One Place

This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture that rejects fear and champions faith in God. The psalmist discusses the meeting of mercy and truth, and how righteousness and peace come together. Jesus is the focal point of it all, the one who enables us to meet God. The concept of grace and truth is seen throughout the New Testament. Justice is achieved through Jesus, and there is now no condemnation for those in Christ. The fall of humanity and the cost of free will are discussed, but God still desires fellowship with us. We can have authority and dominion through Jesus, who paid the price for us. It is by faith in Jesus that we receive peace and operate in God's perfect love. Our worthiness is not based on our efforts, but on God's love and grace for us. Welcome to Fear No Fear. Grace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. May the Holy Spirit embrace you today. This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture. We reject fear in any and all forms. Fear is a spiritual force, the currency of darkness and ignorance. It's what we inherited when Adam gave up his faith and Satan uses it to keep people down. His only weapon is words. If he can get you believing or looking at words of fear, he's got you. Instead, we champion faith as an allegiance to God, as a belief and trust and loyalty to the Lord God Almighty. We accept the evidence of his word as unvarnished truth, as is, just as it's written. We get close to his perfect love through the word, and perfect love casts out fear. 1 John 4.18 All scripture is taken from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Visit eBible.org Psalm 85.10 Mercy and truth meet together. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Mercy is compassion and forbearance. Imprisoning as a penalty for murder instead of death. Truth is a judgment that is true fidelity to a standard. These are two aspects that do not reconcile in the natural. Truth would condemn a murderer justly. Mercy wishes to give clemency. But here, the psalmist says that they meet, joining to produce something else. Mercy and truth standing side by side to achieve a goal. I've read rabbis teach it as loving kindness and mercy, and then comparing it to Moses and Aaron. Exodus 4.27 Moses being a man of truth and justice in a very black and white way. Aaron being a man leaning towards lenience. As the chronicles of the time wandering in the desert show, these two traits did not meet much. These two men were not always in agreement. But this isn't an ordinary psalm, and this statement is also not ordinary. This is a messianic psalm. Lord, you have been favorable to your land. You have restored the fortunes of Jacob. You have forgiven the iniquity of your people. You have covered all their sin. You have taken away all your wrath. You have turned from the fierceness of your anger. Turn us, God of our salvation, and cause your indignation toward us to cease. Will you be angry with us forever? Will you draw out your anger to all generations? Won't you revive us again that your people may rejoice in you? Show us your loving kindness, Lord. Grant us your salvation. I will hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak to his people, his saints. But let them not turn again to folly. Surely his salvation is near those who fear him, that glory may dwell in our land. Mercy and truth meet together. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth springs out of the earth. Righteousness has looked down from heaven. Yes, the Lord will give that which is good. Our land will yield its increase. Righteousness goes before him and prepares the way for his steps. The Lord covered our sin, forgave our iniquity, turned away his fierce anger. He has granted salvation. He speaks peace to us. Truth springs from the earth to declare the rightness of the Lord. The Lord gives good things. The land yields increase, and righteousness is open as a path which we can trod. All of it occurs in Jesus. Jesus is the focal point on which it all hangs, the one single place that enables us to meet God, where mercy and truth coexist, where righteousness and peace are one. Where else could the price of sin and the cause of the Lord's anger be paid, redeeming all humanity while remaining true to the righteous principle of Yahweh God, where the Lord can provide mercy in truth and peace in righteousness? Where else and how else could God be both justice and justifier? Nowhere. There is nowhere else where salvation is given. No other path. No other way. Just Jesus. Period. His truth is the only truth. Everything else is wishful thinking with nothing to back it up but feelings and human reasoning. Jesus said to him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also. From now on, you know Him and have seen Him. John 14, 6-7 But nothing stands alone. The whole Old Testament shadows the New Testament. So do we see this concept elsewhere? Yes, we do. The Word became flesh and lived amongst us. We saw His glory, such glory as of the only-born Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. John 1, 14 From His fullness we all received grace upon grace, for the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. John 14, 16-17 For all the fullness was pleased to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself by Him, whether things on the earth or things in the heavens, having made peace through the blood of His cross. Colossians 1, 19-20 Fullness of grace and truth realized. Grace upon grace, all things reconciled, peace through the blood of the cross. But what about justice? There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who don't walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death. For what the law couldn't do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God did, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. And for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who don't walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. Romans 8, 1-5 No anger. Price paid. Justice done. Justification given by grace through faith. Redeemer, merciful, truthful, righteous, and peace to us. Peace between God and humanity. Luke 2, 14 This is huge, because the Lord is completely righteous, and we are not. Not even a little bit. The Lord made us in His image, Genesis 1, 26-28, on purpose, to fellowship with us. At the time, we were blessed by God. We could stand beside Him in truth and righteousness. There was no need for grace, but God had extended it to us anyway, because He knew what was coming. He knew that we would fall, that we would betray Him, that we would choose a path we saw as easy and choose not to continue to walk His path. He knew there was a need for salvation before He had announced He would create us. He knew the cost of free will, but without free will, we couldn't have true fellowship. Our worship would mean nothing, because it would not be freely given from love. That's how much He wanted to see us face to face. That's how much He wanted to talk to us, to walk with us. And guess what? He never changes. He is dependable. He still wants to talk with us, walk with us, have free fellowship with us. Free will was the cost of fellowship. It was also the ticket into dominion. We needed the restriction of not eating the fruit in order to have the authority to walk in dominion here on earth toward the rest of creation. While we had dominion, nothing and no one could touch us. We say who operates here on earth. We say what spiritual forces have permission to work in our lives. We had total say over everything, and we made the wrong choice. We gave it all away. We brought on ourselves death. It didn't exist in us before the fall. It had no purpose before then. But when we fell, we stepped out of God's yard. We freely chose the curse and all that came with it. I'd love to say that it was for a good reason, but it wasn't. It was selfishness. It was antifaith. It was fear, fear of missing out, fear that we weren't all that we could be, fear that we were toiling. Ironically, we got all of that. We missed out. We aren't all that we could be. We have to toil. We lost authority. We operate in dominion in regard to ourselves. We still choose who can operate on this planet to work in our own lives. But we lost it in relation to the rest of creation. Free will without empowerment outside of ourselves. And that's where we live and move and speak, unless we meet Jesus at the door. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, then I will come in to him and will dine with him and he with me. Revelation 3.20 He is at our heart's door, knocking, asking us if he can come in. We don't have to search for him. He's right there. We need only open the door to him, to seek his face, to admit our sin, receive his redemption, and declare him Lord. Mark 16.16 and Romans 10.9 We need to submit to Jesus. Without the restriction of the yoke of Jesus, we can't have the authority to walk in the dominion that Jesus got back for us. Matthew 11.28-30 He paid the price. He did the heavy lifting. We only need to walk in his ways, seek his face, abide in his word and in him, to receive everything that he has for us, to accept the peace of his righteousness. Because it is Jesus' righteousness in us that is the fount of our peace. 2 Corinthians 5.20-21 It is the perfect love of God that drives out fear and restores peace. It is by faith that we operate in that love. We bring it into our souls from our spirits by faith. Without faith, we do nothing. Philippians 4.13 Without faith, we don't please God. Hebrews 11.6 Without faith, we sin. Romans 14.23 Because faith is all about the Lord. All about God's will. It is all about God's word. There is no us. There is Jesus. In him, we are as he is. Ephesians 4.22-24 Without our efforts, without our worthiness, there is literally nothing that we can do to be worthy of all that the Lord is holding out to us. And it is all because of his love for us. Because he loves us, we are able to love. Because he loves us, he extends to us the grace to have faith in him. He even gives us the faith too. Romans 12.3 He gives all of that to us for one simple reason. But God, being rich in mercy for his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, that no one would boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before that we would walk in them. Ephesians 2.4-10 This is the love of God, a perfect engine to provide for us. He operates in righteousness and truth. He extends mercy and grace. He gives faith. We dwell in peace. This is the good news of salvation. There is nothing held against us unless we want it to be. There is nothing stopping us from strolling into the throne room of heaven with smiles, thanksgiving, and praise. There is nothing stopping us from enjoying a stroll with the Lord in the windy part of the day. There is nothing stopping us from fellowshipping with our Creator as He created us to. We are made in His image, and in Him we are perfected to be as we always should have been, missing out on nothing. We get to be all that we can be, and we are enabled to work without toil to produce blessing for Yahweh God, the ever-loving, ever-merciful, ever-gracious, almighty One. In Jesus. Because of Jesus. By Jesus' works. At Jesus' word. Enjoy the kiss of righteousness in peace, standing before Him in mercy and truth. Our daily affirmation of God's love is Hebrews 11, 1. We cannot see heaven, not with our natural eyes. Almost 60 years ago, the Soviets released a statement they claimed was from their hero cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, which read, I looked and looked and looked, but I didn't see God. Which they framed as a God-doesn't-exist narrative. But the earth's atmosphere is nowhere near enough to see God. Just outside that atmosphere? Nowhere near enough to see God. The Lord exists in a spiritual realm which is outside of the physical realm. We, our physical realm, is like a computer sitting on God's desk. We may be impressive and do exciting things, but we're not really real reality. How do I know this? The same way you can. The love of God. God's love enables us to have faith. By faith, our spirit can see heaven. We can see the things that are not seen. By faith we understand that the universe has been framed by the word of God so that what is seen has not been made out of things which are visible. That's verse 3 of Hebrews 11. Everything was framed by the word of God. By getting into the word, spending time with the word, speaking the word, praying the word, singing the word, and thinking about the word, we are spending time getting versed in the very thing that framed the entire universe. Think about that. Think about the wonders of nature that science has discovered They are nothing to what can be revealed by the Lord. He's stamped creation with himself. He can be found everywhere from your DNA onward. Don't believe that? That's okay. Your belief is not required for the truth to be true. Unbelief by anyone won't touch it. It won't change it. And it won't reduce it in any way. Jesus' prayer for all believers was, sanctify them in your truth. Your word is truth. John 17, 17. It was a piece of scripture that he was praying. Your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness. Your law is truth. Psalm 119, verse 142. Jesus prayed the scriptures over us. Jesus spoke the word into us. Everywhere. Everyone. For all of time. Through grace, by faith, we can grab hold of that. We can be sanctified into his truth. The truth. All truth. Unseen, but seeable by faith. He loves us too much to have us be in darkness, or even a little shade. He is light, and he is knowledge, and he wants you to have them both. He loves you. Accept what he offers today. Read the word to see him on every page, in every word, and for every season. Open your heart to the wonders of El Shaddai, the all-sufficient God of more than enough. As we close, remember that you have earth. You are precious and valuable. Declare this. Today, God loves that I, now you, fill in the blank. Was it a meal you made? A smile you gave? Did you get out of bed? Read? Put on socks? There's no wrong answers here. There is no end to God's love, and no end to the things about you that he loves each and every day. Pick one. And remember, the Lord loves you, just because you're you. 1 John 4, 9-10 tells us, By this, God's love was revealed in us, that God has sent his only-born Son into the world, that we might live through him. And this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. His perfect love turned away God's wrath because of sin, and it casts out our fear, too. See verses 18 and 19. We love because he first loved us. He just loves us. Can't get enough of us. And that is wonderful. See you next time.