As we prepare ourselves to enter Gods house and worship Him there with His Church, it is important we come with a true heart. All week we sin against our neighbor and God, yet Sunday morning we easily walk into Church with no thought of those sins or we hide them. God knows our hearts and he knows our sins. He doesn’t ignore them and neither should we.
Isaiah 29:15, 16 says: “Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the LORD, and their works are in the dark, and they say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth us? surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter’s clay: for shall the work say of him that made it, He made me not? Or shall the thing framed say of him that framed it, He had no understanding?” In verse 15 God gives us a warning against thinking we can bury our guilt and sin. Perhaps we may succeed in hiding our sins from our brothers and sisters around us but we can never hide them from God. We are created by him and he knows all our inward thoughts and desires. When we come to worship him on Sunday then, He does not turn a blind eye to our sin and only see us setting aside our week’s work and coming to worship him as He has commanded us to in His Word.
Job 34:21, 22 tells us, speaking about God, “For his eyes are upon the ways of man, and he seeth all his goings. There is no darkness, nor shadow of death, where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves.” God knows the works of all men, whether they are elect or reprobate, yet we, God’s people, have a hope and assurance which the wicked do not have. God gives us this comfort in Psalm 103:10-13. “He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, [so] great is his mercy toward them that fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him.”
Before we enter Gods house tomorrow, let’s remember our sins and ask God’s forgiveness for them. With this clear conscience we can join our brothers and sisters in Christ on Sunday morning, knowing our sins are forgiven. We can go before God with a confidence given us by Him.
Kate Doezema
Young Calvinists 