MONDAY August 2nd
Psalm 65
NIV (v9) – ‘You care for the land and water it; you enrich it abundantly. The streams of God are filled with water to provide the people with grain, for so you have ordained it.’
ESV (v9) – ‘You visit the earth and water it; you greatly enrich it; the river of God is full of water; you provide their grain, for so you have prepared it.’
One of the marvels of creation (it is all marvellous) is the ability for kind and species to reproduce, and for me I love to see it happening before my very eyes in the garden, to take a seed that has been produced by a plant and to place it into the soil and allow nature to play its part in the darkness of the earth before at last a sign of life pokes up through the soil and what was planted begins to grow and to mature until eventually it is a reproduction of the plant the seed had been taken from. I love going out into the garden every day to see how what we have planted is growing and to watch how the fruit or the vegetable is maturing and the flowers displaying their glorious beauty. (I am also sometimes guilty of poking a little below the soil to see what is going on!)
Our text is found within a cluster of verses that portray the wonder of this reproduction and reminds us that it happens because it is God who as the great gardener sends the water and sunshine that is required to enrich all that has been planted. To allow that DNA which God the Great Creator embedded into all that he had created to reproduce so that mankind could continue to reap the benefits of a regular harvest, a replenished earth. If you have come to this devotion today and just read the verse that I have highlighted above, turn to the chapter, and read verses 9-13, and in doing so wonder about the amazing provision of God that we can enjoy every day and give him thanks from a grateful heart. Even give thanks for the rain! But what I want to share is that these verses demonstrate to us that God is a bountiful God, he is lavish with his provision on both the just and the unjust, we all benefit from that which is reproduced in nature year after year as each season follow the other. But a further and perhaps more important reminder is that the greatest and most lavish provision of all that God has given is that which is to be found in the Lord Jesus Christ, provision that allows us as created beings through the means of human reproduction to also become recreated individuals through new birth. For sin tarnished the DNA that God had embedded into human kind so that as we read in Romans 6:23 we ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’, that which is reproduced every time a child is born is tarnished by sin, but God had a master plan, a plan in which he would allow that which was tarnished and tainted by sin to be renewed, recreated and it takes place through the means of a new birth, being born again by the Spirit of God.
Where do you stand before God today, are you still living as a sinner tainted and ruined by sin or have you been born again, recreated by the Spirit of God, the message and the work of the Cross of the Lord Jesus is powerful, powerful unto salvation for all who will believe, and I through this devotion want to give to you, present to you the wonderful news that just as God has provided for your natural needs, the air you breathe the food you eat, the sunshine and the rain, the beauty of all that is around us, so also he has also provided for you soul, he has provided it through the Lord Jesus Christ, the invitation is open to all to ‘believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.’ Acts 16:31 That is you will be recreated.
I close with a reminder of 2 Corinthians 5:17, my favourite verse of Scripture, ‘Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.’