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April 11                      Today’s Reading: 2 Samuel 24-1 Kings 1

“I have sinned, and I have done wickedly.”

“And David spake unto the Lord when he saw the angel that smote the people, and said, lo! I have sinned, and I have done wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done?”

(2 Samuel 24:17)

 

God the Holy Spirit tells us that for man’s sin the whole creation groans and travails in pain. The slaughter of every beast, the sacrifice of every lamb proclaims with a louder voice than words can declare the horrid evil of our transgressions. When David saw the destroying angel brandishing his dreadful sword over Jerusalem, he remembered his own sin with great grief, knowing that it was his sin that brought the judgment of God upon the guiltless sheep of Israel. The people were not guilty, but David of numbering Israel. Yet, they suffered for David’s transgression. The thought of that fact crushed David’s heart.

 

Just for the Unjust

Oh, how our sins ought to crush our hearts before our crucified Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ, before him who “died the just for the unjust, to bring us to God!” May God the Holy Spirit cause our hearts and minds to think always, throughout every day, of the sufferings of the holy Lamb of God for our sins, that we may constantly bow before him in repentance and lift our hearts to him in praise, gratitude, and love.

 

Sin’s Great Evil

We get some idea of the evil of sin when we behold the apostate spirits cast out of heaven. We see something of the terrible evil of sin when we think of the curse of God upon the earth and upon all the sons and daughters of Adam sinning in him. The destruction of the old world by water, the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire, and the everlasting torments of the damned in hell, all give us some sense of sin’s enormous evil in the sight of the holy Lord God.

But if we would see sin in all its exceeding sinfulness and tremendous evil, we must go to Calvary. There we behold the Lamb of God, taking away our sin by the sacrifice of himself. Here, at the foot of the cross, let us take up the words of David and ask our own hearts, while confessing that we have sinned and done wickedly, — What had this Lamb of God done?

He who knew no sin became sin. He who “was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heaven” became both sin and a curse for his redeemed, “that we might be made the righteousness of God in him!

 

Devotion Desired

Oh, blessed, Holy Spirit, give me ever to set my heart upon the Lord Jesus, my almighty Surety, and to remember that in all he did, in all he sustained, and all he suffered, he bore my sins in his own body on the tree, and that not a single sin of omission or commission was left out! All my iniquities, all my transgressions, and all my sins, the Lord Jehovah laid on his darling Son, as Aaron laid the sins of Israel on the paschal lamb on the great day of atonement (Leviticus 16:21). Help me, Holy Spirit, with increasing confidence of faith, with holy hope, with ardent joy, and with ever-increasing consecration, to look upon Christ my Surety and glory in him, unceasingly in him, who of God is made unto me Wisdom, and Righteousness, and Sanctification, and Redemption.

 


 

 

 

 

Don Fortner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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