Security through Faith in God

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Thursday and Friday, January 15 and 16, 2009
Ps 16-18, 22; Isa 41:17-29; 42:17; Eph 2:11-3:13; Mk 2:1-22

Lord, I have no good thing except You, and I delight in Your people. Those who choose other gods multiply their sorrows; YHWH is my Portion, and I have a good heritage! I keep Him before me always, and I will not be shaken. So my heart is glad and my soul rejoices; even my mortal body is secure. I stand in Christ’s righteousness; God keeps me as the apple of His eye and hides me under His wings. I am defended by the Almighty One. I love You, Lord, my Rock and my Strength! I am saved from all enemies as I call upon the Lord. Death and illness have tried to grasp me, but God wrenches me away and protects me. He puts me on a high rock, above the storms. YHWH lights my lamp and lights my way. His ways are perfect. God puts my enemies under Himself. I belong to the one, true, living God. I face trial, and cry out to God as though He had forsaken me; but I know God will bless me; and I will testify for Him at every opportunity. He has acted in righteousness.

YHWH provides refreshment—food and water and shelter at need. Let those who are presumptuous put up or shut up! The world is in His hands. And He has placed Jesus, His servant and Son, over the creation; God’s Spirit rests on Him, and He brings justice and peace. He will not fail. He is given as the living Covenant, the Light of the nations; He opens blind eyes, He releases prisoners. YHWH is His name, and He shares His glory with no other. Let us sing to our Lord a new song; let all creation glorify our Lord!

The Gentiles once were alienated from God, strangers to the covenant. But God has brought Jew and Gentile together under His Christ, Jesus. He is our Peace; He has broken down the barriers that separated us from God and from one another; He has fulfilled and ended the righteous requirements of the law; He is the new Adam, the perfect human being, bringing hostility to an end by absorbing all righteous wrath into Himself. All in Christ are citizens together in God’s household. We constitute His body, filled with His Spirit. God has revealed this mystery chiefly through the work of Jesus and the writings of Paul: Gentiles are fellow hears, members of the same body, and partakers in the Messiah Jesus through the gospel. We have access to God and the fulfillment of God’s eternal purpose in and through Jesus the Messiah, our Lord. Suffering is temporary; this blessing is eternal!

As Jesus taught a crowd at His residence in Capernaum, four friends brought a paralytic to Him, removing the roof and lowering their friend to Jesus’ feet. When Jesus perceived the friends’ faith, He forgave the paralytic his sins. Some scribes in the crowd questioned this in their hearts, believing that Jesus blasphemed when He took authority to forgive sins. So He confronted them as well: ‘Why do you question in your hearts? Which is easier, to say one’s sins are forgiven or to tell this man to get up and walk? But so you can know that I have this authority,’ and He spoke to the patient, ‘I say to you, rise; take up your pallet, and walk.’ And the man did that—all those present were amazed and glorified God. Jesus went out again to the lakeside, and taught there.