Curbing Rebellion against God's Deep Ways

10 MARCH

O LORD, how great are Thy works! and Thy thoughts are very deep. Psalm 92:5

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Romans 11:33-36

God governs the world in a manner that we are often unable to comprehend. Were things under our own management, we would invert the order that God observes. Since that is not the case, we may perversely argue with God for not hastening sooner to help the righteous and to punish the wicked. 

It strikes us in the highest degree inconsistent with the perfections of God that He should bear the wicked when they rage against Him, when they rush without restraint into the most daring acts of iniquity, and when they persecute at will the good and the innocent. It seems intolerable to us that God should subject His own people to the injustice and violence of the wicked while failing to check abounding falsehood, deceit, plunder, bloodshed, and every species of enormity. Why does He suffer His truth to be obscured and His holy name to be trampled under foot? Such is the greatness of the divine operation and the depth of divine counsel that cause the psalmist to break forth in admiration.

It is no doubt true that God has displayed incomprehensible depth of power and wisdom in the fabric of the universe; but what the psalmist especially has in view here is to check our tendency to murmur against God when He does not pursue our plan in His providential management. When His ways do not agree with the general ideas of men, we ought to contemplate them with reverence, remembering that God, to better try our obedience, has lifted His deep and mysterious judgments far above our conceptions.

John Calvin

FOR MEDITATIONS: How easily our hearts rise up in rebellion and unbelief when God does not act as we think He should! This psalm is a wonderful corrective to that spirit. What steps can we take to remind ourselves who is Creator and who is creature when we contemplate God's ways in the world?

365 Days With Calvin

Selected and Edited by Joel R. Beeke