Prayer
Merciful Father have your way with my heart. Mold and shape my heart so that it is pleasing in your sight. Exercise your sovereign will over me that I may be made into the image of my Lord Jesus Christ. Lord I know if I was left to my own devices I would stray from you, instead direct me by your power, your Word and your Spirit into truth and sanctification. Amen.
Today’s Hymn
Words: Words: Augustus M. Toplady, 1774.
FOUNTAIN OF NEVER CEASING GRACE
Click here for tune.
Fountain of never ceasing grace,
Thy saints’ exhaustless theme,
Great object of immortal praise,
Essentially supreme;
We bless Thee for the glorious fruits
Thine incarnation gives;
The righteousness which grace imputes,
And faith alone receives.
Whom heaven’s angelic host adores,
Was slaughtered for our sin;
The guilt, O Lord was wholly ours,
The punishment was Thine:
Our God in the flesh, to set us free,
Was manifested here;
And meekly bare our sins, that we
His righteousness might wear.
Imputatively guilty then
Our substitute was made,
That we the blessings might obtain
For which His blood was shed:
Himself He offered on the cross,
Our sorrows to remove;
And all He suffered was for us,
And all He did was love.
In Him we have a righteousness,
By God Himself approved;
Our rock, our sure foundation this,
Which never can be moved.
Our ransom by His death He paid,
For all His people giv’n,
The law He perfectly obeyed,
That they might enter Heav’n.
As all, when Adam sinned alone,
In his transgression died,
So by the righteousness of One,
Are sinners justified,
We to Thy merit, gracious Lord,
With humblest joy submit,
Again to Paradise restored,
In Thee alone complete.
Our souls His watchful love retrieves,
Nor lets them go astray,
His righteousness to us He gives,
And takes our sins away:
We claim salvation in His right,
Adopted and forgiv’n,
His merit is our robe of light,
His death the gate of Heav’n.
Thought Provoker
When I was in grade school we had to take art class. I say “had” to take because it wasn’t one of my favorites. Sometimes the art media we worked in was clay. We would take modeling clay and could form it into anything we wanted. Here was one reason why I didn’t like art class, I could never think of anything to make. I could never really determine what I wanted to mould the clay into. Today, God through Jeremiah, teaches us about His sovereignty over creation through the example of the potter’s ability to mould the clay into whatever he desires
Dad’s Study
This was a common teaching method of Jesus to have His hearers observe a common task of their day and then use it to illustrate a heavenly truth. God tells Jeremiah to go to the potter’s house and watch him work. I am sure Jeremiah observed many things, however he records only one; that a spoiled vessel he was attempting to make was re-made by his hand into whatever the potter desired. God would use this to instruct Israel how He would sovereignly deal with them. In verse 6 we read, “O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the LORD. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel.” God teaches them of His mercy in repentance and forgiveness and of His wrath in judgment for the stiff-necked. God had called to them to repent of their spiritual adultery and to cease from following after false gods and return to Him on many occasions. Once again, He shows them His mercy and long-suffering through the potter one final time. He shows them that if a nation or kingdom repents and turns from it’s wickedness He will forgive and relent in judgment. This, the great Jehovah did in Ninevah, when the people of that wicked city repented at the preaching of Jonah, put on sack cloth and mourned over their sin. But what was Israel’s response to their merciful and long-suffering God who had delivered them and made them the apple of His eye? They did the most abominable thing, verse 13. They became stiff-necked and determined to follow their own evil schemes according to the wickedness of their hearts, verse 12. They certainly proved the words of the preacher true in Ecclesiastes 7:29 Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions. The virgin of Israel had been given the oracles of God and yet they abandoned God, His ways, His precepts and His statutes. They forgot God as if He didn’t exist and went after false gods and perverse ways. Like the spoiled vessel of the potter, so too Israel had become a spoiled vessel. Rather than being a vessel for honorable purposes they had become a vessel fit only for wrath and judgment.
Click here for Matthew Henry’s Commentary.
Truth in Practice
We also see the sovereign right of the potter reflected in Romans 9:19-29 in the great doctrinal truth of God’s unconditional election of His saints. God chooses whom He will make a vessel for honorable use and whom He will make a vessel for dishonor; but even in this God is patient with those vessels of wrath prepared for destruction. Through His patience He displays the riches of His glory through vessels of mercy. Christians are His vessels of mercy, those who once were lost and dead in trespasses and sins but now have been brought into the kingdom of light by His great mercy. Unlike the virgin of Israel who pursued after their own evil schemes those who have been saved by grace answer the call of God to repent. Be a vessel of mercy, hear the gospel call, do not shut up your ear as the virgin of Israel had done but instead heed the call, repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ who drank the full cup of God’s wrath in atoning for the sins of the Christian.
Catechism
Question 53
Q. What is required in the fifth commandment?
A. The fifth commandment requires the preserving the honour, and performing the duties belonging to every one in their various positions and relationships as superiors (Ephesians 5:21, 22; 6:1, 5; Romans 13:1), inferiors (Ephesians 6:9), or equals (Romans 12:10).
Popularity: 1% [?]
