Daily Devotion

June 23, 2006

Psalms 40:9-10  I have preached righteousness in the great congregation: lo, I have not refrained my lips, O LORD, thou knowest.  (10)  I have not hid thy righteousness within my heart; I have declared thy faithfulness and thy salvation: I have not concealed thy lovingkindness and thy truth from the great congregation.

In these prophetic words of King David, we discover the integrity of our LORD towards His redemptive mission; we discover His passion in His message of lovingkindness and truth to us.

He came to the ‘great congregation’, to “His own”, knowing that they wouldn’t receive Him (John 1:11).  He came with the knowledge of the fate that awaited Him.  He came aware of the violent price of His redemptive work.  In the face of these facts, He did not ‘refrain’ His lips.  This left us with an example to emulate.

You may say, “Oh, but He was the Son of God; He had supernatural powers to withstand it all!”  Did He?  Didn’t He, like we all have to, learn obedience through suffering?  Wasn’t He a man, tempted in all things even as we are? (Heb 5:8; Heb 4:15).  My friend, can we really excuse ourselves from striving to follow His example? (Mat 10:24,25).

He has not concealed the truth from us, and we should not conceal it from others either. Truth hurts; it is difficult to grasp and it feels uncomfortable to our modern day ears. The mind of this generation seems to have become like its nutritional diet.  Everything has to be processed, soft, sweet, fat, tender, grounded and sad to say, lacking for true nutritional substance and value.  People do not want to do the hard work of chewing on principles of virtue anymore.  May God help us to not settle for this food; may God help us to be hungry for the truth, to not be apprehensive of the ‘chewing’, processing and heavy digesting it demands, but rather look at it with challenge.  Would you really want Him to ‘conceal’ the truth from you because you cannot take it?

Fear not my friend, this truth by the Son of God, is tempered with His lovingkindness; for He loves us and has no desire in to see us our perish (2 Pet 2:9.  When He is done, oh wonder of wonders, you will have found freedom!

John 8:31-32  Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;  (32)  And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

Patrick Lumbroso
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http://hearthstoneministries.blogspot.com/