Unity # 20: He Has Provided All
Dear Father,
Your
glory will be revealed to all mankind. You are the Great King, the Mighty
Warrior by our side. What a dreadful thing it is to fall into Your Hands, the
Hands of the living God. Teach us to keep Your Name holy, not to speak of You
in vain, but to uphold Your true Character: Your justice, Your infinite
unfailing love for righteousness and Your people and Your infinite and dreadful
hatred against wickedness and all that is devoted to destruction. We do not
want to leave You, Abba, Father. Where else can we go? Help me to have Christ’s
attitude towards all men. Jesus Christ is Lord and He has come in the Flesh.
In Jesus Christ’s Name,
Amen
Dear Beloved,
In last week’s letter, I spoke of the
Covenant of Peace which God has established for His people through the blood of
Christ. By this Covenant, we are reconciled to God through Christ, and
experience the eternal Life of knowing Christ. This knowledge of Christ
increases over time in the lives of all believers until they see Him Face to
face and the knowledge of Christ is perfected. Even when the children of God
stray, the result of the Shepherd’s discipline and omnipotent search-warrant is
a peaceful harvest of righteousness and a magnificent restoration marked by
exceeding underserved Spiritual growth. He is able to do immeasurably more than
all we ask or think. As God spoke through the prophet Zechariah , “Return to the stronghold, O prisoners who have the hope; this very day I
am declaring that I will restore double to you” (Zech 9:12). He repays the
locust eaten years of His painful loving discipline. This letter is about God’s
certain provision of all the needs of all of His people from all time through
His grace shown at the cross.
Dear saints, our God will truly supply all
of our needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus (Phil 4:19). This
promise is not simply for some saints, or with regard to some or most of their
needs. God surely will meet all of
our needs. Those of us who feel that we lack something, whether Spiritually or physically, can trust in the
faithful Provider for He will surely give His children all that they need. King
David said, “I have been young and now I am old,
yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his descendants begging bread.
All day long he is gracious and lends, and his descendants are a blessing (Ps 37:25-26).” An important
principle we must consider is God’s perspective of what is considered a need in
our lives. For many lust and do not have so they commit murder. Some are
envious and cannot obtain, so they fight and quarrel. God says that they ask
and do not receive because they ask with wrong motives, so that they may spend
it on their pleasures. Those who are friends with the world are adulteresses
and live in hostility towards God. For whoever wishes to be a friend of the
world makes himself an enemy of God. He jealously desires the Spirit which He
has made to dwell in us. He gives us a greater grace. He is opposed to
the proud, but gives grace to the humble. (James 4:1-6). Thus, our needs do
not involve anything that is born either consciously or subconsciously from a
love for the world. Rather our needs involve what is a part of God’s
will for our souls to be preserved under His New Covenant. For He has made
an everlasting Covenant with us, ordered in all things, and secured; for all
our salvation and all our desire, will He not indeed make it grow (2 Sam 23:5)?
Our needs comprise of whatever is required according to the will of God for
each of His children to be sanctified entirely by the God of peace and for our
spirits, souls, and bodies to be preserved complete, without blame at the
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He who calls us, and He also will
bring it to pass. (1 Thess 5:23-24) Remember the great salvation that our Lord
Jesus Christ has accomplished for us. The Father who did not spare His own
Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely
give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the
one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died,
yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also
intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will
tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or
sword? Just as it is written, “For Your sake we are
being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered”. But in all these things we
overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loves us. For I am convinced that
neither death, nor life, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to
come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be
able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(Rom 8:32-29) Dear saints, because we
have been regenerated, our only desire is to know Christ, to glorify Him, to
obey Him, and to remain in Him. Thus, our only needs are what our Father deems
necessary for these things to be fulfilled in our lives. So may we never
fear or worry over our earthly needs, for our Father has secured our souls for
eternity. He has secured our justification and our progressive sanctification
both of which comprise the eternal Life of knowing Christ, our only heart’s
desire. Christ tells us not to be worried about our life, as to what we will
eat or drink nor for our body, as to what we will put on. For those who are not
regenerated and still love the world seek all these things. Our heavenly Father
knows that we need all these things. But we must seek first His Kingdom and His
righteousness, and all these things will be added to us. (Matt 6:25-33)
We have been discussing that when people
profess Christ as Savior, and yet continually refuse to obey Him, they undergo
the irreversible hardening of the heart resulting in damnation (Heb 10). Thus,
if our needs are those very things required for our ongoing perseverance in our
faith, our needs consist of what is required for our obedience and ongoing
bearing of good fruit/works and what is required for our escape from
temptation. God is able to make all grace abound to us, so that always
having all sufficiency in everything, we may have an abundance for every good
deed. He scattered abroad. He gave to the poor. His righteousness
endures forever. He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will
supply and multiply our seed for sowing and increase the harvest of our
righteousness; we will be enriched in everything for all liberality,
which through us is producing thanksgiving to God. For the ministry of this
service is not only fully supplying the needs of the saints, but is also
overflowing through many thanksgivings to God. Because of the proof given by
this ministry, they will glorify God for our obedience to our confession of the
Gospel of Christ and for the liberality of our contribution to the saints.
Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift! (2 Cor 9:8-15). Now the God of
peace who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the
blood of the eternal Covenant, even Jesus our Lord, equips us in every good
thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His
sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever,
Amen (Heb 13:20-21). God grants us the request made in the Lord prayer to lead
us not into temptation, but to deliver us from evil. For no temptation has
overtaken us but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not
allow us to be tempted beyond what we are able, but with the temptation will provide
the way of escape also, so that we will be able to endure it (1 Cor
10).
Often our needs are for the Words
that proceed from the mouth of God. It is written that man shall not
live on bread alone, but on every Word that proceeds out of the mouth of God
(Matt 4:4). Often we cry out for greater filling of the Holy Spirit.
If we, even when we were evil, knew how to give good gifts to our children, how
much more will our heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him
(Luke 11:13)? Jesus said that if anyone is thirsty, let him come to Him and
drink. Those who believe in Him, as the Scripture says, from his innermost
being will flow rivers of living water. Here Jesus was speaking of the Spirit,
whom those who believed in Him were to receive. (John 7:37-39) Often we need wisdom.
If anyone of us lacks wisdom, we should ask of God, who gives to all generously
without reproach, and wisdom will be granted to us. But we must ask in faith
without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea,
driven and tossed by the wind. That man ought not to expect that he will
receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all his
ways. (James 1:5-8) Other times, we need gratitude, hope,
joy, and peace. Paul prayed that the Colossians
would be firmly rooted and built up in Him and established in their faith, just
as they were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude (Col 2:7). He prayed for
the Romans that the God of hope would fill them with all joy and peace in
believing, so that they will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit
(Rom 15:13).
As Jesus said, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock, and it
will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds,
and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who,
when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish,
he will not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to
give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in
heaven give what is good to those who ask Him” (Matt 7:7-11). For those who
are regenerated, they abide in Christ, and His Word abides in them. Thus, when
they ask for anything according to His will and in His Name, it will be granted
to them (John 15:7).
When God’s children are temporarily
trusting in the things of the world to satisfy them He may do to them as He did
to the Israelites. He led them in the wilderness for forty year that He might
humble and test them to know what was in their heart, whether they would keep
His commandments or not. He humbled them and let them be hungry, and fed them
with manna which neither they nor their fathers knew, that He might make them
understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything
that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. In His grace, their clothing did
not wear out on them, nor did their feet swell during those 40 years. (Deut 8:2-4)
In the weakness of His people, His glory and strength are revealed to them. Though
Paul pleaded three times that the thorn in his flesh would be removed, God told
Paul that His grace is sufficient for him, and that His power is perfected in
weakness. For this thorn was given to Paul to keep him from exalting himself.
In fact, though Paul initially prayed for the thorn, the tormenting messenger
of Satan, to be removed, God gave him the thorn as a gift to prevent him from
becoming proud unto damnation because of the surpassing greatness of the
revelations. As Paul understood this he said, “Most gladly,
therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ
may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults,
with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for
when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Cor 12:7-10). He was filled with comfort and
overflowed with joy in all his and his fellow saints’ affliction (2 Cor 7:4).
For in a great deal of affliction and deep poverty of the saints the abundance
of joy overflowed in the wealth of their liberality (2 Cor 8:2).
The Lord says that behold, He extends
peace to us like a river, and the glory of the nations like an overflowing
stream (Is 66:12). He tells those who thirst to come to the waters. He tells
those with no money to come, buy, and eat. He asks us why we spend money on
what is not bread and our wages on what does not satisfy. He tells us to listen
carefully to Him, and eat what is good, and delight ourselves in abundance. He
tells us to delight ourselves in His abundance, to incline our ears and come to
Him, to listen that we may live. For He has made an everlasting Covenant with
us! (Is 55:1-3)
Dear saints, listen to Paul’s introduction
in his letter to the Ephesians:
3 Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him
before the foundation of
the world, that we would be holy and blameless
before Him. In love 5 He predestined us to adoption as sons
through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of
His will, 6 to the praise of
the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 7 In Him we have redemption through His blood,
the forgiveness of our
trespasses, according to the riches of His
grace 8 which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight 9 He made known to us
the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention
which He purposed in Him 10 with a view to an
administration suitable to the
fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of
all things in Christ, things in the heavens and
things on the earth. In Him11
also we have obtained an
inheritance, having been predestined according to His
purpose who works all things after the counsel
of His will, 12 to the end that we
who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of
His glory. Eph 1
Excellent Messages:
Final Judgment
Sermon by John Piper
Dying as a Means of
Loving Sermon by John Piper
Love in Christ,
Preethi
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