Meditate on his Promises

I put this on my web site at http://www.oldoldstory.org as well. I'm not sure it's edited well enough to be on the web site, but oh, well. I wrote this on the plane on the way back from Myanmar.

Today I read, "I stay awake through each watch of the night, to meditate on your promise" (Ps. 119:148, Holman Christian Standard Bible). This came right after verses about crying out to the Lord in order to keep his statues and testimonies. There are indeed promises about keeping the commandments of Christ. This verse in Psalm 119 tells us that one way to obtain the provision of those promises is to stay awake at night thinking about them.

Many of us struggle with sin all the time. We want to do the will of God in everything. We want our eating, our entertainment, the use of our time, our speech, and our finances to be under his control. We are told that no useless word should proceed out of our mouth, but that we should say only what is needful for building up at that moment. Yet, who can obey such a command? James tells us that we all sin in many ways, but if anyone can control the tongue, he is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body. Oh, what a delight that would be! How can it be obtained?

This issue is on my mind because of my trip to Myanmar. I am writing on the plane on the way back. I am stricken about my inability to control simple things like how much I eat. Never mind my weight. That is not the issue. If I hunger, immediately I'm stricken with the need to rummage through the cabinets or run from work to the store for the snack, or at least to drink a cup of coffee. On a previous trip, David Servant tells me that he asked when lunch was, and a Myanmar man said, "Oh, we are not like you Americans. If there is food, we eat. Otherwise, we don't think about it." Ouch!

I have returned from Myanmar wondering if I am even a Christian. I would like to be able to say with Paul, "All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will NOT be brought under the power of any." I would like to be able to tell those who hear me, "I buffet my body, and I bring it under subjection." Unfortunately, too often my joke about the word buffet there meaning a banquet is only too true! May God grant me to be a doer of his word, making no provision for the desires of this body, my temporary dwelling place in this world.

The Psalmist tells me that one of the provisions for receiving the benefit of the promises is to stay awake meditating on them. So be it! But today I want to talk about the greatness of those promises.

The Scripture expressly calls those promises great. "His divine power has given us...exceedingly great and precious promises, that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust" (2 Pet. 1:3,4). Yes, this is exactly what I want!

The promises of the New Testament are awesome. American Christianity is prone to "dumbing down" the promises of the New Covenant. American Christianity tells us that grace will allow us to continue in sin, but we'll go to heaven anyway. This is not the mind of the apostles. The apostles conceived of great and precious promises that would deliver us from sin's power, allowing us to boast with Paul that "I have lived to this day in all good conscience before God and man." This was such a shocking claim even to the religious and Law-keeping Jews that the high priest commanded Paul to be slapped for saying it. The high priest did not have Paul's, nor our, exceeding great and precious promises.

We are told in the letter to the Romans that sin won't have power over us because we are under grace. We are told that Christ died for us specifically so that what the Law could not enable us to do, his death would enable us to do; that is, to fulfill the righteous requirement of the Law by the power of the Spirit. It is something we must do. If we live according to the flesh, we will die, but if, by the Spirit, we put to death the deeds of the body, then we will live. Those exceedingly great and precious promises are given to us so that might happen.

Brothers and sisters, who are bombarded daily with the self-serving advertisements and lifestyle of the outrageously rich western world, we are not just exhorted to strive for holiness, though we are exhorted to do so. We are told that we can use the promises to be partakers of his divine nature! Christ used his divine nature to overcome the desires of the flesh, which tempted him just as they tempt us. He does not need to have an advantage over us. He is offering his advantage. You can become a partaker of his divine nature! You can be not mere men, but gods, as it were!

We are horribly frightened of such wording, but our ancestors were not. The church fathers commonly quoted Jesus' statement that God himself called them gods, to whom the Word of God had come. Justin Martyr made the claim to the Greeks that Jesus Christ could 'make mortals immortals, make mortals gods, and transport them to the realms above Olympus' (Discourse to the Greeks, ch. 5, c. AD 150).

Brothers and sisters, let us meditate on his promises. Let us stay awake through the watches of the night, considering what he has promised. Let us reject the dumbed down Christianity of the masses and find the narrow way that leads to life. I am not speaking of something easy! I am speaking of something impossible for man. It will take the intervention of God. If God is not real, and if our Gospel is not the power of God to salvation, then we will not succeed. We must fail. But if Jesus Christ is really the Son of God, then his statement is true that what is impossible with man is possible with God, and even the outrageously rich, like you and I, can be saved and enter the kingdom of heaven! The life of American Christians makes us doubt, but there have been Jim Elliotts, Amy Carmichaels, C.T. Studds, and others--some whom I know and live with today--who make it known to us that it is possible.

To God be the glory! Let us stay awake through the night watches, considering his promises to give us divine power and make us sons of God, younger brethren to Jesus Christ, the Word of God and Lord of all. Such promises are so great that they make the ministry of condemnation--the Law, which caused Moses' face to glow so brightly that it had to be hidden--seem inglorious by comparison.

Brothers, meditate on these things.