Companions to Grace
Monday (December 8)
Companions to Grace
Psalm 99:6
Moses and Aaron were among his priests, Samuel also was among those who called upon his name. They called to the LORD, and he answered them.
I understand that we’re living in a deconstructionist age where revisionists want to whitewash all the stains from history’s pages or just blot the transgressors out entirely. For instance, some have called Mark Twain a racist for using slurs in his great American classic, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, when, in fact, Twain was a staunch abolitionist. In the same vein, others are tearing down monuments left and right, like statues to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Christopher Colombus, and changing the names of football teams and military bases and brand logos. But none of that compares to so-called pastors and professors speaking out from their pulpits and podcasts that the days of Abraham and Moses and David are too full of uncomfortable facts for us moderns to grapple with and then resolving to just start with Matthew 1:1 instead of toiling by the Spirit’s guidance to properly exegete the culture, context, and language of a forgotten world. To think that prominent pastors have decided that they can simply gloss over the Old Testament as if it no longer bears the seal of divine authority is truly infuriating. Well, let me offer a simple reminder from Psalm 99:6 that needs repeating often: God intentionally lined our path of faith with living, breathing testaments to His great faithfulness, and we will never, not even in a trillion years from now, outgrow our connection to those who got us here.
Today, friend, if you’re struggling to pray because you’re surrounded by opposition, remember Daniel in the lion’s den. If you’re forgetting that God is greater than the swelling darkness, remember David’s defeat of Goliath. If financial struggles pile up, and you lose your job, and you find yourself toiling from day to day just to put food on the table, remember God’s provision to Ruth as she gleaned leftover wheat in Boaz’s field. If family members are refusing to speak to each other and reconciliation seems impossible, remember Joseph’s weeping embrace of the very brothers who tried to murder him in cold blood.
Mark this down: the Old Testament is not a book full of contradictions to life in Christ, but a book full of companions to it.