March 14 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David" (Isaiah 55:3).

Devotional

God had promised David that he would sit upon the throne of his fathers—that the kingdom of Israel, torn from Saul, would be transferred to his government. But the crown and the scepter thus promised still loomed in the distance, almost hidden from view by dark intervening clouds. The promise seemed like a dead letter. The providence of God appeared to clash with and contradict the promise of God. But, in the history of his church, the providences of the divine government are not the interpreters of the promises of the Divine Governor. It is not so much by what God does, as by what God says, that he is to be judged.

Christian mourner, God's promises are also for you. They are just as much yours as they were David's, whose "sure love" you possess in Jesus Christ. These promises are exceedingly great and precious in their nature. They are personal and particular in their application. They are absolute and infallible in their fulfillment. Death may seem to be written not only on the promise, but also on all the means that lead to its accomplishment, but there is a life in the promise that cannot die.

See how God wrote the sentence of death upon his promises in the cases of the age of Abraham, the sterility of Sarah, the abduction of Joseph, the demand for Benjamin, the banishment of David, and so on. And yet, in each of these instances, the Word upon which God caused those waiting souls to hope was made good to the letter! And the promise that appeared to be dead rose again with a life that was all the more vigorous and glorious because of its long and gloomy burial.

It is your mercy as a believer to know that you have to do with a Divine Promiser whose faithfulness has been proved, and with a promise whose power has been tested. There is not a promise with which the Holy Spirit the Comforter seeks to support and console you that has not passed through the crucible, and has been "tried as silver is tried" (Ps. 66:10). "This God—his way is perfect; the word of the LORD proves true; he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him" (Ps. 18:30). And if it is a fearful sin to doubt what God has declared, it is a tenfold aggravation of that sin not to believe, when a thousand times over he has made good what he has promised, and when a great cloud of witnesses testify that he has never once falsified his Word.

Whate'er my God ordains is right:
he never will deceive me;
he leads me by the proper path;
I know he will not leave me:
I take, content, what he hath sent;
his hand can turn my griefs away,
and patiently I wait his day.

Whate'er my God ordains is right:
his loving thought attends me;
no poison can be in the cup
that my Physician sends me.
my God is true; each morn anew
I'll trust his grace unending,
my life to him commending.

Whate'er my God ordains is right:
he is my Friend and Father;
he suffers naught to do me harm,
though many storms may gather,
now I may know both joy and woe,
some day I shall see clearly
that he hath loved me dearly.

Whate'er my God ordains is right:
though now this cup, in drinking,
may bitter seem to my faint heart,
I take it, all unshrinking.
My God is true; each morn anew
sweet comfort yet shall fill my heart,
and pain and sorrow shall depart.

Whate'er my God ordains is right:
here shall my stand be taken;
though sorrow, need, or death be mine,
yet am I not forsaken;
my Father's care is round me there;
he holds me that I shall not fall:
and so to him I leave it all.

(Samuel Rodigast, 1675; tr. by Catherine Winkworth, 1829–2878)

Be sure to read the Preface by Octavius Winslow and A Note from the Editor by Larry E. Wilson.

Larry Wilson is an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In addition to having served as the General Secretary of the Committee on Christian Education of the OPC (2000–2004) and having written a number of articles and booklets (such as God's Words for Worship and Why Does the OPC Baptize Infants) for New Horizons and elsewhere, he has pastored OPC churches in Minnesota, Indiana, and Ohio. We are grateful to him for his editing of Morning Thoughts, the OPC Daily Devotional for 2025.