Christ’s Willing People

Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth.

Psalm 110:3

As we have considered this text for the past two days, we have dwelt upon the fact that Christ has a people. We further considered that Christ empowers those people. Today we will consider what Christ’s empowerment of those people makes them willing to do. Notice the wording of the text, ‘Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power….’ Yesterday we considered the empowerment of Christ to bring His people unto salvation and to sanctify them. In order to see how ‘willing’ these people become by the empowerment of Christ, let us observe the disciples. Who were they at the start? They were common men, fishermen, tax collectors, and political activists, to describe a few. Christ hand-picked them; spent time with them; died before them; showed Himself to them after His resurrection; ascended from in front of them; and sent the Holy Spirit to fill them. These men become the Great Lions of God. They ‘ceased not to preach and teach Jesus Christ.’ According to their enemies they ‘turned the world upside down.’ They ‘went everywhere preaching the Gospel.’ Here was a people willing to look to Christ; to love Christ; to live for Christ; to preach Christ; and to die for Christ. Their history has become the history of the redeemed of the ages. Christ empowers His People, and that empowerment makes them utterly unlike any other force upon earth. It has made them willing to go to the darkest places in the ends of the earth to live Christ in the most desperate of places, ‘Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power….’ So, Christ is able to empower us to be those people in our own day and generation.

Our most Holy and Wise God,
we praise You that You empower us to be all that You would have us to be,
that we might perform Your Will, advance Your Kingdom,
and lift up Jesus Christ.

Tomm Tice

Where the Bush is Burning

Real Empowerment

Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth.

Psalm 110:3

Our text, which we began to consider yesterday declares, ‘Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power….’ We considered yesterday that Christ has a people. They are the elect of God.  The difficulty is that these people, though they be the elect of God are, ‘by nature the children of wrath;’ they are ‘dead in trespasses and sins,’ and completely unable. Christ does not leave them so. Our text says, ‘Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power….’ What does that mean in spiritually real terms? It means that Christ empowers those people in His ‘day’ or appointed time. In practical terms, it means, as Ephesians declares, ‘for by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.’ Salvation is, from start to finish, the work of God. It is the empowerment of God that regenerates us. It is the empowerment of God that grants us regeneration unto life; that gives us faith to believe. It is the empowerment of God that sanctifies us; that ‘renews us in the whole person after the image of Christ and enables us to die more and more unto sin and to live unto righteousness.’ It is the empowerment of Christ that gives us grace to live; that will give us grace to die; and that will raise us from the dead at the last trumpet. Christ well said, ‘without me, you can do nothing.’ Christ is the Great Empowerer of all of His saints in every age, and unto the end of this age. ‘Your people shall be willing in the day of Your power.’

Our most Holy and Empowering Christ,
we rejoice that You enable us to do what we could never do apart from You.
We rejoice that you give power to the faint, and raise up Your Church,
to assault the very gates of Hell.

Tomm Tice
where the Bush is Burning.