April 16 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading

Devotional

No wonder the church of Christ loved this psalm so much. It spoke of the blessedness of forgiveness long before justification by faith in Jesus was fully revealed. Martin Luther used to say that Paul could have written this psalm. Paul certainly did love this psalm (Rom. 4:6-8).

Psalm 32 says clearly that God forgives by grace, and that sins must be confessed before they can be forgiven. These basic truths, with which every Christian is familiar, were known before Jesus was born.

In the last part of the song, a teacher begins to speak. The teacher may be a father, a mother, an elder, a rabbi, or a pastor, but the voice is really the voice of God. God usually talks to us through people he has chosen for that purpose. This teacher says: "I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go." Now that you have confessed your sins, now that you have been forgiven, you must learn to live wisely. "I will instruct you."

The teaching is not made up solely of information that must be received; it also includes a way of life that must be learned: "I will teach you in the way you should go." Neither is the instruction a kind of impersonal mass communication: "I will counsel you with my loving eye on you." Some of us remember very vividly when the teacher made us sit in a desk right at the front of the classroom. "I want to keep an eye on you," she said. We didn't appreciate it at the time, but it was certainly good for us.

God's instruction of forgiven sinners must be taken seriously. The usual place where God instructs us in the way we should go, the place where he gives us his personal attention, is the church. Therefore we must be faithful and diligent in our participation in the life of the church.

Every day forgiven sinners need personal tutoring in the way of wisdom. Who is your teacher?

REFLECTIONS

What do you need to ask God to teach you?

Andrew Kuyvenhoven's Daylight, a modern devotional classic, was originally published by Paideia Press in 1977. This updated edition is copyright 2009 by Faith Alive Christian Resources. You can order a copy of this revised version of the book directly from the publisher.

A man of many accomplishments, Andrew Kuyvenhoven is probably best known for his contributions to Today (formerly The Family Altar), a widely-used monthly devotional booklet associated with the Back to God Hour. Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations for this updated edition of Daylight are from the Holy Bible: Today's New International Version copyright 2001, 2005 by the International Bible Society.