August 4 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading

Psalm 119:169–176

Devotional

The poet of Psalm 119 knows himself to be a wayward person. He sees himself as a straying sheep that often loses his way. He needs the great Shepherd to come and find him. The more he knows the inclinations of his own heart, the more he has need for Christ to find him.

Do you know something of these matters in your own life? Do you understand this poet when he says that he is lost unless the searching love of God intervenes, even after having received grace?

The poet needs God’s searching love. This searching work of God is accomplished by the Surety, the Lord Jesus Christ. He descended as low as the sheep had fallen. He followed the footsteps of the lost sheep. He followed them from the point where they had forsaken the Lord to the point where He found them in the depths of the terrors of hell that caused them to lose all comfort. That is how deep He humbled Himself. In those depths He found them mortally wounded. He found them horribly mutilated. He found them while they were powerless to deliver themselves. He took their sins and their miseries on Himself. He paid the ransom price for them and carried them back to the flock in His arms of compassion. He had to carry them in order to get them home. There was no other way. We need Christ in His humiliation as well as in His exaltation. So, we have to become what we are: helpless. We need to learn to become more and more helpless in ourselves. Everything more than this is too much. God’s searching love seeks such people.

 

From The Everlasting Word by Frans Bakker, compiled and translated by Gerald R. Procee. Reformation Heritage Books and Free Reformed Publications, 2007. Used by permission. For further information, click here.