April 26, 2021 - To Prosper in God’s Truth

What sinful flesh ever uttered a prayer greater than the one in Daniel 9:4-19, a confession of the corporate wrongs that left Judah decimated and the Jewish temple in Jerusalem trashed. Even as he pled with God to “take away your anger and your fury from your city, Jerusalem, your holy mountain” (Daniel 9: 16), Daniel admitted that his people had not been faithful, the idea being that had they been, they would have turned from their iniquities oule-haskiyl ba-amitteka “and prospered in your truth” (Daniel 9:13).

Prospered in your truth?

How not? God had given the Hebrews light, truth, honor, privileges, and manifestations of His goodness and power unlike anything among the nations around them. “For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the LORD our God is in all things that we call upon him for? And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day?” (Deuteronomy 4:7, 8). And had His chosen ones done what their Lord had asked, which wasn’t so hard (“But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it,” [Deuteronomy 30:14])—how majestically they would have prospered in God’s truth.

And what about us, today?

Look at the truth given us: the cross, the state of the dead, the second coming, the sanctuary, the gospel. God has poured out light on His people as never before. And yet, what are we doing with it? Will we thrive in what we have been given; we will prosper in the truth? Or will we founder, and muddle along, deceiving ourselves with the idea that because we claim to be Christians that we, really, are?