Daily Lesson for October 5, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Psalm 106 verses 7, 8 and 43-45:

7 Our fathers, when they were in Egypt,
did not consider your wondrous works;
they did not remember the abundance of your steadfast love,
but rebelled by the sea, at the Red Sea.
8 Yet he saved them for his name's sake,
that he might make known his mighty power.
43 Many times he delivered them,
but they were rebellious in their purposes
and were brought low through their iniquity.
44 Nevertheless, he looked upon their distress,
when he heard their cry.
45 For their sake he remembered his covenant,
and relented according to the abundance of his steadfast love.

We are told in the Scriptures that when the LORD delivered the Israelites from Pharaoh and brought them through the Red Sea, He did not do it because they were anymore faithful or pious than all the other nations, but He did it that His mighty power would be made known throughout the world.  And when they rebelled in the wilderness, we are told that Moses had a heated conversation with the LORD where Moses prayed to (begged, screamed at?) the LORD and begged Him not to abandon the Israelites in their troubles -- not because of anything they had done, but because of His own name's sake. If they were given up for dead how would it look?

It was the great preacher Gardner Taylor who first gave me this insight when he said often he would pray to the LORD and begged the LORD to lead him from temptation and deliver him from evil, not because he deserved it but for the sake of the LORD's good name. Many a time I have thought of that and prayed the same, that no failure of mine would ever bring shame or dishonor on God. I still pray that today.

And yet, in Psalm 106 where at the beginning it says "He saved them for His name's sake," there is also another phrase at the end of the Psalm, "For their sake He remembered His covenant."  Now this is a phrase that comes not only at the end of the psalm, but also at the end of a listing of many, many failures and rebellions and rejections by God's people.  It is like the psalmist begins by saying that for the LORD's name's sake He sought to bring them out of Egypt, but later on -- when their failures and apostacies just got to be embarrassing -- He kept with them, seeing them out of the wilderness and into the Promised Land, not for any honor it brought Him, but purely because He had promised that He would not forsake them.

Our deliverance may bring God glory among the nations, or it may be bring God no honor at all and may perhaps even bring Him dishonor.  Yet in the end, we will be delivered and we will be saved whether that means His glory or His shame, because that is what kind of God He is -- faithful always to His people and to His promises.

And that is why we can say that our LORD is mighty to save and great is His faithfulness!