the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Grace for Today
Isaiah 51:1
‘Don’t ever forget’
Read Ezekiel 16:1-14 ; Ezekiel 16:60-63
‘Hearken unto me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the Lord: look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged.’ Believer, I say, don’t forget what you are by nature, and what you were when God called you to life in Christ. Though God has so freely forgiven us of our sins that they will never be remembered against us any more for ever, the prophet here teaches us that we must not forget them, lest we forget what the Lord has done for us by his loving grace.
Let us always remember who we were, where we were, and what we were when God saved us by his grace. We were ourselves the fallen sons of Adam, rebels before God. We were lost and ruined in this perishing world. Like Ezekiel’s deserted infant, we were helpless, polluted and perishing. We were dead in trespasses and sins. Physically, we were alive, alive to our lusts, alive to the world, alive to Satan, alive to sin. But spiritually, we were dead, dead to righteousness, dead to truth, dead to Christ, dead to God. In a word, by nature, we were sinners. Sinners by birth, sinners by choice, sinners in heart, sinners in practice, sinners against God, sinners against men, we were nothing but perishing, hell-deserving sinners.
Remember also your merciful Deliverer. We could never deliver ourselves. No man or angel could deliver us. But the God-man, Jesus Christ, has delivered us. There came the Deliverer out of Zion, and he turned away all our transgressions. He delivered us from the curse of the law by his sacrifice of blood in our place. And he delivered us from the powerful bondage of sin by his sovereign power in regeneration. Blessed be God, he did not leave us to our own free will. ‘But God’, in loving, merciful, sovereign and saving power intervened in our lives. He stopped us in our mad race towards hell and arrested us by his grace! ‘By grace ye are saved!’
Now, child of God, don’t ever forget: ‘salvation is of the Lord.’ To the triune God alone we ascribe all honor, majesty, praise and dominion.
