Tag: God is God

53.j. Wilderness – 17.p. “Yhere is no rock like our God”

 

 

Deu 32:31  For their rock is not as our Rock; our enemies are by themselves.

 Numbers 23:8   How can I curse whom God has not cursed? How can I denounce whom the LORD has not denounced?

 1 Samuel 2:2    “There is none holy like the LORD: for there is none besides you; there is no rock like our God.

  Jeremiah 40:3   The LORD has brought it about, and has done as he said. Because you sinned against the LORD and did not obey his voice, this thing has come upon you.

 Daniel 2:47   The king answered and said to Daniel, “Truly, your God is God of gods and Lord of kings, and a revealer of mysteries

 Daniel 3:29    Therefore I make a decree: Any people, nation, or language that speaks anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego shall be torn limb from limb, and their houses laid in ruins, for there is no other god who is able to rescue in this way.”

 Daniel 6:26-27    I make a decree, that in all my royal dominion people are to tremble and fear before the God of Daniel, for he is the living God, enduring forever; his kingdom shall never be destroyed, and his dominion shall be to the end.  He delivers and rescues; he works signs and wonders in heaven and on earth, he who has saved Daniel from the power of the lions.”

Firm foundation: the solid eternity of the rock on which we can build. Refuge: ‘refuge from the storm’; ‘my rock and my fortress and my high tower.’ 

Every man’s experience shows him that there is no such refuge anywhere else. We do not assert that every man consciously comes to that conclusion. All we say is that he would do so if he rightly pondered the facts. The history of every life is a history of disappointment. Take these particulars just stated and ask yourselves: What does experience say as to the possibility of our possessing such blessings apart from God? There is no need for us to exaggerate, for the naked reality is sad enough. If God is not our best Good, we have no solid good. Every other ‘rock’ crumbles into sand. 

Every man’s own nature tells him that God is his true Rock.

 Again I say that here I do not appeal to the surface of our consciousness, nor to men who have sophisticated themselves, nor to people who have sinned themselves, into hardness, but to the voice of the inner man which speaks in the depths of each man’s being. There is the cry of Want: the manifest want of the soul for God. There is the voice of Reason. There is the voice of Conscience.

Yet many of us will not take God for our Rock.

Surely it is a most extraordinary thing that men should be ‘judges,’ being convinced in their deepest consciousness that God is the only Foundation and Refuge, and yet that the conviction should have absolutely no influence on their conduct. (MacLaren)

God is certainly ever-present and a rock and refuge for those who are His children. Disobedient, complacent, neglectful, unappreciative, deaf, blind, self-reliant, self-worthy, lovers of self, proud, greedy, jealous, etc… as we may be, He has reached out to us and sent His Son to redeem us for His own purpose, pleasure, and plans. How are we to act in light of His blessings? How are we to think and speak? How are we to honor God the creator of all there is? By continually renewing our minds through His word and intentionally desiring to live to honor and glorify Him.

50.c. Wilderness – 14.i. ” Know therefore that the LORD your God is God”

 

Deu 7:6-10  “For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, and repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face.

 Titus 2:14    who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

 1 Peter 2:9    But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

 Malachi 3:17    “They shall be mine, says the LORD of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him.

Israel was holy in their standing before God before they were holy in their conduct. They were set apart unto God by His choosing (God has chosen you to be a people for Himself) and were then called to live as chosen people. As much as anything, their election meant the LORD set His love on them. Their motivation for such a total obedience was to be that they knew God loved them. (Guzik)

A proper understanding of the evil of sin, and of the mystery of a crucified Saviour, will enable us to perceive the justice of God in all his punishments, temporal and eternal. We must deal decidedly with our lusts that war against our souls; let us not show them any mercy, but mortify, and crucify, and utterly destroy them. Thousands in the world that now is, have been undone by ungodly marriages; for there is more likelihood that the good will be perverted, than that the bad will be converted. Those who, in choosing yoke-fellows, keep not within the bounds of a profession of religion, cannot promise themselves helps meet for them. (Henry)

For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God—that is, set apart to the service of God, or chosen to execute the important purposes of His providence. Their selection to this high destiny was neither on account of their numerical amount (for, till after the death of Joseph, they were but a handful of people); nor because of their extraordinary merits (for they had often pursued a most perverse and unworthy conduct); but it was in consequence of the covenant or promise made with their pious forefathers; and the motives that led to that special act were such as tended not only to vindicate God’s wisdom, but to illustrate His glory in diffusing the best and most precious blessings to all mankind. (Brown)

For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God,…. Not sanctified in a spiritual sense, or having principles of grace and holiness in them, from whence holy actions sprang, at least not all of them; but they were separated from all other people in the world to the pure worship and service of God in an external manner, and therefore were to avoid all idolatry, and every appearance of it: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself above all people that are upon the face of the earth; for special service and worship, and to enjoy special privileges and benefits, civil and religious; though they were not chosen to special grace here, and eternal glory hereafter; at least not all of them, only a remnant, according to the election of grace; yet they were typical of the chosen people of God in a special sense; who are chosen out of the world to be a peculiar people, to be holy here and happy hereafter; to enjoy communion with God in this life and that to come, as well as to serve and glorify him now and for evermore. (Gill)