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March 3 Today’s Reading: — Deuteronomy 25-27 “I Profess this Day” Deuteronomy 25:3
What blessed thoughts with which to open the day! Thank you, blessed Spirit of God, divine Comforter and Teacher of chosen, redeemed sinners, called by grace and taught of God, for this portion of Holy Scripture! Thank you for reminding me of all that I have professed and am still enabled with joy to “profess this day!”
The Savior’s Stripes How sweet it is today to look up to heaven with the eye of faith and behold him with whose stripes I have been healed. Blessed Lord Jesus, you were wounded for my transgressions, you were bruised for my iniquities, the chastisement of my peace was upon you, when you were made to be sin for me upon the cursed tree. How I praise you for your great mercy, love, and grace! Yes, by the sin-atoning death of God’s darling Son, when he was made sin and was justly condemned in the place of the wicked, all for whom he bled and died were made the righteousness of God in him and are therefore justified by God himself in complete accordance with his holy law. Sin could not be imputed to our Substitute until he was made sin for us. Justice could not touch him until he “bare our sins in his own body on the tree.” And we could not be justified by God’s law and righteousness could not be imputed to us until we were made the righteousness of God in him. But now, since Christ was made sin and was punished for our sin made his, God is both “a just God and a Savior” to his redeemed.
Ox not Muzzled “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn” (Deuteronomy 25:4). Why did the Lord God put this commandment in his law? “Doth God take care for oxen?” Take care, child of God, that you highly esteem and generously provide for that man (those men, faithful gospel preachers, pastors, missionaries, evangelists) who cares for and labors for your soul. Compared to the strong, laboring ox (Ezekiel 1:10), God’s servants labor in the Word and doctrine of Christ. As such, they are worthy of and should always have from you both love and honor. As faithful laborers for your soul, all their needs are to be provided for and supplied by you generously (1 Corinthians 9:9-10; 1 Timothy 5:17-18).
Perfect Balance My Father, give me grace day by day to honor you, to honor the gospel of your grace, and to bring no reproach upon your name, your gospel, or your church. Compel me, by the sweet, irresistible constraint of your Spirit, to “have a perfect balance and just weight, a perfect and just measure” in all my dealings with men in this world.
Firstfruits Christ is the firstfruits, the first and the last. He is the offering of our souls to God by which we are perpetually, as from eternity, “accepted in the Beloved.” Early let us bring him to God, the first of every year, the first of every day, and the first at the close of every day, rejoicing in him whose name is “The Lord our Righteousness!”
Avouched “Thou hast avouched the Lord this day to be thy God…And the Lord hath avouched thee this day to be his peculiar people!” How honored we are to avouch that the triune Jehovah is our God, declaring by our baptism and our confessed faith that we are his, chosen, redeemed, called, and devoted by faith to him. But how indescribably blessed it is to have the triune Jehovah avouch that we are his! As soon as the sinner looks to Christ in faith, trusting him as his only Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification, and Redemption, he has within him God’s own avouched assurance that he is God’s! The blood of Christ sprinkled on the heart, the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost gives assurance that “I am my Beloved’s, and my Beloved is mine” (Song of Solomon 6:3). It is this avouchment, that we are God’s property, that was confessed in the tithes of the law and is confessed in the free, voluntary gifts of God’s saints in the house of God week by week.
Don Fortner
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Pastor Fortner’s
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