Daily Devotional

March 10

A First Book of Daily Readings

by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (selected by Frank Cumbers)
Sourced from the OPC website.

Why does God...? Why doesn't He...?
(continuing from March 08 devotional)

(e) God is faithful ... God is the God of the Covenant. Though He is independent and absolute, eternal, mighty, righteous, and holy, nevertheless He has condescended to make a covenant with men.... It was this covenant that entitled Israel to turn to God and say, "My God, mine Holy One." [Habakkuk] remembers that God has said, "I will be their God and they shall be my people."

For those saintly men, the prophets, and all who had spiritual understanding in Israel, this fact was more significant than anything else. While believing in the eternal attributes of God, they might have been chilled by the thought that such a God might be far away in the heavens and oblivious to their need. But what linked Him to them was the knowledge that He was a faithful, covenant-keeping God. God had given His word, and He would never break it.... Whatever the Chaldean army might do, it could never exterminate Israel because God had given certain promises to Israel which He could never break....


The prophet now proceeds to bring his problem into the context of those absolute and eternal principles.... He reaches his answer to this question about the Chaldeans by reasoning like this: "God must be raising them up for Israel's benefit: of this I can be absolutely certain. It is not that the Chaldeans have taken the law into their own hands; it is not that God is incapable of restraining them. These things are impossible in view of my propositions. God is just using them for His own purposes, ... and He is carrying out those purposes. I do not understand it fully, but I am quite sure that we are not going to be exterminated ... although ... there are apparently going to be very few of us left; and we are going to be carried into captivity. But a remnant will remain because the Almighty is still God, and He is using the Chaldeans to do something within the purpose of the covenant. God ... is not being defeated.... He is doing this and doing it for His own grand end and object."

From Fear to Faith, pp. 31-2

---

“Text reproduced from ‘A First Book of Daily Readings’ by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, published by Epworth Press 1970 & 1977 © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes. Used with permission.”