Lost but Not Abandoned
By A.W. Tozer

       . . . The Advent established:. . .

      Third, God indeed spoke by the prophets. The priests and scribes who were versed in the Scriptures could inform the troubled Herod that the Christ was to be born in Bethlehem of Judaea. And thereafter the Old Testament came alive in Christ. It was as if Moses and David and Isaiah and Jeremiah and all the minor prophets hovered around Him, guiding His footsteps into the way of the prophetic Scriptures.

      So difficult was the Old Testament gamut the Messiah must run to validate His claims that the possibility of anyone's being able to do it seemed utterly remote; yet Jesus did it, as a comparison of the Old Testament with the New will demonstrate. His coming confirmed the veracity of the Old Testament Scriptures, even as those Scriptures confirmed the soundness of His own claims.

      Fourth, man is lost but not abandoned. The coming of Christ to the world tells us both of these things.

      Had men not been lost no Savior would have been required. Had they been abandoned no Savior would have come. But He came, and it is now established that God has a concern for men. Though we have sinned away every shred of merit, still He has not forsaken us. ''For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.''