God is for His people

“For the eyes of the LORD are over the righteous, and His ears are open unto their prayers: but the face of the LORD is against them that do evil.” -I Peter 3:12 [KJV]

What a comforting thought it is for God’s children to know that He watches over us as a shepherd watches over his sheep. He has saved us, He keeps us, protects us, and preserves us by His sovereign grace in and by the Lord Jesus Christ. He has ordained and arranged all persons and events in our lives to work for His glory and our eternal good. He also hears our prayers as a father listens to the children he loves. Our prayers go up before Him in the beauty of Christ our Redeemer and Intercessor and by the merits of His righteousness whereby we stand justified in God’s sight and from which we receive spiritual life from God. But this verse states also that God’s “face” (His glory and His presence) is “against them that do evil.” Are we not all sinners? Have we not all done evil? This is true, and God’s wrath would be a reality that we would all have to face were it not for His grace and mercy to us in Christ. 

Is God for me, or is He against me? As His watchful eye is “over the righteous” and His face “against them that do evil,” how can I, a sinful man who deserves nothing but God’s wrath, honestly count myself amongst the “righteous”? It is only as I stand in and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ Who is my only righteousness! The righteous here does not refer to those who are righteous by their works or within themselves. It refers to those who have been “made the righteousness of God IN HIM” (2 Cor. 5:21) by that grace that reigns through righteousness by Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom. 5:21). Having Christ as my Surety, Substitute, and Redeemer, as evidenced by God-given faith in Him and repentance of dead works, assures me that God is FOR me and not against me – “What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, Who is even at the right hand of God, Who also maketh intercession for us” (Romans 8:31-34).

-preacher Bill Parker

 https://www.sermonaudio.com/source_detail.asp?sourceid=reignofgrace

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