Praise the LORD!
Praise the LORD from the heavens;
Praise Him in the heights!
Praise Him, all His angels;
Praise Him, all His hosts! Psalm 148.1, 2

The goal of common grace

As we saw in Psalm 104, as well as in the poem, “Pied Beauty,” the common grace of God leads those who observe it to worship and praise the Lord. This is precisely as God intends. The end for which God does anything, including pervade and sustain the world with common grace, is to glorify Himself.

The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament shows His handiwork.
Day unto day utters speech,
And night unto night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech nor language
Where their voice is not heard. Psalm 19.1-3

A neglected discipline

I suppose I could muster several convincing arguments for why you should spend more time reading and contemplating poetry.

“But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” Matthew 5.44, 45

In your face

In his 1903 novella, “The Beast in the Jungle,” Henry James tells the story of John Marcher, a young man persuaded that something amazing or catastrophic lay ahead for him in life. One day it would leap out at him, like a beast in the jungle, and he would either wrestle it into submission or be overwhelmed and destroyed by it.

“Nevertheless He did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good, gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.” Acts 14.17

The doctrine of common grace

We have been considering the Biblical teaching concerning the doctrine of common grace.

The earth is satisfied with the fruit of Your works. Psalm 104.13

So loved

The basis for common grace – grace that reaches to every nook and cranny and creature in the creation – is nothing other than the love of God.

“But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” Matthew 5.44, 45

Reason not enough

In his book, How the West Won, Rodney Stark argues that Western culture and the modern worldview came to prevail through the centuries on the strength of sound reason. If we want to understand why science, the arts, technology, business, education, and government, based on Western models, are the preferred forms and systems throughout the developed world, the answer is the power of sound reason.

ReVision studies are designed for individual or group use and explore various aspects of the Christian worldview. All ReVision studies are available in free PDF format and may be duplicated for group use.

A nice way to be remembered, that.

The Law of God for Daily Meditation

Morning Meditation

Deuteronomy 13.1-11

¹“If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, ²and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods’ – which you have not known – ‘and let us serve them, ³you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the LORDyour God is testing you to know whether you love the LORDyour God with all your heart and with all your soul. ⁴You shall walk after the LORDyour God and fear Him, and keep His commandments and obey His voice, and you shall serve Him and hold fast to Him. ⁵But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has spoken in order to turn you away from the LORDyour God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of bondage, to entice you from the way in which the LORDyour God commanded you to walk. So you shall put away the evil from your midst. ⁶If your brother, the son of your mother, your son or your daughter, the wife of your bosom, or your friend who is as your own soul, secretly entices you, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods,’ which you have not known, neither you nor your fathers, ⁷of the gods of the people which areall around you, near to you or far off from you, from oneend of the earth to the otherend of the earth, ⁸you shall not consent to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him or conceal him; ⁹but you shall surely kill him; your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. ¹⁰And you shall stone him with stones until he dies, because he sought to entice you away from the LORDyour God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. ¹¹So all Israel shall hear and fear, and not again do such wickedness as this among you.”

The Law of God for Daily Meditation

Morning Meditation

Exodus 23.23-25, 32, 33

²³“For My angel will go before you and bring you in to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites and the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I will cut them off. ²⁴You shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do according to their works, but you shall utterly overthrow them and completely break down their sacred pillars. ²⁵So you shall serve the LORDyour God, and He will bless your bread and your water. And I will take sickness away from the midst of you…³²You shall make no covenant with them, nor with their gods… ³³They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against Me. For ifyou serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.”

The Law of God for Daily Meditation

Morning Meditation

Exodus 20.4-6

⁴“You shall not make for yourself a carved image – any likeness of anythingthat isin heaven above, or that isin the earth beneath, or that isin the water under the earth; ⁵you shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I, the LORDyour God, ama jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generationsof those who hate me, ⁶but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.”

The Law of God for Daily Meditation

Morning Meditation

Leviticus 27.28, 29

²⁷“Nevertheless no devoted offeringthat a man may devote to the LORD, of all that he has, bothman and beast, or the field of his possession, shall be sold or redeemed; every devoted offeringis most holy to the LORD. ²⁹ No person under the ban, who may become doomed to destruction among men, shall be ransomed, butshall surely be put to death.”