August 18: INSEPARABLE
And I prayed to the LORD my God, and made confession and said, “O Lord, great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and mercy with those who love Him and with those who keep His commandments, we have sinned and committed iniquity, we have done wickedly and rebelled, even by departing from Your precepts and Your judgments.” Daniel 9:4-5
Daniel’s awareness that the time was fulfilled regarding the literal Babylonian captivity—seventy years—combined with his perplexity over the visions he had been given of the distant future, set the stage in his mind to ponder the conditional nature of many of God’s promises (see Jeremiah 18:5-10); he saw the impenitence of his people and was greatly concerned that the prevailing attitude could delay or prevent the blessings of God. His prayer was genuine, heartfelt, humble. He included himself in the confession, saying we have sinned and committed iniquity, we have done wickedly and rebelled… Daniel’s prayer did not have a shred of self-righteousness before the God of heaven.
Daniel knew and loved the LORD [his] God, calling Him great and awesome. Some translations read great and dreadful, better understood as revered and awe-inspiring. Daniel rightly credited the only true God who keeps His covenant and mercy with those who love Him and . . . keep His commandments. It is love for the One who made us—and loved us first! (1 John 4:19; see also Revelation 1:5)—that fuels the desire to honor and keep His commandments. Love toward God and the keeping of His commandments are inseparable (John 14:15). Yet Satan has consistently led individuals to attempt to separate these two essentially intertwined facets of a relationship with the Lord. A left-leaning “love” for God ignores the righteous requirement of the law (Romans 8:4) and spreads a message of antinomianism – or lawlessness. A right-leaning attempt to keep the law apart from a genuine love for God is not only miserable but a losing proposition that spreads a harsh message of legalism. Both of these leanings can lead to a self-righteous attitude. Neither of these leanings invite or welcome the aid of the Holy Spirit, yet He will tenderly seek to draw attention back to the precepts of the Creator. Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it” whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left (Isaiah 30:21).
Satan has worked overtime to paint caricatures of our God as vindictive, arbitrary, and unlovable…OR as a blind old grandfather who condones whatever his children want to do, as long as they occasionally sit in his lap and declare that they love him. To believe any of the deceptive representations of our Creator is to fall into Satan’s sinister trap, and aids the spread of false messages regarding the character of God. Satan is going down soon and he knows it (Revelation 12:12); therefore, he wants to take as many with him as he can deceive into not loving the true God for Who He really is: the majestic God of justice and mercy. Satan’s efforts are all for the purpose of leading the greatest objects of God’s affection—people—astray, as Daniel stated, “even by departing from Your precepts and Your judgments”. Sadly, our own stubborn ways and errors make us more likely to fall into a false line of reasoning that works to block the blessings that God yearns to bestow.
Beloved, make it your life’s goal to build your character in accordance with the One who desires to fully restore His image in you. This is the greatest of blessings – and one that is inseparable from eternal life!
I will never forget Your precepts, For by them You have given me life. Psalm 119:93