THE DIFFERENCE

November 21

Psalms 34:19 Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the LORD delivereth him out of them all.

About 400 years before the birth of the Messiah, the prophet Malachi prophesied that the Lord will come to purge the priests of His temple that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness (Malachi 3:1-3).

‘Purging’ creates in us what fire creates in gold: it makes us better vessels for Him. Jesus had to learn obedience through the things that He suffered (Hebrews 5:8), David claimed that his afflictions taught him God’s statutes (Psalms 119:71), and the Apostles Paul and James told us to rejoice in times of tribulation and to count temptation as a joy. (Romans 5:3; James 1:2)

This is what keeps the righteous ‘righteous’--their many tribulations.

The Lord has not promised to take afflictions from us, only to deliver us from them, and as we go through them, we grow and mature!

This is the difference between the righteous and the unsaved. In times of tribulations, the righteous have the everlasting promise of deliverance, the assurance that there is an end, and that their afflictions purify them even more. The unsaved fall in their woes to never rise again.

Proverbs 24:16 For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again: but the wicked shall fall into mischief.