Thursday, November 17, 2022

 

Thursday, November 17, 2022


Psalm 40

Zechariah 11:4-17

Revelation 9:1-12


Observances: Hilda of Whitby, abbess (d. 680); Hugh, bishop of Lincoln (d. 1220)


I waited patiently for the LORD; He inclined to me and heard my cry.


A terrifying spectacle is presented before us today in the reading from Revelation: the army of demonic locusts, come not to harm the crops but to torture people, swarming out from the pit made by the fallen star. Zechariah is equally apocalyptic: the flock of sheep, rejecting their shepherd, are handed over to the “foolish” shepherd, who takes the broken staff and uses it as a club to beat the lambs.


Indeed, we cannot help but sense some holy terror in God’s sovereign authority when we reflect on the fact that it is by His grace alone that we are saved by faith in Christ. But while in Revelation it seems to be those people have a physical mark on them that lets them know they belong to God, what is the spiritual mark we can identify in ourselves? Where is our assurance that God has not handed us over to the foolish shepherd, to the Destroyer?


Our assurance, thanks be to God, comes not from our emotions, subject as they are to whimsy. Nor does it come from any physical effort we have made, whether in any effort to try and be a “good” person, or in a conversion moment when we were first convicted by the Holy Spirit. Our assurance comes from what our Good Shepherd did for us on the cross. It is from an external act.


Yet we are still tempted with doubt. Even demons believe that Jesus exists, writes Saint James, yet they are not saved. While our salvation was once and for all accomplished by Jesus, not by us, how can we know that we are not merely intellectual about this historical fact? Look at the response of the sheep who rejected their good shepherd.


They rejected their good shepherd, and so he quit. The owners of the sheep, laughing in the good shepherds face, gave him a measly thirty pieces of silver as wages: the price of an injured slave. Is your attitude to Jesus as Shepherd different? What price would you put on the blood of Christ?


This is our assurance that God has marked us with His seal of protection and salvation: that in our hearts, we do love the Lord Jesus, and that there is no treasure in the world we could be offered that could tempt us away from Him. His love, His support, His understanding, reassurance, constant presence and everything else He gives us is the most precious thing we have. This love we have for Jesus proves to our hearts that we belong to Him. We always find ourselves running back to it. And, as Saint Paul reminds us, there is absolutely nothing in heaven or earth that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.



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