Online Bible Audio/Readings Links (ESV)
8/19 Reading Portions: 1 Samuel 11; Romans 9; Jeremiah 48; Psalm 25
Psalm 25:12
Who is the man who fears the LORD? Him will He instruct in the way that he should choose.
INSTRUCTION
Surely, this verse is about the Messiah. There is no one on earth who has ever feared YHVH God, Christ’s heavenly Father, with a loving, holy, honoring reverence like Jesus, our Lord. As fully Man, the Lord Jesus was instructed by God the Holy Spirit in all things (Luke 2:46-47, 52; Phil 2:7; Heb 5:8), so that He walked upon the earth in sinless perfection. In preaching and teaching, I’ve often described godly fear and the fear of the Lord as a holy, loving reverence for Christ that fears breaking God’s heart. Now this fear is on our part. Did Jesus have those proclivities toward failure? God forbid. That idea stems from the old, unthinkable doctrine first espoused by Charles Hodge (1797-1878), that Jesus, though sinless, possessed the possibility to fail when tempted even though He didn’t fail. Preposterous! That would defy Christ’s imputed righteousness as well as soil the doctrine of His full divinity. Think about it. Jesus is also fully God. Can God fail? No way, Jose! Now, as far as Christ’s imputed righteousness goes, Jesus feared YHVH God on our behalf. This didn’t acquit us from the obligation to fear God, however. Because of Christ’s love for us, we respond with love and godly fear to Him. This is why His commandments are not burdensome to us (1 Jn 5:3). Nevertheless, because of the corruption remaining in our mortal flesh, we do fail to fear God properly. At the very least, we fail to fear God perfectly in thought, word, and deed. Because Christ’s righteousness is applied to our accounts when we believed, when we honor Christ in loving devotion and fearful reverence, as shaky as it may be, God honors His Word and fulfills this verse in us— the Holy Spirit instructs us in the way that [we] should choose. Therefore, even our good and best decisions are nothing that we can boast about as something accomplished apart from God’s grace. It’s all of grace because it’s all of Christ. Hallelujah! What a Savior!
That even my decisions made
Exist through Christ alone:
It’s all of grace, and self must fade;
It’s by the debt that Jesus paid,
And so, my flesh doth groan.