This Day With God

Written for Our Admonition, September 2

The meek will he guide in judgment: and the meek will he teach his way. Psalm 25:9. TDG 254.1

God will work with those who will listen to His voice. TDG 254.2

The Word of God is to be the man of our counsel, and is to guide our experience. The lessons of Old Testament history, if faithfully studied, will teach us how this can be. Christ, enshrouded in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, was the guide and the light of the children of Israel in their wilderness wandering. Here was an unerring Guide. TDG 254.3

In all their experiences, God was trying to teach them obedience to their heavenly Guide, and faith in His power to deliver them. Their deliverance from affliction in Egypt, and their passage through the Red Sea, revealed to them His power to save. When they rebelled against Him, and went contrary to His will, God punished them. When they persisted in their rebellion, and were determined to have their own way, God gave them that for which they asked, and in this way showed them that, that which He withheld from them, He withheld for their own good. Every judgment that came as a result of their murmurings was a lesson to that vast multitude, that sorrow and suffering are always the result of transgression of the laws of God. TDG 254.4

The history of the Old Testament was recorded for the benefit of those who should live in the generations following. The lessons of the New Testament are as greatly needed. Here again Christ is the instructor, leading His people to seek that wisdom that cometh from above, and to gain that instruction in righteousness that will mold the character after the divine similitude. Both Old and New Testament Scriptures teach the principles of obedience to the commandments of God as the terms of securing that life which measures with the life of God, for it is through obedience that we become partakers of the divine nature, and learn to escape the corruptions that are in the world through lust. Therefore its maxims are to be studied, its commands obeyed, its principles, which are more precious than gold, brought into the daily life.—Letter 342, September 2, 1907, to the workers in southern California. TDG 254.5