Who is Able to Stand Before Him?
Psalm 130:3 says, “If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?”…Because of our sins, none of us are worthy to stand before Him, much less enter His Kingdom. “But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.” With Jesus Christ, there is forgiveness. He is the only one who can forgive. My heart cries out this morning with the Psalmist when he says in verses 1-2, “Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy!”
We are all born sinful. From birth the only thing each one of us deserves is to die and go to Hell. Scripture tells us that if we commit just one we’re guilty of all. Just one sin is more than enough to deserve to die and go to Hell. So why should God save us? Why should He bless us? Who are we that, as wicked and sinful creatures, could ever think we deserve anything from God, our Creator? And who are we to question why God does what He does? This is like what Romans 9 speaks about, the clay asking the Potter “Why have you molded me this way?”
If we understand Scripture correctly, we understand that we are dead in our trespasses and sins and can do nothing but sin. There is absolutely NO good within us. There is absolutely no hope. None. The only difference between a believer and a non-believer, is Christ. We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. As a Christian, I did not make some choice of my own free will, but it was wholly of God. He completely changed my life. I can take no credit for it because I understand what Scripture says about me as a lost man, dead in my sins, with a heart that is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. I was born this way, and there was nothing I could do to change it, apart from Christ choosing to do a work in me that only He could do.
But then still, as a Christian, I continue to do a battle with the flesh. It is something we all deal with. So why does God continue to bless us? As sinful, wicked creatures, who from our very birth were, and still are wicked, why on earth does God continue to shower blessings upon us? Why did He even choose to save me? These are questions I ask all the time, because although I know that He has changed my life, and my desire is to live a holy life, I still sin. I am still flesh and will continue to battle it until the Lord calls me home. So why does He still bless me, and better yet, why did He save me? One simple answer. It is all for His purpose and glory (Ephesians 1).
Since there is nothing good in me, and apart from Christ, I am and can do nothing, then all the good that I have in life, everything both good and seemingly bad is all for His glory. The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. We are to glorify God with our lives, but apart from Him working in our lives we can’t even do that. We can’t even do that unless we are one of His children, and we can’t even become one of His children until we obey God’s command to repent and believe. But…we can’t repent and believe the Gospel, until God grants us faith and repentance. It all goes directly back to the Lord Jesus Christ. Soli deo Gloria!
So this morning I thank God for His Mercy upon me, and his undeserved blessings and unbelievable Grace that He has given to me. “I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning,” . My hope is only in the Lord, the Immortal Creator and Sovereign Orchestrator.
And I will also leave you with a video and some of the lyrics to this song, “Triune Praise” by Shai Linne:
VERSE 1
Praise God the Father, the Immortal Creator (1 Cor. 8:6)
For Your glory you made us (Is. 43:6), You’re the Sovereign
Orchestrator (Eph. 1:11)
All that You decree will most surely come to happen (Is. 14:24)
You’re awesome as can be and Your glory none can fathom
(Ps. 104:1)
Nothing could ever stain You, the heavens can’t contain You
(2 Chron. 6:18)
We thank You for sending Your Son to explain You (John 1:18)
Otherwise we would have remained in the dark
but You sent Your Holy Spirit to spark a change in our hearts
(Matt. 4:16-17, 2 Cor. 4:6)
According to Your eternal purpose and will
You determined to reveal Yourself to those who deserve to be killed
(Luke 10:21, Rom. 1:32)
Those of us whom You foreknew adore You
We praise You that You predestined us to be conformed to
The image of Your Son who’s the radiance of Your glory
(Romans 8:29, Heb. 1:3)
When I meditate on it, the weightiness of it fl oors me (1 Chron. 16:25,
Psalm 139:6)
So Father, we’ll praise you over and over again (Ps. 34:1)
Because You sent Your only Son to atone for our sins (Dan. 9:24,
1 John 4:9)
CHORUS
Glory to the Father, Glory to the Son,
Glory to The Spirit- Three and Yet One
One in Your essence, Three in Your Person
The same in Your nature, distinct in Your working
Oh my soul- behold the wonder of the Trinity
Blessed be the Trinity, Oh, what a mystery!
I’ll stand amazed for the rest of my days
Pouring out my heart in Triune praise
His Ways Are Not Our Ways…Isaiah 55:8-9
God has been working in my life recently in ways I would have never dreamed of. There have been and continue to be many challenges and trials, but God is revealing more of Himself to me everyday. God has shown me so much in regard to the Doctrines of Grace, and words cannot express the change that He has made in my life, despite all those “Arminians” around me who tell me I am flat wrong, and that I have been doing nothing but following after other men. I beg to differ, and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God has shown Himself to me, as I have stuided His Word, and only His Word, and have been led by the Holy Spirit in these matters. My view of Him, my thirst and desire for Him, and my Salvation, mean so much more, and have been so much the more highly exalted and all the Glory belongs to Him. Soli Deo Gloria!
With that said here is something I have written to help others understand a bit more how God has so graciously worked in my life…
The Lord through His Word began to show me more clearly that my salvation in Him was and is wholly of Him and nothing of myself. That when I was lost I was just as Romans 3 tells us that, “There is none righteous no not one, there’s none that understandeth, there’s none that seeketh after God.”….and that my heart was, well that is as Jeremiah says “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.” When I was lost, the wrath of God was abiding on me because of my unrighteousness and ungodliness (Romans 1), and that I was dead spiritually, “dead in my sins and trespasses” doing nothing but sin (Ephesians 1), and that I was, a “natural man” not able to receive the things of God (I Corinthians 1-2). I was enslaved, in bondage to my sin, and there was nothing in and of myself, in all my wickedness and sinfulness to gain my freedom from being in bondage to sin. We see this truth so clearly evident in the apostle Paul, in Acts 9, 22 & 26 with testimony given of his conversion, and then again in Galatians 1. God completely changed his life, there was nothing he did, when God came to him on that Damascus Rd. He repented and believed on Christ but only after God came to him and changed him for it says that he fell down and was trembling (Acts 9 22, 26), and that “it pleased God to reveal His Son” in him (Galatians 1). He got up on the Damascus Rd and asked the Lord what He wanted him to do. Yet previous to that was persecuting the church. Paul did a 180 degree turnaround, all because God came in and quickened him and made him alive, and he saw himself for what he truly was, because he saw God for who He is, and could do nothing but run to Him in faith, believing on Christ. And the amazing thing is that Paul gives testimony in Galatians that God had separated him from his mother’s womb, and yet allowed him to live the life he did. Why? All so that God alone would get the glory for his changed life!……The same thing holds true for us Bill. It was our sinfulness and wickedness that kept us from God, that had us in bondage to sin, and we could nothing but sin and we were condemned already….. As you look at your life, when God saved you was there anything you could have done to have prevented it?…Or the change He made, was it anything of yourself of completely of God?
Many preach and teach that a man is not so wicked that he cannot make a decision for or against God, in his own natural sinful state before coming to Christ. God works on a man’s heart but it is left up to man to decide, but that does not hold true to Scripture and takes away glory from God.
When Christ came to me as a lost man, there was nothing I could have done to escape it. I remember praying with Paul on the shuttle bus at the Crowne Plaza, and making a profession of faith but when I left and went to school in SC, I lived a wicked, wicked life. There was no change, there was no evidence of my salvation (James 2). I was lost, and thought I was saved b/c I had prayed that prayer. But when the Lord led me home, (He was in control the whole time for He is Sovereign), it was at some point when I was going to Solid Rock and hearing the preaching of the Word of God that He changed my life. The sin that I once loved, (for example, drinking alcohol), I now hated. I repented of my sin, turned from it, and turned to Christ. The only way I could have done such a thing is because He regenerated me! He quickened me, regenerated me (Titus 3:5) and gave me faith to believe in Him, and that even the faith we have is a gift from God, (Ephesians 2) and by Grace He saved me! I cannot explain the change in my life other than that God alone made that change when He saved me!
It is a difficult thing, and yet the most humbling to realize from studying Scripture that salvation is of God and that He does things for His own purposes and His own glory. He is Soveriegn, “All power” is given to Him in heaven and in earth (Matthew 28) including ourselves …and it is Colossians 1:16 that says, “all things were created by Him and for Him” In Romans 9 we read of how God had raised up Pharaoh to show forth His own power, and that He has mercy on whom He will and hardens who He wills….Paul also says in Romans 9 that God He is the Potter and we are the clay, and that He had made some vessels to honor, and some to dishonor (and this word means to the effect of vile and disgusting)….and to top it all off Paul goes on to say in verses 22-23 “What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much long suffering, the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy which he had afore prepared unto glory,”….The word : “fitted” means, to render, to fit, sound or complete….or to equip, and the word “destruction” means basically damnation. His ways are not our ways and His ways are past finding out. And asPaul says Romans 9:20, who are we to question God….
We know that Jesus Christ died on the Cross for our sins and is our propitaiton, our ransom. He is the one that redeemed us, paying for our sins on Calvary, that “God hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53). Christ gave Himself for the church (Ephesians 5:25) and Christ says in John 10 that He gave Himself for the sheep, for His sheep, b/c Jesus says that “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me”….He says this just after He tells the unbelieving Jews that question Him, that the reason they don’t believe is b/c they’re not His sheep (John 10:26)…..When Christ died on the Cross, and shed His blood for our sins, He paid our ransom. and He is as I John 2:2 says, “…the propitiation for our sins…”….He as Matthew 20:28 says “gave His life as a ransom for many” That He stood as our equivalent, that He didn’t die for us, He died as us. What a wonderful and glorious thing, and when we know what He has done for us, as believers, what assurance of salvation we have! Praise God!
How wonderful it is that God has been working in my life especially in the challenging things He has brought. My view of God has been so highly exalted through studying His Word and in the Truths from His Word I have just mentioned. Salvation in Him, and the work that He alone has done, means so much more to me now than it ever did before. As I understand more fully what was accomplished on the Cross in the redemption of His people, of us the Lord confirmed these to be true from His Word, He began to open my eyes to seeing that these things were ,although seemingly close, contrary to what I had been taught. Even with that The Lord has used the experiences of being taught these things in great way in my life and I am so grateful and thankful to God for that. I encourage you to study Scripture….and as you do I pray God reveals more of Himself to you, and gives you the thirst and desire for His Word that He has so graciously given me….Words can’t describe the change that His Word has made in my life in this last year. When I think about His Word and how much more it means to me through all of this it brings tears to my eyes to think of His love, mercy and grace that He has given to me…..as the song says just a sinner saved by grace…..and the most wonderful thing about all of this is that all that He does is all for His own Glory….
May God get all the Glory through all of this, and with much love in Christ,
Called & Saved By His Grace 