Psalm 109:10
Who would beg, the prince or the pauper? The answer is obvious, for the prince has no reason to beg. He has all and is all, while the pauper has nothing and is a nobody by social standards. Due to your faith in Christ and His finished work would you consider yourself more a prince or a pauper? If you think it too haughty to consider to yourself a prince, so you choose pauper by default, you are not showing forth humility; but rather you are doing serious insult to the finished work of Jesus Christ.
When God changed Jacob’s name to Israel, he went from “supplanter” to “prince with God” (Genesis 32:28), though Jacob had done no princely act. This coronation was an act of God’s abundant grace, independent from Jacob’s righteousness. Solomon called his lover (the church) a “prince’s daughter” (Song of Solomon 7:1) and Jesus is the “Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). John told us that “as He is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17). Now, ask yourself again, are you closer to a prince or a pauper?
Many believers may say that they are a prince with God, but they act more like a pauper on the street. We beg God for things, pleading and crying aloud, making a show of our effort of supplication. The impression that must fall on the minds of the unbelievers around us is that our God is very hesitant to do good things for His people, and that it is difficult to get His attention. We pray this way many times because we honestly think that God is far away and that we must prove to Him how badly that we want things before He even stops to listen. This attitude paints God as distant, cold and unwilling.
David’s 109th Psalm speaks of wicked people who have fought against him “without a cause” (Psalm 109:3). As an individual living under the Old Covenant, he petitions God to judge and condemn the man (verse 7). These verses are worthy of commentary on the subject of how God has judged and condemned all of our sins in the body of Jesus, but for purposes of this devotion, look closely at the wording of verse 10:
“Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek also out of their desolate places”. Notice that I dropped the italicized words “their bread” because they are not in the original Hebrew. Children without a father are “continually vagabonds” and they “beg”. That which they seek, they seek out of “desolate places”. You and I have a Father, so what cause do we have to ever “beg”?
When we beg, we are coming from a place of desolation, where we think that God does not want to bless us. Some Christians say that this is a humble place, where saints realize how useless that they are and they lower themselves in the presence of a holy God to show that they are unworthy. This is to pray and act like the cross never happened! You are not an unredeemed, unregenerate sinner, so stop acting like it! You are a joint-heir with Christ and you have been made as one of His sons (Galatians 4:5).
The word “plead” occurs 39 times in the Old Testament but never once in the New Testament. Under the Old Covenant, men had to plead with God, for there was an ever-present consciousness of sin due to the fact that the blood of bulls and goats could not take them away (Hebrews 10:4). Now that we rest under a better covenant, we have a mediator who does our petitioning for us. We no longer need to plead with God, for Jesus does all of our pleading for us. We are not fatherless children. We are not paupers. We have been given power to become the sons of God! (John 1:12)
Who would beg, the prince or the pauper? The answer is obvious, for the prince has no reason to beg. He has all and is all, while the pauper has nothing and is a nobody by social standards. Due to your faith in Christ and His finished work would you consider yourself more a prince or a pauper? If you think it too haughty to consider to yourself a prince, so you choose pauper by default, you are not showing forth humility; but rather you are doing serious insult to the finished work of Jesus Christ.
When God changed Jacob’s name to Israel, he went from “supplanter” to “prince with God” (Genesis 32:28), though Jacob had done no princely act. This coronation was an act of God’s abundant grace, independent from Jacob’s righteousness. Solomon called his lover (the church) a “prince’s daughter” (Song of Solomon 7:1) and Jesus is the “Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). John told us that “as He is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17). Now, ask yourself again, are you closer to a prince or a pauper?
Many believers may say that they are a prince with God, but they act more like a pauper on the street. We beg God for things, pleading and crying aloud, making a show of our effort of supplication. The impression that must fall on the minds of the unbelievers around us is that our God is very hesitant to do good things for His people, and that it is difficult to get His attention. We pray this way many times because we honestly think that God is far away and that we must prove to Him how badly that we want things before He even stops to listen. This attitude paints God as distant, cold and unwilling.
David’s 109th Psalm speaks of wicked people who have fought against him “without a cause” (Psalm 109:3). As an individual living under the Old Covenant, he petitions God to judge and condemn the man (verse 7). These verses are worthy of commentary on the subject of how God has judged and condemned all of our sins in the body of Jesus, but for purposes of this devotion, look closely at the wording of verse 10:
“Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek also out of their desolate places”. Notice that I dropped the italicized words “their bread” because they are not in the original Hebrew. Children without a father are “continually vagabonds” and they “beg”. That which they seek, they seek out of “desolate places”. You and I have a Father, so what cause do we have to ever “beg”?
When we beg, we are coming from a place of desolation, where we think that God does not want to bless us. Some Christians say that this is a humble place, where saints realize how useless that they are and they lower themselves in the presence of a holy God to show that they are unworthy. This is to pray and act like the cross never happened! You are not an unredeemed, unregenerate sinner, so stop acting like it! You are a joint-heir with Christ and you have been made as one of His sons (Galatians 4:5).
The word “plead” occurs 39 times in the Old Testament but never once in the New Testament. Under the Old Covenant, men had to plead with God, for there was an ever-present consciousness of sin due to the fact that the blood of bulls and goats could not take them away (Hebrews 10:4). Now that we rest under a better covenant, we have a mediator who does our petitioning for us. We no longer need to plead with God, for Jesus does all of our pleading for us. We are not fatherless children. We are not paupers. We have been given power to become the sons of God! (John 1:12)
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