The salvation of the righteous comes from the LORD; he is their stronghold in time of trouble. (Psalms 37:39, NIV)
This year at our “flagship” Links Fellowship, The Red Door Community in Bermuda Dunes, California, Links Players president Jeffrey Cranford has been exploring a question that plagues the minds of many: Is there any way to rectify the God I think I see in the Old Testament with the God I think I see in the New Testament?
Partly what makes this question so compelling in our own time is that the New Atheists—those who are leading the anti-God thinking in their speaking, writing, and debates—isolate incidents in the Old Testament that make God appear especially wrathful and capricious. “We should know well enough from our own human understanding of good and evil that these ‘acts of God’ are anything but loving,” the atheists argue. “Who would ever think such a God is worthy of worship?”
It’s a tough challenge. Plant yourself across the table from your various golf partners during a round of after-golf drinks and you eventually hear the same kinds of contentions. If you don’t know how to respond, you probably curl up behind your glass and hope the conversation somehow turns back to golf as soon as possible.
I’ll let you head to the Red Door web site to listen to these teachings if you want to add significantly to your own understanding how God’s Old Testament law points to God’s New Testament grace. But let’s take one quick look at something you need to understand for the sake of your own faith.
In a nutshell, this is it: The gospel is as prevalent in the Old Testament as it is in the New. You may just have to learn to do a better job of keeping your eyes open for it.
Consider the first line of today’s verse, Psalm 37:39. Salvation, we see, is granted to the righteous. But note that it is not granted to them because of their righteousness. Rather, salvation comes from the same source it has always come from; salvation comes from the Lord.
This is the gospel message. Our righteousness, good as it may appear in a moral sense, counts for nothing in terms of salvation. What is credited to us as righteousness is the same thing that was credited to Abraham as righteousness in some of the earliest pages of scripture: faith in God (Romans 4:1-5).
In God’s long outworking of his master plan, salvation for those who do believe was bought by the death of his Son, Jesus of Nazareth. But the source of that plan and its completion is the God of all time, the one who has reached out from the first hour of sin, saying to all who would listen, “I am here to save you. Put your faith in me, and I will be your stronghold.”
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Jeff Hopper
March 26, 2012
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The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday through Friday at www.linksplayers.com.