Mankind was presented the good tidings because we are treasured by God. This devotional reading looks at three ways in which God’s Word described how and why we are valued by God.
Nuggets
- We are treasured because, even though we are fallible, God designed the Plan of Salvation to restore us.
- We are treasured because we have been given a special relationship with Jesus as His bride.
- We are treasured because we have been given victory over sin when we ABCD.
- What Jesus wants most with His sacrifice is to bring us peace.
There is one reason why God designed the Plan of Salvation to restore our relationships with Him. He love us.
God treasures us.
Boston pointed out three ways in which God’s Word shows that He treasures us. Let’s dig in.
Let's Put It into Context
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Devotions in the Gospsel Tidings about Easter series
The foundation of this series is Boston’s sermon, Jesus and the Meek.
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The headings are Boston’s words.
These Tidings Relate to a Treasure
“But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us” (II Cor. 4: 7 ESV)
We are treasured because, even though we are fallible, God designed the Plan of Salvation to restore us.
We can take this topic two ways.
The first way is that mankind is fragile like jars of clay, so we need Sovereign God’s intervention to save us.
A jar of clay is a good representation of what we are. A blob of clay is put on the potter’s wheel. The potter lovingly molds it into a jar, fashioning it as He chooses.
Then, the jar goes into the kiln. The baking strengthens it – but it still can be broken.
Some jars were used in the temple. Therefore, they were consecrated to God.
But look at it this way.
We, like the clay, are a blob when we are unregenerated. We aren’t fulfilling the purpose of our creation – to worship God.
When we ABCD, God molds us and makes us after His Will. The jar, like us, is filled with whatever the potter wants to put in it.
But the jar doesn’t get to choose.
We get to choose whether we will follow God or not. We decide whether we are going to be complete or not.
The other way we can take this is that Sovereign God treasurers us so much that He did provide the Plan of Salvation.
Yes, God gain glory because our lowliness shows His majesty. Others looking at us can see God.
But it is more than that. God loves us that much. To put it in our emotions, I bet God was crushed when Adam and Eve disobeyed Him.
Still, God is the One Who designed the Plan of Salvation to get us back. He decided what offering would work – and He provided the priceless Sacrifice to accomplish that offering.
God was willing to give up what was needed – the life of His own beloved Son – to get us back.
God’s Word tell us exactly how God sees us as His treasure. “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth” (Deut. 7: 6 ESV).
I think both ways are correct. We are fallible. We did disobey God and let sin into the world.
But God loves us so much that He designed the Plan of Salvation to restore our relationships with Him. He wanted us back. He wants to return to a place in our hearts.
What we can’t lose sight of is the importance of what is in us, not what the important thing is in. The focus isn’t on how wonderful we are. The focus is on how wonderful God is.
Our physical jars of clay are supposed to be filled with the gospel message. To the core of our beings, we have to be infused with the message that we are sinners, Jesus died to pay the price for our sins because we couldn’t, and we need to confess God as Sovereign Lord.
We are to be willing – and excited – to share the good news with others.
Yes, we can witness. Don’t gloss over the fact that “… we have this treasure in jars of clay …” (II Cor. 4: 7 ESV).
The power to witness is in us now, because “… the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us” (II Cor. 4: 7 ESV).
God will use us to spread His gospel message. “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Isa. 55: 10-11 ESV).
We have to understand that God loves us so much that He put something precious in something that He considered precious. Sherman had a great way to say that. He wrote, “Then the gospel is precious, for it is the word of life, and he that believeth it hath everlasting life.”
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God put the precious gospel message in His precious children.
To a Marriage, a Most Happy Match for Poor Sinners
“And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord” (Hos. 2: 19-20 ESV)
We are treasured because we have been given a special relationship with Jesus as His bride.
A covenant is an agreement or a promise. In essence, that is what a marriage is.
God’s Word tells us how God views marriage.
- “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2: 24 ESV).
- “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous” (Heb. 13: 4 ESV).
Betrothal was something more than our becoming engaged. A ceremony occurred, and they were considered legally married. They just didn’t set up house yet.
Boston gives us the timeline of what happens when a couple is betrothed to us.
- The Trinity saw our acceptance of the gift of salvation throughout eternity.
- They rejoiced at the match.
- Jesus completed the Plan of Salvation by sacrificing Himself so that we may be redeemed.
- Jesus accepted the match by signing the contracts.
- The Holy Spirit is sent to convict us of our sins.
- While we are determining whether we will choose to accept the gift of salvation or not, Jesus is preparing for our acceptance.
- The Church is waiting to welcome us with open arms.
- Baptism and the Lord’s Supper has been prepared for us.
- Other disciples share examples of their relationship with Jesus.
This marriage lasts forever. Boston say that playing out this way. He wrote, “Espousals stand firm in the case of the adversity of either party; in the case of the advancement of either party; in the case of desertion on either side.”
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The Church, as we are going to find in Revelation 19 when we get there, is the bride of Christ. We are so beloved by Him that He wants to spend eternity with us.
We cannot lose sight of the fact that the purpose of the marriage is to restore our righteousness and eliminate the judgment of whether we are God’s children or not.
It is interesting that Calvin described faithfulness as stability. It’s never heard it described like that, but it fits.
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We’ve called it being sober minded. “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (I Pet. 5: 8 ESV).
Ooo, baby. God doesn’t want us flopping back and forth between serving Him and serving the worldview. He was us focused solely on Him. That is the stability.
When we think of a marriage contract, we understand that both parties have to be present and working toward the relationship for it to work. This is no different. We have to be seeking God.
Searching for and Seeking God
Hearing His Word (Rom. 10: 17)
Reading His Word (Rev. 1: 3)
Praying to Him (Heb. 4: 16)
Studying His Word (Ac. 17: 11)
Meditating on His Word (Ps. 1: 1-2)
Memorizing His Word (Ps. 119: 11)
What we have to focus on here is that betrothals were forever because the couple wouldn’t separate for any reason. God has an unbreakable covenant with Jesus.
Think about it. There isn’t any closer relationship than being married. Of course, the love is there. So is communication.
The whole purpose of the marriage is so that we can “… know the Lord” (Hos. 2: 19-20 ESV).
I keep thinking about what God has been telling Pastor Steve. The Church is missing Jesus because of ignorance and apathy.
We think we know God, but we really don’t.
Hannam told us why knowledge is so important. He wrote, “There can be no cordial obedience to God by those who are ignorant of Him. Ignorance is not the mother of devotion, but the parent of superstition and idolatry. An unknown person cannot be truly and cordially loved.”
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We can’t obey what we don’t know. Not knowing God causes idolatry, worshiping something other than Him.
God is our Creator, and Jesus is our Redeemer. They demand — and deserve — our obedience.
It has to start with knowledge. True, God overlooked that in times past. “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent” (Ac. 17: 30 ESV).
In my opinion, that was before Jesus came. There was God’s laws that He had given, but those weren’t given to bring salvation. Those were given so that we would know we need a Savior.
God wasn’t going to judge harshly when the way wasn’t in place. Oh, He would still demand obedience, but He would accept that redemption wasn’t in place – yet.
Once the Savior came and that redemption is in place, that is the only way in which we can be saved. “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Ac. 4: 12 ESV).
Everything is in place now for our redemption. All we have to do is choose to follow God.
To a Glorious Victory
“He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken” (Isa. 25: 8 ESV)
We are treasured because we have been given victory over sin when we ABCD.
There are two kinds of death: physical and spiritual. We are all going to experience the physical death.
I like how the King James Version says it. “He will swallow up death in victory …” (Isa. 25: 8 KJV).
Jesus was victorious over spiritual death. “and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (II Tim. 1: 10 ESV emphasis added).
The sting is taken away because the sting is sin. Paul talked about that in his letter to the Corinthians. He kind of combined what Isaiah said with what Hosea sort of said. “… ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ ‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’” (I Cor. 15: 54-55 ESV).
The Evalgelist listed four victories that Jesus enjoyed.
- Defeating death and hell
- Altering disciples’ nature
- Securing a different judgment for all who ABCD
- Resurrection
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Jesus treasured us so much that He submitted to this horrible death so that we could be victorious over sin. He gave all He had forus.
Moore was correct with what he said. He wrote that Jesus didn’t use any of His hidden divine powers. He used His life to give us eternal life.
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The eternal life we receive will be without sorrows. We’ve talked about that once and will again when we get to Revelation 21.
Jesus fulfilled all the laws. It is those laws that gave sin its authority. His death and resurrection took that authority away.
Now wait a minute. Aren’t we supposed to follow God’s laws? How can they lead to sin?
Well, breaking God’s laws and commandments means we are sinning. But the laws have a greater purpose.
“Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 5: 20-21 ESV).
We can only find salvation through submitting our hearts and lives to Jesus.
To a Most Desirable Peace
“For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility” (Eph. 2: 14 ESV)
What Jesus wants most with His sacrifice is to bring us peace.
The whole purpose of the Plan of Salvation is restore us back to the peace we have in God. We can only do that through accepting Jesus as our Savior, because He is the author of peace.
- “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5: 1 ESV).
- “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (Jn. 14: 27 ESV).
Jesus is the author of peace because He make peace between us and God. Through His death is how He created that peace.
Jesus’ peace is His presence and that of the Father’s.
But that isn’t peace as we think of it, is it? We think of peace as absence of conflict.
What trips us up is we sometimes think Jesus should give us what we call peace in one shot to cover us for eternity. It doesn’t work that way.
Jesus employs peace continually by degrees.
I know. It doesn’t always feel that way.
- It doesn’t feel like Jesus is giving us any peace.
- It feels more like it comes in stops and starts when it does come.
- It doesn’t feel like we are getting more of it, just the same meager amount we got last time.
We forget our part of Jesus’ peace – contentment. If we aren’t content, we don’t have peace.
We have to be satisfied with whatever amount of peace Jesus gives us at the time.
We also have to be unified with fellow disciples in order to feel that peace. “Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind” (I Pet. 3: 8 ESV).
Peace can only be found through living our lives as Jesus would have us do.
Making the Connections
If we do not accept Jesus as our Savior, we are at war with Him. That is the opposite of peace. We can only find peace in His shed blood.
How Do We Apply This?
- Rest in the peace of Jesus’ presence.
Father God. We are so humbled that You count us as treasures. We let sin into the world, and we continue to sin daily – even after we have committed our lives to You. Help us to strengthen our resolve to live for You. Help us to not be complacent in what we think we are. Help us to become more like You. Amen.
What do you think?
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