He Sustains All Things By His Powerful Word

Jesus sustains all things by His powerful word. I don’t think we have any adequate understanding of what this means at all.  Riots here in the UK, spreading to many cities nationwide, have left many of us deeply unsettled. This comes on top of the financial uncertainties, with what seems to be the whole system teetering on the brink. What has particularly unsettled me in both cases is the speed at which collapse can come.

It takes  events like this to make me realise that Jesus sustains our civilisation through His powerful Word.  I take for granted so many many things that Jesus sustains in our lives. Only as He withdraws His hand of protection over us, giving us over to our wicked ways, can we see that we can’t even BREATHE without Him sustaining us, as Paul Washer so eloquently puts it in his sermons. So even as the rioters and looters serve the lusts of their flesh, God is glorified as He reveals how utterly desperate and hopeless man is without Him.

Earlier this year, as the earth shook and the seas raged, the way in which Jesus sustains the very ground on which we stand was made apparent. And our utter helplessness when He shakes the nations is revealed, and He is glorified.

The true condition of man contrasted with the True Glory of Christ. How desperate we are for Him! How needy we are! How completely dependent we are on Him for everything – whether we recognise His Kingship or not. And how merciful He is that He sends these times of shaking to wake us up to our dire condition, our need of a Saviour, that we might be still and know that He is God, that He will be exalted among the nations, He will be exalted in the earth, so that we might bow the knee before Him and confess with our mouths that He is Lord, and honour His Name, His Glorious Name, which is above every other name.

Oh Lord, may You bring Your church to repentance. May You shake us to the core, to see You revealed in Your Glory, that we may be broken and humbled before You. May You enable us to root out sin in our lives, that we may follow after You wholeheartedly. May You raise up men in Your church who will be bold to preach Your Word without compromise, men who are not ashamed of Your gospel, for it is the power of salvation for all those who believe, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. May You raise up men who will preach of a Jesus who reigns majestically in the heavens, who is the radiance of God’s glory, who sustains all things by His powerful Word, and who is coming again to bring salvation to those who are waiting for Him. Come, Lord Jesus!