therefore all men are conceived in sin, and by nature children of wrath, incapable of saving good, prone to evil, dead in sin, and in bondage thereto, and without the regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit, they are neither able nor willing to return to God, to reform the depravity of their nature, nor to dispose themselves to reformation. “There remain, however, in man since the fall, the glimmerings of natural light, whereby he retains some knowledge of God, of natural things, and of the differences between good and evil, and discovers some regard for virtue, good order in society, and for maintaining an orderly external deportment. But so far is this light of nature from being sufficient to bring him to a saving knowledge of God, and to true conversion, that he is incapable of using it aright even in things natural and civil. Nay further, this light, such as it is, man in various ways renders wholly polluted, and holds it in unrighteousness, by doing which he becomes inexcusable before God.”   – Canons of Dordt, III/IV, Art. 2-3