From J. C. Philpot's Daily Portions
July 24 "Nevertheless my loving-kindness will I not utterly take
from him, nor allow my faithfulness to fail. My covenant will I not break,
nor alter the thing that has gone out of my lips." Psalm 89:33, 34 We live in a changeable, ever-changing world. All outside
of us is stamped with variation, death, and decay; and as regards ourselves,
everything within us tells us how frail, weak, and mutable we are. Thus, as
viewed by the eye of sense and reason, uncertainty and changeability are
ever seen to be deeply stamped, not only on every event of time, but on all
we are and have in body and soul; and this experience of what we feel in
ourselves and see in all around us often greatly tries both our faith and
hope, for we are apt to measure God by ourselves, and judge of our state
before him, not according to his word, but according to the varying thoughts
and exercises of our mind. But when we can look by faith through all these mists and
fogs which, as resting on the lower grounds of our soul, so often obscure
our view of divine realities, to the fixed purposes of God as manifested in
an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure, and have at the
same time some testimony of our interest therein, ground is thus afforded
both for faith and hope as resting, not on our ever-changing feelings, but
on the word and promise of him who cannot lie. It was thus David was
comforted on his bed of languishing when the cold damps of death sat upon
his brow (2 Samuel 23:5). It was then in this "everlasting covenant, ordered
in all things, and sure," that even before the world was formed, or man
created, or sin committed, a Savior was provided, a Redeemer set up, and the
persons of the redeemed chosen in him and given to him. How can we think,
then, that any changing and changeable events in time can alter and
frustrate what was thus absolutely fixed by firm and sovereign decree, or
that any mutable circumstances in ourselves or others can defeat and
disannul the eternal purposes of God?