June 30, 2022
Romans 5:21 “That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord”
The Bible pairs sin with death and grace with life and this summarizes the scope of our depravity followed by our rescue through Jesus Christ our Lord. In verse 17 of Romans 5, the Bible declares that death reigns, and in today’s verse it says that sin reigns, the two again being united in their domination over the human race because sin rules over all and death is the sentence and consequence of sin: the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). It’s amazing that we can’t fully grasp this fact because all we’ve ever seen and known is that no matter how strong we are, how many resources we have, how excellent our genetic make-up, or how many of the most brilliant doctors we have we’re going to die. People live as if this is not true, pushing the very thought of it out of their minds and they continue as if there is no accountability to God and no final judgment. They act as if they are king and that nothing or no one can dethrone them. But sin and death are their kings and they are fully and completely under their control as the scriptures say in Hebrews 9:27, “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment”. When a baby is conceived, before it ever takes its first breath sin and death rule over it, and nothing its parents, the world around it, or anything it can or will be able to do can save it. When it cries its first whimper, testifying it is alive immediately the law of condemnation is in effect because of the Adamic judgment until the day that Jesus sets it free. It is into this predicament that grace steps as a conqueror, defeating sin and death and then grace takes the throne as declared in today’s verse, grace reigns through righteousness which is not our righteousness but the righteousness of Christ Jesus imputed to us. And, remembering Romans 5:20, “where sin abounded, grace did much more abound”. As we have previously said, some people fear that if we live in the reign of grace, we will have a flippant regard for sin but this is a misunderstanding of the kingdom of grace. Grace reigns through righteousness and grace teaches and leads us to righteousness (Titus 2:11-12) for grace does not cause us to look inward or live for self and pleasure. Grace looks first to Jesus and then to others and anything that teaches otherwise is frustrating the grace of God: Galatians 2:21, “I do not frustrate (dishonor, neutralize, set aside) the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law (human efforts to achieve a right standing with God), then Christ is dead in vain. Faith doesn’t rule, we are unable to live perfectly faithful. Religion doesn’t rule, it is a flawed cobbled-up device of humans. We do not rule, for there is none good. No, not one. Grace rules because it alone brings glory and honor to God. Ephesians 1:6, “To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved”.
1 Corinthians 2:14 “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned”
The Greek words translated here as “the natural man” have their root meaning as pertaining to the material world around us, materialistic. This is how we enter life, learning about food, other people, how to play, and all that is connected with our five senses. As we get older, the material world and how we relate to it is the foundation for our thinking and sadly, many people never move from this physical realm to the spiritual. Any contact we might have with spiritual things apart from times we are exposed to the Word of God and the work of the Holy Spirit is when the fallen forces of darkness influence us both internally and externally to harden us against the Lord and fuel the innate unbelief that is born in us all from our Adamic depravity. In our unregenerate state, God declares in today’s verse that we will not recognize, take hold of, or follow Godly, spiritual things because they are foolish, silly, and absurd to us. The Lord goes a step further and says we can’t even understand such things because the only way to understand spiritual truth is from a spiritual perspective. Because most people live daily by operating only by their natural senses and materialistic interpretation of reality, they seldom discuss spiritual truths or see life with spiritual vision. They live their routines with their focus on just getting by, finding pleasure, trusting themselves or luck, pursuing their hobbies or work, and rarely if ever divert their attention heavenward. Many Christians know little to nothing of God’s Word and their decisions, motives, and outlook is never from God’s revealed truth and they do not operate in the spiritual realm and power of the Holy Spirit. The Bible says in Psalms 119:130 “The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple” and shows us as God’s Words enter into our minds and find their way into our hearts, they are God’s light, shining into our natural darkness. This light is the power of God’s Spirit for the Spirit and the Word of God are inseparable as Jesus said in John 6:63 “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh (natural man) profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life”. The only way we can be transformed from the natural to the spiritual is by the Word of God as the scriptures say in Hebrews 4:12 “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart”. As the Word of God is declared lass and honored even less in our world, especially in our churches, the natural will dominate and the things of the Spirit of God will remain foolish or at least inconsequential to us.
1 Kings 19:7 “And the angel of the LORD came again the second time, and touched him, and said, Arise and eat; because the journey is too great for thee.”
Elijah was instrumental in one of the most dramatic miracles in the Bible when he challenged the prophets of Baal to a showdown on top of Mount Carmel and the Lord answered him by sending down fire, burning up the water-soaked sacrifice and also the stones that made up Elijah’s altar. As a result of that miracle and the destruction of Baal’s prophets, queen Jezebel declared she would have Elijah killed and he ran for his life. This is the irony of who we are and the substance of our faith. We can have great moments of victory when we’re trusting the Lord with all our hearts followed immediately by waves of doubt and fear when we lose sight of all we’ve just seen God do. Elijah’s faith could shut off the rain for three and a half years and stand up by himself against 850 false prophets and defeat them but then one angry, vengeful woman could send him word she was going to kill him and he ran for his life into the barren desert. But today’s verse is part of a miracle the Lord performed for Elijah where He displayed His mercy and care for His harrowed prophet and restored his strength and courage. After running 80 miles away from Jezebel, Elijah fell asleep, exhausted, under a tree and an angel of God woke him up and told him to eat. Elijah opened his eyes and there was bread baking on a fire and a container of water, all either prepared by the angel or appearing miraculously because the Lord was taking care of him even in his time of uncertainty and weak faith. Elijah fell back asleep after he had eaten and the angel touched him again, speaking the words in today’s verse that he should eat some more because the journey he was about to take for the Lord’s work was a big one. Another miracle followed this for the next verse, v8, says “And he arose, and did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God”. The food the Lord provided by the angel gave him strength for the next 40 days and nights. God sent Elijah back to confront King Ahab and prophesy the death of Jezebel. The Lord is faithful even when we are not and He will never cast His people aside just because they are going through times when they have doubt and fear. The Bible says we can come to Him, asking for help, and he will not find fault or mock us (James 1:5). Just He sustained Elijah and proved His care for him even in his moments when his faith had fallen, the Lord will keep His promises to us as in Isaiah 41:10 “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness”.
2 Corinthians 3:9 “For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory”
Today’s verse speaks of the ministry of condemnation and this is a reference to the written law, described in the preceding verses as “the letter”. In verse seven, the Bible speaks of the law as “ministration of death, written and engraven in stones” and seems to present another Biblical paradox because how could it be a ministry of condemnation and death yet also be declared in these verses as glorious? It is because the written law is perfect and, in its perfection, it shines as a masterpiece of God’s will. A physical representation of its glory was seen when Moses came down from the mountain where he had met with God and received the ten commandments, his face glowed like the sun. Yet the law in its practical application exposed human sin and because people were not able to keep its ordinances, the same glorious law demanded their death. The law, so glorious in its letter, became the instrument of condemnation and destruction. The execution of the Levitical observance of the law was also glorious with the beauty of the tabernacle and later the temple, the daily display of offerings, activity around the temple area, the glorious feast days and celebrations, and even the cyclic familial observances such as Passover and so on. It is just as easy for us today as it was for the Jews to get caught up in all the rituals of the observances and rules of religion and find some kind of glory in doing all the religious stuff as if it makes us righteous. But in a morbid sense, it is like trying to find glory in the work of an undertaker, embalming and attending to dead bodies. God’s plan is to bring people to righteousness and nothing in the law, religion, any religious work on our part, or anything at all we have a hand in can achieve what God wants. So the New Covenant, where we are made righteous by faith in Christ alone, brings a glory that far excels any glory of the law because it is the glory of Jesus of whom the Father said, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased”. Today’s verse leads us to verses 10-11, “For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth. For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious”. Compared to the glory of Christ, the law has no glory at all. Any glory apart from the imputed glory of Jesus is the glory of self-righteousness just like that of the Pharisees who used the law to promote and honor themselves while falsely claiming they were paragons of godliness. May the Lord help us rest in the covering of Christ Jesus and find glory in Him.
Acts 1:3 “To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God”
Today’s verse tells us that after Jesus’ resurrection, He appeared to His disciples and proved He was alive by many infallible, certain, unmistakable proofs. A point here is that from the forty days He spent with them, proving the resurrection was real, the Apostles’ faith throughout their lives and ministries rested on unmoveable certainties. The idea that our faith is some mystical experience with no facts or reason is absurd. Believers should take notice and rejoice that what we believe is eternally trustworthy and reliable, infinitely more concrete than the hair-brained theories and schemes of all human reason that are not rooted in God’s Word. The lunacy underlying the prevarications that have invaded our world, under the guise of scientific truth, is that outright theories which can be shown to be impossible by reason and mathematics, are swallowed hook, line, and sinker by a gullible culture that has scoffed at God’s truth and passed laws to make honoring the Word of God illegal in our educational systems. As the Word declares “the fool has said in his heart, there is no God”, we are a culture of fools. Christianity is not founded on human philosophies although we know that all the perversions and cults have used human philosophies to twist the simple truths of Christianity into hideous sticky webs of lies. But it is founded on evidence firmly established in those forty days following the Lord’s death, burial, and resurrection. Jesus was seen by hundreds of people even being seen by five hundred people at the same time on one occasion (1 Corinthians 15:6). It is proof of our wicked depravity that we will disbelieve the facts of Jesus and choose to embrace human fables and lies that are based on statements like” we think so, it could have been, and most likely”. We swoon over and pour our money into the concoctions of God-denying people we have elevated to “expert” status in our race to purge God and His Word completely from our minds. Instead of proving there is no God, we have proven the truth of Romans 1:28, “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient”. It is not a culture of intellectuals and progressive, truth-seeking geniuses, it is a culture of reprobates and even when we witness their houses of cards slowly crumbling, we stop our ears, cover our eyes, and scream “but they’re telling us the truth”. Meanwhile, in all this, the foundation of God stands firm and believers can rest with the assurance that what we believe is a sure footing, a proven and unfailing rock.
Genesis 26:18 “And Isaac digged again the wells of water, which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father; for the Philistines had stopped them after the death of Abraham: and he called their names after the names by which his father had called them”
In the areas of the Middle East where these accounts took place, wells for water were an absolute necessity for survival. In the dry months, the only source of water to sustain people and animals was from wells and the Philistines had filled in the wells Abraham had dug in his life as a way of trying to force Abraham’s descendants out of the land. But Isaac returned to the place his father had lived and re-dug the wells, reclaiming the physical and spiritual territory the Lord had promised to His people. The verses following today’s verse show us that as Isaac re-dug the wells, the Philistines harassed him and his servants. The first well Isaac named Esek, meaning contention or strife, and the second well he named Sitnah meaning opposition. As a practical application, we can see this story as a reminder to us that the blessings of the past are available to us today but the enemy is always at work to block them from us like the Philistines tried to block the wells of Abraham. When we stand our ground and reclaim what belongs to us, there will always be contention and opposition but the Lord’s will for us is to refuse to get stuck and sidetracked by what opposes us for He has a better plan. After the first two wells were dug and were fiercely opposed, Isaac dug a third well that was finally uncontested and he called its name Rehoboth meaning plenty of room or space. Isaac could have stayed at the site of the first two wells and spent his life fighting daily with the Philistines but he moved on and after he dug the uncontested well, he ended up in Beersheba, a place where Abraham had been before him. There, we are told in verse 24, “And the LORD appeared unto him the same night, and said, I am the God of Abraham thy father: fear not, for I am with thee, and will bless thee, and multiply thy seed for my servant Abraham’s sake”. It’s a lesson for us to keep moving forward, even when we are opposed and despite our best efforts of well-digging, get accosted by the enemy. The Lord will lead us away from strife and into a place of peace. People who are contentious, disagreeable, complaining, mean, and foul-spirited are not God’s choice of company for us. He has a better place and plan for us and our families: a better well of living water.
1 Corinthians 15:58 “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord”
Things don’t always go our way and the more we venture for the Lord the more difficult the opposition. It’s always tempting to take the path of least resistance or throw in the towel when it gets hard to press forward. But today’s verse speaks to us of commitment and faithfulness and is a reminder that what we’re doing as believers is not pointless or worthless. We get the sense of this charge in Ephesians 6:13-14, “Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness” where the words “withstand” and the word “stand”, which occurs twice, are a call to steadfastness. To withstand here refers to holding our ground against the force of opposition and means literally to remain firmly planted, face to face with adversity. The word stand speaks of a fighter that remains on his feet through a fight and afterward, stands in victory over his opponent. We have to settle in ourselves, the answers to the questions, “What am I working for and what do I stand for?”. When the answers to those questions point to the name of the Lord and the things of God, when it is about our families, our communities, and all that is precious to us then we hold our ground, plant our feet, and refuse to consider yielding to the temptation to compromise, walk away, or relax our commitment. Our Lord wrestled with the reality of His situation in the garden of Gethsemane the night He was betrayed and led away to be tortured and crucified. We have the record of His cries to His Father in that hour to deliver Him, if possible, from what He was facing yet despite the unimaginable difficulty, Jesus pressed forward and remained steadfast. The Apostle Paul, knowing he was going to be arrested and tried before Caesar, refused to move from the foundation of faith. We live in perilous times where there is uncertainty, stress, and outright attacks against all that is true. Both inside and outside the church, there is a war against faith in Christ and the Word of God. A cultural upheaval is re-labeling good as evil and evil as good yet may the Lord help us to stand strong on the foundations of truth and remain unmovable. What we do will never be in vain.
Exodus 3:1-2 “Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb. And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush”
When it came time for the Lord to reveal Himself to Moses He did so as a flame of fire in a desert bush. Of all the ways God could have chosen to appear, speaking from a tall tree, in a whirlwind, or some other striking manifestation, He chose a lowly bush. And not just any bush but the Hebrew word used here means a thorn bush and carries the meaning to prick. The image of the thorn bush is one implying pain, suffering, and hardship. Part of the curse God placed on mankind because of Adam’s fall says he will have to live life connected to the hardship of tilling the soil and in Genesis 3:18, “Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee”. The Lord in the thornbush speaks to us that He was identifying with His people in their bondage in Egypt and we can never forget that Jesus wore a crown of thorns, a picture of Him carrying our curse and knowing our pain and sorrow. Moses was drawn to the bush because it was burning but was not consumed by the fire but, when he approached it, the Lord spoke to him, telling him to remove his shoes because even the ground around the bush was sacred because of the Lord’s presence. Shoes are a barrier between us and the soil from which we were made. They keep us from feeling the sharp rocks, keep us from the mud, and protect us from either the burning hot or freezing cold ground. The practice of reflexology teaches the feet have 7,200 nerve endings that are connected throughout the body and if this is true, our feet are a doorway to our entire being (lifegate.com). Moses’ bare feet were connecting him to the soil of his origin but also to the consecrated ground at the burning bush. We live much of our lives disconnected from the reality of who we are, what people around us are experiencing, and the joy of being in God’s presence. Our barriers, symbolized by the shoes we wear, are usually self-made and we should ask the Lord to reveal what is separating us from what is real and eternal and from the anointing of His presence. As Moses peeled off his sandals that day and stood barefoot before the Almighty, he was called at 80 years old to identify with the suffering Hebrew people and to represent the Eternal Creator both to them and to Egypt. A wandering, barefoot shepherd and a burning scrub bush set the stage for something that had eternal consequences.
Psalms 23:6 “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life”
Our devotions often mention the goodness of God and we always try to do so from a Bible perspective. We can never forget that God will one day, in His anger, punish evil and put away sin forever. But these are times of the outpouring of grace and from cover to cover the Bible declares the Lord is extending mercy and forgiveness to anyone and everyone who will receive His gift as He said in Isaiah 45:22, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else”. We point out that the heresies and false doctrines of salvation by human works or efforts undermine the precious truths of the gospel and are an offense to the sufferings and death of Jesus. And what is often overlooked or ignored, they are crafted stealthily by the enemy and the flesh to rob God of the glory of His grace by mixing human effort into the message of forgiveness. Those who believe and teach that they have some part in saving themselves or maintaining their salvation can only say “Jesus and I saved me” and God will not share this glory with fallen humanity. He alone is worthy of goodness and mercy and He alone will eternally be magnified for His abundance of grace. Today’s verse, a part of the amazing 23rd Psalm, speaks to the truth that we are not the ones pursuing God’s goodness and mercy and we are not in any way achieving such a right standing that we receive goodness and mercy because we have attained some spiritual level or standing by our efforts or abilities. Such a view is always a perch of self-righteousness and nowadays more than ever it follows the prophecy of modern man’s attributes of self-centered arrogance and pride: the testimony of this church age of Laodicea. And all the time cloaked in the garment of false humility. God’s goodness and mercy follow us, a verb meaning to hunt down, pursue, run after, and chase and carries the picture of an aggressive pursuit that, were it not for the fact it is goodness and grace, might seem almost harassing and ardent. God comes after us and even when it appears we are reaching out to Him, He is the one drawing us with conviction and power, enabling us by the Holy Spirit fiercely and persistently. And all glory to His name, He will do this all the days of our lives. We are not earning His favor, begging for His goodness, or trading our efforts for mercy. He is in charge of our salvation and is the One pursuing and subduing us, convicting and convincing us of His own will and purpose.
Psalms 73:28 “But it is good for me to draw near to God: I have put my trust in the Lord GOD, that I may declare all thy works”
This Psalm begins by declaring the goodness of God, a statement of indisputable truth. Yet the second verse says, “But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well-nigh slipped” and begins telling how we can look around us and it appears God is good to people who are evil, boastful, vain, and those people look like they are the ones being blessed and prosperous. This is the view that causes doubt to arise in us, that occasions the enemy to point out that believing God is always good is wrong because while wicked people prosper, people of faith sometimes suffer. Doubt leads to discouragement and then comes failing faith. Maybe we’ve all been there, going from a moment when our faith was so strong it seemed unshakable only to find ourselves as the Psalmist said with our feet stumbling and almost slipping from beneath us. But at the sum of it all, we have the words of today’s verse saying “it is good for me to draw near to God” like the words of the old hymn, “Where could I go but to the Lord?”. It reminds us of a turning point in the ministry of Jesus when, in St John 6, all His followers except His chosen men, turned away and didn’t follow Him anymore. Jesus asked His disciples, “will you also go away?” and Peter answered, “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life”. Instead of continuing in discouragement with our faith slipping and sliding the best thing we can do is to stop where we are and get close to God but it isn’t always an easy thing for us to do. Our flesh wants to do the opposite and withdraw from the Lord. Our human reasoning wants to take matters into our own hands and find a different path to relief but God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in times of trouble (Psalm 46:1). His desire is toward us and as we draw near to Him, trusting His promises that even though the circumstances may seem contrary to His goodness, faith will begin to testify of all His works. The Holy Spirit will remind us of the past proofs of God’s goodness, working on our behalf, and then remind us of what the Lord has promised us. The good place for us to be is not standing apart from God as if He is untrustworthy and undesirable but reaching for His unfailing hand as Ezra declared in Ezra 8:22, “The hand of our God is upon all them for good that seek him”.
Hebrews 8:12 “For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more”
Grace is the message of the first eight words of today’s verse, “For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness”. On the judgment side, we have the words of Ezekiel 18:20, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die” and again in Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death” reminding us the holiness of God demands the destruction of the sinner. But the mercy of God intervened and His grace, meaning we do not get what we deserved but receive life instead, shines the eternal spotlight on the goodness of God. The wonderful promise of “and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more” has the Greek double negative meaning for “no more” so that it is “no more, no more” doubly assuring us sinners, that not ever again will our sins come up before the throne of God’s holy judgment to condemn us to eternal death. A striking point of the importance of the message in the passage where today’s verse resides is that the Holy Spirit moved it to be penned twice in the same book of Hebrews again doubling its assurance to us: Here in chapter 8 verses 10-13 and again in chapter 10 verses 16-18. God is telling us the New Covenant we are under is not based on our ability to maintain His standards or to perfectly follow His path of holiness. But the method He set for us to attain a right standing in His sight is revealed in Hebrews 10:19-20, “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh”. When we look back at the Old Covenant, we see that it was a time when God did not forget about people’s sins, and in the ten commandments, the Lord said He would continue the punishment for sins for people’s descendants: Exodus 20:5, “for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me”. How much more precious does this make the promises of today’s verse and the blessings of the New Covenant. And how glad we should be that we do not have to live under the law and fear the wrath and judgment of the Almighty.
Ephesians 6:2-3 “Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;) That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth”
We’re thinking about our dads on this Father’s Day and my dad, whose birthday was this past Tuesday, would have been 103 this week. Those who remember his story know he passed away from a massive heart attack standing in front of the pulpit at Plum Grove Baptist Church where he had, moments before, just finished preaching his last sermon. He left for heaven doing exactly what he loved, preaching the gospel. I think of dad almost every day in some way and with a tinge of regret because it’s only now, as I’m older, that I have started to understand him. For a lot of my life, I saw what I thought were his flaws, how he wasn’t like other people because he was obsessed with the Bible and the things of God. In my teen years, I was a bit ashamed of my dad because he wasn’t like any of the kids’ dads I grew up with. He seldom talked about himself so I never knew what he was about except he talked about the Lord, could quote massive amounts of scripture, and was always looking for an open door to minister. He didn’t fish, hunt, or have any real hobbies. He didn’t care for sports, never used foul language, and fixed broken stuff around the house with a roll of tape. I think I remember that one Father’s Day, we gave him a toolbox filled with rolls of every kind of tape imaginable and told him that now he could fix everything. Today’s verse reminds us to honor our parents, a word meaning to set in a place of value, and follows the first verse which tells us to obey them. As we grow and pass childhood, we are not in obligation to continue to obey but we are always to give our parents that high level of respect and value that is pleasing to the Lord and remembering it is so important to God, He attached a promise of longevity to it. If I could relive some of my life, I would take more time to better understand my dad and talk to him about anything and everything that made him who he was and foster a better relationship with him. My dad was honest, good, kind, loyal, faithful, and provided for our family. He was a man of integrity and strength. But more than anything else, my dad was a Christian, not just in name or Sunday morning church association, he was a through and through, head-to-toe follower of Jesus Christ. He was not ashamed of his salvation and found his greatest joy in knowing the Lord and God’s Word. There’s no doubt in me that soon I will see him again and we’ll rejoice together in the presence of the Lord but until then may God help me be more like Jesus and may He help me be more like my dad.
Psalms 1:1 “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful”
The word “blessed” in today’s verse does not refer to what we consider material blessings or the favor we receive from the Lord but is from the Hebrew word “Esher” which means to be happy and contented. We might think happiness is an elusive state of mind that we have on occasion but because the first word of the first verse of the first Psalm is blessed it is an indication that God’s will for His children is their happiness and contentment. The point is made there are three things that if we do not do, we are well on our way to being happy, the first of which is that we do not follow the advice or purpose of the ungodly, those who are morally wrong, and in opposition to the things of the Lord. We are continually bombarded with the views, theories, language, and persuasions of those who are not of God, who are filled with the spirit of this age, and who are speaking from a place of deception, corruption, and fleshly power. We stream their chatter, download their podcasts, immerse in their politics, and expose our children and families to their forcefulness. Yet we will not seek the wisdom of the Lord or live in allegiance to His Word as He declared in Jeremiah 2:32 “yet my people have forgotten me days without number”. We are people who do not pray, do not hide God’s Word in our hearts, and do not hold ourselves accountable to His truth. Maybe the consequences can be seen in a recent poll by NBC which showed people in the U.S. are more unhappy today than they’ve been in nearly 50 years. Evolutionists argue,” Humans are not designed to be happy, or even content. Instead, we are designed primarily to survive and reproduce, like every other creature in the natural world. A state of contentment is discouraged by nature because it would lower our guard against possible threats to our survival” (theconversation.com). These are the words of the advice and counsel of this ungodly world telling us to give up on being happy or content and it is the evil opposite of the promises of God. It is not a far journey from listening to their advice until we end up in the seat of the scornful, a place where we are pridefully inflated, scoffing, and mocking. It is a position of negativity and opposition to God’s ways and truth and the end is unhappiness and discontent.
Esther 9:22 “As the days wherein the Jews rested from their enemies, and the month which was turned unto them from sorrow to joy, and from mourning into a good day”
The name of God is not mentioned in the book of Esther but the power and providence of God are clearly revealed in its story. The period of history was during the Persian empire and at the end of the Jewish captivity. Many Jews were beginning to return to their homeland and were rebuilding their temple, the walls around Jerusalem, and starting to reclaim their country after seventy years of exile. But within the Persian government, a man named Haman hated the Jews and schemed to annihilate them by turning the masses against them until they rose up as a mob and slaughtered all the Jews. He worked his subtility and wicked plans until he convinced the king of Persia to pass a decree that on the thirteenth day of the Jewish month of Adar, all the Jews would be killed by their enemies. The faithfulness of God to protect His people is seen in the details of the story when He used a young orphan girl, Esther, and her uncle Mordecai to deliver the Jews from destruction. Today’s verse tells us how the annual Jewish feast of Purim began, as a celebration of that time when God delivered His people from their enemies, turned their sorrow into joy, and their season of mourning into a good day. Our takeaway from this book is that there are times when it may seem God is nowhere around and our enemies have risen against us. There may be confusion and darkness on every side and the tone of our life might be sorrowful and grievous. It may look as if our prayers are not being answered and seem as if we’re all alone, trying to defend ourselves against the enemies and forces that are stronger than us. But just as God put strength and resolve in Mordecai and Esther to do what was right and refuse to bow to Haman’s demands, the Lord will give us the grace and glory to stand firm against Satan and the flesh and wait on the delivering hand of the Lord. For the Jews, after what seemed repeated setbacks and a hopeless situation, God brought them a good day. God is always at work on our behalf and He knows every trick and turn of our enemy. He will remain faithful to us, faithful to His Word, and faithful to turn all that is against us and plotted for our destruction into joy and victory. We have already witnessed this many times in our lives and have every reason to trust the Lord that what He has done before, He will always do again, again, and again.
Job 9:33 “Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both”
The story of Job is the account of a man that suffered so much in one season of his life that his words are hard to think about. The pain of his loss and suffering can be heard in Job 3:1 “After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day” and these are words spoken by many people who are in such agony they wish they’d never been born. Job saw himself so far from God, with the distance between them so great that he was not able to bring his troubles and his overwhelming sorrow to the Lord to get help as he said in verse 32, “For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgment”. Then he spoke today’s verse where he longed for a “daysman”, a word that means a mediator, someone who could stand between him and God with the authority to bring them together. In this, Job is the picture of the fallen world, separated from God by sin and suffering without anyone to help them and, from the Lord’s view, presented in Isaiah 59:16, “And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore, his arm brought salvation unto him; and his righteousness, it sustained him”. When it says here his arm brought salvation, it is speaking of Jesus who became exactly what Job was crying out for and what God purposed as an intercessor: 1 Timothy 2:5 “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus”. We may sometimes think we identify with Job when we’re in severe trials but the difference is we have someone who knows how we feel, knows the pain of our suffering and He is able to bring our situation to God and then bring God’s help to us. What Job wanted so desperately is fulfilled for us in Jesus and He not only represents us as our advocate, He carries our sorrow, our sicknesses, our pain, and our human condition all by Himself. Unlike Job, who felt so all alone in his suffering, we have the constant companionship and friendship of our Savior. Our enemy wants us to forget this and to be swallowed up in despair and hopelessness but the Holy Spirit is always ready to point us to the truth of Jesus our mediator and His Words that encourage us to come to Him and find rest. We are never alone, never helpless, never victims of circumstance, and can eternally declare 2Corinthians 2:14, “Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ”.
Psalms 40:2-3 “He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the LORD”
This Psalm gives a picture of being in trouble and waiting on the Lord for deliverance. This theme of waiting while God moves us out or away from a situation is common in the scriptures and is given to us to help us be patient. God will deliver us, there’s no question about that but He will do it in His own way and in His own time. The deliverance is given in today’s verses and these scriptures have also been commonly used to describe the New Testament believer’s salvation in Christ. We even sing songs using these verses to tell how we were in the horrible pit of sin and the phrase saying the Lord “set my feet upon a rock” is a beautiful illustration of being established on the rock of Christ’s salvation. But no matter if we’re seeing these words as a description of being born again or of times when God rescues us from situations that are like being stuck in a muddy, sticky pit, the end result is the same: He gives us a reason to sing praises to the Lord as a testimony of His goodness and greatness. A lot of churches have taken away the opportunity for people to publicly give a testimony of praise to the Lord, except for group participation in the singing, there’s no room in the program. Those who have been delivered can hardly keep silent and when the Holy Spirit calls for us to praise the worthiness of the Lord, Jesus said if we are silent, even the rocks can cry out His praise. Ours is a declaration of God’s faithfulness to deliver us, to save us, to not only pull us out of the pit but to place us in a safe, strong place. Current theology and presentation have diminished the wretchedness of sin until it no longer appears to us as a horrible pit and God’s hatred of sin has been dismissed as if He’s somewhat tolerant of it. This lessens our appreciation for what the Lord has done until we have no exuberance of praise, no depth of thankfulness, and no awareness of our personal unworthiness of His grace. May the Holy Spirit open our eyes again to see what the Lord has delivered us from and may He give us the garment of praise.
1 John 4:16 “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him”
The essence of Christianity, what it’s all about, is love. Jesus said in John 13:35, “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another”. What He did not say here is as important as what He did say because, from the way we present ourselves and the way we wrangle the message we preach, it looks and sounds as if love is not the common denominator of the church. He did not say people will know we are followers of Jesus by how holy we are, how spiritual we appear, which church or denomination we belong to, which version of the Bible we defend, what doctrines we spout, or how “old-timey” we look and claim to be, or any of the other dribble we rant and rave about or hold onto as if those things are the lifesavers that are keeping us out of hell. Most of that stuff is exactly what blocks any of Christ’s love from showing and while some of it is important for us in our personal Christian journey, it’s not the beacon of hope the world desperately needs which is to know that because God loves us all, we also love everyone. When we look at today’s verse, particularly the part that says “we have known and believed the love God hath to us”, we might agree that sometimes it’s hard to feel or even think that God loves us. When we’re in a painful circumstance, when the enemy is attacking us with doubt and fear, when we’re confused and uncertain, or when we feel lonely and isolated, we may start to question if God really loves us, if He cares about us, and if He is listening to our cries for help. But the truth of who God is and the fact He loves us eternally, unconditionally, and completely rings out loudly in His Word for it declares God is love. In the times we do not feel He loves us or we are tempted to doubt His word that He does, it’s time to stand by faith on His promise and confess the truth that God will never change, that He has declared His love for us, and He has plainly said in Romans 8:39 that nothing can ever separate us from His love. It is not enough to know in our heads that God loves us, but we must allow the Holy Spirit to internalize it within us and become a rock-solid principle of faith.
Galatians 3:12 “And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them”
The Bible says Jesus commended only two people during His ministry as having “great faith”. One was the Roman centurion in Matthew 8 whose servant was sick and he asked Jesus to heal him. The other was a Canaanite woman in Matthew 15 who came to Jesus for help for her daughter. Neither of them was Jewish and in fact, our Lord did not recognize any Jews during His ministry as having great faith although of all the people, including the mentioned above, the Jews were the most religious and the ones that saw themselves as approved of God. The key to this perplexing puzzle is found in today’s verse which literally states the law is not based on faith but is a system where people become acceptable to God not by just trying to do the demands of the law but by actually and completely doing them by living out the rules every moment of every day for their entire life. It was not a faith-based system where they could place their confidence in the Lord because of their own sinless, perfect obedience because no one could achieve that. Consider Romans 4:14 “For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect” in the light that God’s promises to Abraham were made hundreds of years before the law was given. Abraham was not blessed because he kept the law but because he believed what God said and that trust was the ground of God proclaiming Abraham was righteous. The law was not bad, it was perfect but for it to be the path of being acceptable to God, it had to be obeyed and followed without error either minute or large. Only Jesus could and did keep the law perfectly His entire life. Our faith now rests in the perfection of Jesus who lived the law for us, and in our place, became the first human to ever accomplish moral perfection. Some people think that somehow, they are able to continue what Jesus did before God’s eyes by living by some moral codes they’ve conjured or distilled by their imperfect understanding of what is righteous or unrighteous. But faith understands the full implications of the Lord’s last words spoken before He died, “it is finished”. Faith is our Sabbath of rest in the finished work of Jesus where we are fully acceptable to God, not by what we do or do not do, but what the Lord completed by the purpose and plan of the Creator on our behalf.
Matthew 3:9 “And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham”
John the Baptist, filled with the Holy Spirit, made this statement to the Jews as he preached their need to turn to the Lord lest they be consumed by God’s coming wrath. The Jews believed in God’s wrath they just didn’t believe it applied to them because they were descendants of Abraham and they viewed all the other nations, whom they viewed in their self-righteousness as heathen, as deserving of the wrath because they weren’t Jews. John is pointing out that just because they believed they were in good shape because of their heritage, that was not true because God demands righteousness of both Jews and gentiles. As John is the forerunner of Christ, the door is being opened here for the appearing of Jesus who will live a perfect, sinless life and God will allow His righteousness to be transferred to everyone who receives Him as their Savior. As a side view of all this, a part of today’s verse is so astounding the more we think about it, the more incredible it becomes: “God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham”. He was not downplaying the value of being a descendent of Abraham and a good summary of those blessings are listed in Romans 3:1-2. Also, as a part of the covenant to Abraham, it is through his descendants that the world will be saved and all creation brought into subjection to God by the head of all creation, the Jewish man Jesus Christ. But he is pointing out here the absolute power and unlimited abilities of the Almighty Creator of all things: He, if He so chooses, can take rocks and make people from them and they would become children of Abraham. So, the focus is not on the glory of the Jews but on the unspeakable glory and power of God. He is limitless in His abilities, eternal in His person, and there is nothing too hard for Him, nothing too complicated for Him, and nothing that is beyond His power. He is unstoppable, undefeatable, inexhaustible, and there is nothing He can not do. When that becomes our understanding of Him, it makes us want to pray bold prayers, believe Him for big answers, trust Him for great deliveries, and proclaim His glory and power with the voice of confidence. God can raise up people out of stones if He so chooses and there’s nothing about us or that comes our way that’s too difficult for Him.
Hebrews 12:1 “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us”
Often today’s verse is interpreted that as we live out the Christian life here, we are being observed by saints who have gone on before us and they are cheering us on. If this is true, it doesn’t seem to appear as a doctrine in any other place in the scriptures. Some have suggested if our loved ones in heaven are in a state of happiness and peace, watching what’s happening on this earth would cause them misery. Another view is that all around us, angels and heavenly beings are watching us and keeping a record of our lives to be presented as evidence at the judgment seat of Christ. Such an interesting thought may be expressed in Daniel 4:17 “This matter is by the decree of the watchers, and the demand by the word of the holy ones” and in Jeremiah 4:16, “Make ye mention to the nations; behold, publish against Jerusalem, that watchers come from a far country, and give out their voice against the cities of Judah”. Then there’s an interpretation that the cloud of witnesses is referring to all the saints, especially the martyrs, whose lives are and were a witness to us of their faith. No matter if we ascribe to either of the views or another not mentioned here, the main point is that we live a life opposed to personal sin and things that hold us back from doing our best. The belief that it doesn’t matter how we live and it’s no one’s business if we behave or do whatever we want is a pattern that dishonors the Lord and will keep us from obtaining a full reward, 2 John 1:8 “Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward”. The Bible assures us we will answer for our lives, 2 Corinthians 5:10, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad”. The Holy Spirit plants the desire within every believer to live a full, dedicated Christian life and the grace of God is always working on our behalf to help us do the things that honor the Lord. Records are being kept to reveal the details of our life of service to our Lord and we walk in the paths forged by others who have gone before us. What we do, what we say, and how we live matter both here and now and in the eternal realm.
Ecclesiastes 1:4 “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever”
The idea that we can own a piece of the earth, be it a house and lot or a multi-acre farm has driven people to murder over property rights or work themselves to the bone for years trying to beat back weeds and keep their place looking good. Sometimes my wife and I sit on the back porch and watch all the lawnmowing rigs pass by on their way to mow for people who no longer want the labor and inconvenience of mowing a big front yard they never use but nevertheless want to keep it immaculate. Most of the old family farms in our area have disappeared, replaced by subdivisions and the tradition of handing the land down to the next generation has disappeared. Along with it, the sense of permanence for the family name that hung on a shingle or mailbox post advertising the people who had owned the property for many years has been replaced by a generation of ever-changing blended households that are always looking to make their next move, following a career. When we look at today’s verse maybe it’s just as well that we no longer identify with earth because we can never own it in the here and now because it completely belongs to the Lord, Psalms 24:1 “The earth is the LORD’S, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein”. But most people are not able to get the truth of 1 Timothy 6:7 through their heads that “we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out”. Since the fall, when we were driven from God’s Garden, we have been under the curse of Eden, to survive by the sweat of our faces and then finally to give up our spot on this earth to someone behind us. God has a better place for us, a home eternal that belongs to us, was created for us, and we will enjoy without the sorrow of humanity’s fall: Revelation 22:3 “And there shall be no more curse”. Jesus spoke to the idea of thinking that we should grab and hold on to the things of this world in Matthew 6:19 “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal”. May the Lord give us the heavenly view, a view of what is lasting and satisfying and may the Holy Spirit help us see that all that is here is passing away and the things the Lord has in store for us are our real treasure.
Isaiah 14:27 “For the LORD of hosts hath purposed, and who shall disannul it? and his hand is stretched out, and who shall turn it back?”
A lot of these devotions talk about the Lord’s purpose, that is, His determination and unstoppable plans for His creation. And rightfully so because very few people consider or believe that God is in full control of the universe. The teaching of randomness and chance along with the reigning will and purpose of humans dominate the way we think about the world around us and form our interpretations to make sense of what we see happening. In our past, we trusted our leaders, we were driven by the forces of things like the manifest destiny, people believed in their personal strengths and abilities. And we somehow pieced together a sense that there was some kind of order in things but even then, it was man-centered. Now there is confusion, despair, an epidemic of depression, and we are skeptical of everything. For many, it’s the continual feeling of impending doom for them and the world around them as we’ve watched cycles of the destruction of families, the unnerving changes to our world, and the disappearance of hope for our future. This is why we must return to the truth of God’s Word, especially to passages like today’s verse that declare God is following His plans and purpose which nothing can disannul, a word meaning to stop it, change it, or cause it to disappear. When we left the standard of God’s Word, we left the only security we have to know that no matter how it may look or seem, the Lord is fully in control of all things and nothing has ever or will ever wreck His purposed plans. Consider Daniel 2:21 “And he changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings” and have the assurance that it did not surprise God when our current president came into office and his doing so did not disannul the Lord’s plans. We could gander a guess at it all and say perhaps God is giving us exactly what we deserve and if we think we deserve better than we have, apparently our sinfulness does not warrant it. Proverbs 14:34 tells us “Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people” revealing that it is not the choice of a leader that makes us great but doing what is right regardless of the leadership. A side note here is that we may not like our leaders or have confidence in them but the Lord still wants us to pray for them (1 Timothy 2:1-3). It may seem things are out of order and that there is no path to a place of security, peace, and blessing but the purpose of the Lord will stand. The promise is that He has stretched out His hand meaning He has already moved to accomplish His will and nothing can stop Him.
Psalms 64:3 “Who whet their tongue like a sword, and bend their bows to shoot their arrows, even bitter words”
Most of us do not suffer physical assaults but we do face harsh criticisms and slanderous words at times. Today’s verse describes people who use words like weapons and lash out at others with sharp tongues and angry, heavy words. We’ve all read Proverbs 18:21 “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” along with many other Bible verses like Proverbs 18:7 “A fool’s mouth is his destruction, and his lips are the snare of his soul.” With such truth in mind, why is it that people’s words sometimes get away from them and before we know it, we put people down, repeat gossip and unkind stories we’ve heard about others, and say things that wound and scar people that Jesus died for? Parents especially have the responsibility to speak words of encouragement and strength to their children and bite their tongue when they are in a flash of anger. A few words spoken in contempt or wrath can wound children to their core and while we are duty-bound to correct our children, the Lord will have us bridle our tongues, and our emotions for that matter, and speak the truth in love, taking into account our children have the same Adamic nature as we do. Take the truth of Romans 2:4 for example, the Bible says “the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance” and we have twisted the truth by believing a mortal fear is the best deterrent to bad behavior. Most of us who grew up with quick-tempered parents who took the “spare the rod and spoil the child” to heart know full well our parents’ switches didn’t dissuade us from disobeying them, we just learned to hide our meanness or pass the blame to others. If and when we catch ourselves ranting and raving like a lunatic or saying cutting, disrespectful words, name-calling, or pushing others away with a wall of vocal anger, may the Holy Spirit help us to bridle our tongues, calm our state of being, and stop the insults and harshness. The love of God brought us to the cross and the words our Savior spoke while He was dying were words of healing, forgiveness, and mercy. Our tongues, sharpened by our insensitivities, pride, and fleshly wrath have no place for those who are called in Romans 14:19 “Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another”.
1 Corinthians 15:33 “Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners”
Does it really matter about the company we keep and does what other people talk about and their points of view have any impact on us? This is the theme of today’s verse where the phrase “evil communications” is from the Greek “homiliai kakai” and means ”bad company”. The Lord is saying we shouldn’t fool ourselves in this matter for when we are around people who do not walk in God’s ways, it ruins our good manners, words that mean our habits, lifestyles, and character. Believers are taught by the example of Jesus who the Bible describes in Hebrews 7:26 “For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens” and while our Lord ministered to those around Him, His companionship was with those the Father gave Him who were chosen out of the world. The Old Testament gives a vivid example of how bad influence along with bad advice leads to disastrous consequences when Rehoboam, son of Solomon came to the throne upon Solomon’s death and he was companioned by men who did not follow the Lord and he followed their foolish advice. His choices led to the division of Israel and eventually the overthrow of the kingdom. Even though we’re saved and have the Holy Spirit in us, our fleshly nature is still struggling against our new nature and the old man finds power in rebelling against the truth. If those we associate with slide into compromise, we will be pulled in that direction. If they have argumentative and abrasive personalities, we will start to see ourselves adopting that mindset. If they are lazy, have no drive or motivation to succeed, and waste their opportunities by settling into an unfocused lifestyle and stuck in a rut, before long we can find ourselves becoming apathetic and aimless. May the Lord help us to move away from people who are angry, bitter, world-centered, critical, and negative. They may even be believers but keeping company with them is a sure way to sidetrack that which God has in store for us. The Lord has purposed our lives to be filled with His glory and wants us to pursue goals and dreams that aim us towards a life of victory where we set high standards for ourselves and our families. He gives us opportunities to excel, to walk in ways of peace, and to use the talents and abilities He has given us and we should never think we are immune to the negative influence of those we company with. What the Lord has given and planned for us is of immense value and may we treasure it and protect it from the pollution around us.
Psalms 31:19 “Oh how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee; which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee before the sons of men!”
We live with certain expectations but when things don’t turn out the way we expect them to, it can be stressful and difficult. For example, we walk to our car early in the morning and expect it to start and get us to work on time but when the battery is dead or a tire is flat, our whole routine is messed up and we have to solve the unexpected problem. Today’s verse is about what we can expect from the Lord and what our future holds for us when we trust Him and it begins by declaring His great goodness which He has in store for us. This is not just pointing to the present but is telling us God has planned a path of blessings and good things for our future, that He has goodness laid up for us. The word goodness here comes from a Hebrew word that means good things, goods, property, fairness, beauty, joy, and prosperity and that’s quite a mouthful of things to be desired. Some people cringe when they start thinking of their future in these terms because they’ve believed the lie of the enemy which pictures a foreboding sense of what they can expect their future to be. It’s almost as if they live waiting for the other shoe to drop and their expectation is negative, tinged with darkness, and the expectation of failure and trouble. Sure, trouble is inevitable as it’s a part of this fallen world but the Lord knows our future and He has purposed our path through all the troubles and disappointments, laying up blessings and favor for us despite what the world slings at us. Christians sometimes act as if the Lord is holding back His goodness or handing it to someone else more worthy than they and their expectation from Him is very low. But God’s favor to us is not based on our merits but the power of His grace and He fulfills His promises such as the ones in today’s verse because He chooses to do so out of His kindness and mercy towards us. The Lord Jesus taught in Matthew 7:11, “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” showing us that just as we enjoy doing good for our children, our heavenly Father is pleased to fill our lives with goodness. Our expectation then is that now and, in the future, we are blessed and nothing can or will change God’s plan and provisions of all things good for us.
Psalms 30:5 “weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning”
We all have seasons of trials, times when it looks like we’re up against the wall with no way out. People betray us, our family lets us down, and it happens to us like Job in Job 3:25 “For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me”. Anyone who implies the Christian life is a constant walk of giddy happiness is falsifying because it was said of our Lord Jesus in Isaiah 53:3, “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”. There will be times we weep and that is not for just a moment but as today’s verse says, it may endure for a while. We sorrow not only for our own sufferings and pain but also for others who are in duress. It may be that hopes get pushed away, we lose a loved one, or our prayers don’t seem to be answered. But the Lord promised us that joy is coming and that no matter whatever we or someone we love is going through, God has already purposed that he will bring us out and we will have victory. The Bible says in Psalms 30:11, “Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness; To the end that my glory may sing praise to thee, and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks unto thee for ever.” The enemy lies to us when our seasons of sorrow come, telling us we’ve messed up and he wants us to forget the trial we’re going through is temporary and that God has already made a way out for us. He twists the view of our circumstances to lay the blame on us as if we’ve fallen out of God’s place of favor but he is a liar and always speaks a lie. God will not fail to answer our prayers, He will never stop loving us, He will always work things for our good, and any trial He has allowed is part of His unfailing plan for our lives. Even in the middle of our test of fire, like the test of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel 3, the Lord will faithfully walk with us until we are delivered. We are promised in 2Corinthians 7:6, that God, “comforteth those that are cast down”. If you’re going through a season of trouble, practice the provision given to us in James 4:7-8, “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you”.
Romans 3:20 “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin”
The Bible says in Psalms 19:7,” The law of the LORD is perfect” yet it says in Hebrews 7:19, “For the law made nothing perfect”. At first, this seems a contradiction but the scriptures reveal the problem was not with the law, but with people. For one thing, no one could completely keep the law all their life and once it was broken the sinner’s condemnation could not be undone. And there was the problem that God’s rules were broken by our federal head, Adam, and the entire human race is judged and sentenced to death for his transgression. Also, the law was not God’s plan for restoring His creation because people couldn’t keep the law perfectly and even if they could, eternal life would not bring glory to God but to people who were able to save themselves. The law then was a revealer, a mirror that showed our sin so we could understand the reason for our condemnation, the meaning of the phrase “for by the law is the knowledge of sin”. If the law God gave to Moses could not justify us, that is make us righteous and innocent, why do people think their list of rules and laws which they claim are also from God, can bring them into a right standing with the Lord? The arrogance of man is limitless and we even try to disguise it, claiming it is humility. But what we’re saying when we teach people that their actions, either refraining from things we label as sin or doing things we label as righteous is that even though God’s perfect law could not make people approved before the Lord, somehow, we’ve set up some standards that will do what His couldn’t. Can you see the foolish self-righteousness of that reasoning? It’s saying that when we behave or don’t behave in certain ways, it’s as if God looks down and says, “Now you’ve finally learned to please me and I accept your holiness and will give you eternal life”. Accompanying this smugness is a look at other people who are failing to be as holy and we say, “now I’m not condemning anyone” but that’s a lie because we’ve already perched like victors on the top of the rules we’ve declared as righteousness as though we’re now “living right”. By the deeds of the law, and that can be generalized to the law of Moses or any law we claim is a code of holiness, there shall be no flesh justified in his sight. God’s salvation is justification by faith in Christ alone. (Romans 3:24-31).
Mark 11:24 “Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them”
Christians are identified as praying people. When Paul was converted, there is no doubt that before being saved he was a praying man because we know he was a devout Pharisee. But the Lord said of him after he was born again in Acts 9:11, “behold, he prayeth” acknowledging Paul was in touch with God in prayer. The failure to persist in prayer is one of the reasons we do not progress in our faith and today’s verse can be quickly read past without internalizing its truth as a foundation for our petitions to the Lord. Our unbelief will rationalize away the power of God’s promise to us and we can walk away without firm confidence that God means exactly what He said here: that when we pray, and the verb means to pray earnestly, we pray with the faith that whatever we are praying for is a done deal. The phrase “believe that ye receive” is literally translated as “have received” or have laid hold on something that will certainly remain in our grasp. There is no faltering suspicion that God is not listening or that we might or might not see an answer. When we twist this promise in our unbelief so that we’ve already convinced ourselves God will not grant what we have asked, our faith has failed at that point. And the Bible says when we waver in faith, James 1:6-8, “But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord. A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways”. It’s easy to give up hope that our prayers have been heard and answered because we are prone to unbelief and when we don’t see immediate answers, we fall into patterns where we stop praying, make excuses for why the answer isn’t already in our hands, and we start praying less. Then we begin operating in the power of our flesh to solve our situations, do things our way, or do without since we’ve lied to ourselves in unbelief and determined that either God didn’t really mean what He said or for some reason, we missed His will. But may the Lord help us shuck off the cloak of unbelief, get back on our knees, declare God’s Word to be eternally true, and above all, pray, pray, pray!!!
Romans 12:2 “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God”
The Greek word for conformed, suschēmatizō, means to copy or fashion something according to a pattern or likeness. In today’s verse, it is used to remind us we are not of this world, we do not belong to it, and we should guard against the temptation to imitate it. Sometimes we might think the Lord is warning us against the seven major sins of pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth but the verse here carries the idea that the world’s patterns need to be eradicated from our minds. Our thoughts, what we purpose, plan, imagine, and entertain can not be fueled and suggested by the world but by things that are approved and initiated by the Lord. The pull to the things of the world is born into us through our human nature and from our first breath and throughout our lives, the world’s influence draws at us to follow its ways, believe its propaganda, and mold ourselves into its image. When we allow the truth of God’s Word to shape the way we think and become the pattern for the way we live we become radically different from the world around us and people may not understand why we live the way we do. When we do what is right, allow the Holy Spirit to guard our words, make choices and conduct ourselves in ways that honor the Lord, and show respect for others by being kind, loving, and compassionate we are imitating Christ and not the patterns of the world. Faithfulness, honesty, integrity, and high standards are not self-righteous badges Christians wear to promote themselves but principles and beliefs that honor the Lord. If we value the things of the Lord far greater than anything this world offers or suggests we will not compromise even if it means others may not see things from our perspective. The Bible tells us Moses came to a point where he thought that being insulted for Christ would be better than having the treasures of Egypt and because he chose to follow God’s ways, he was looking ahead to his reward. The verse following today’s verse tells us “For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think” and is a reminder that we are not passing judgment on the world around us as if we are better than they, but just living as God has called us to live. We are new creations, born from above, and not in bondage to this world.
1 Thessalonians 5:21 “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good”
Someone who is a bit of a packrat will hold on to things because they are reluctant to toss them out, thinking someday they might have a use for them. People on the extreme end of this scale we call hoarders and they never throw anything away often living their lives addicted to keeping every scrap of paper, every tin can, and everything that comes their way. We’ve all seen the reality shows on TV where hoarder’s houses look worse than the city dump. From a spiritual perspective, people can be the same way and over time they will accumulate a mixed-up mess of doctrines, beliefs, habits, and persuasions and today’s verse is calling for us to put everything to the test, the meaning of the word “prove” and just keep what is good. A lot of what we hear and get exposed to in the name of God is bumbled concoctions of people’s opinions, and personal interpretations, and should be proven against the Word of God to be trash, things to be tossed out. I recently cleaned out our storage shed and was amazed at the stuff I’d stacked up and held onto, stuff I hadn’t touched or needed for years. And all the time it had been blocking access to things I needed, things I use to work on the cars, trim the hedges, and do repairs around the house. When I had gone through it all, piece by piece, hauled off the junk and organized the good stuff, now when I start on a project and have my tools and supplies organized and easy to find, I wonder why I ever let that mess get out of hand in the first place. This is the principle of getting back to the basics of our faith, discarding all the man-made garbage disguised as “religious stuff” and setting the good truth in order in our lives and homes. Holding on to superstitions, things we’ve believed just because they’re a part of some denominational tinker-toy construction, or stuff we’ve learned from our parents or other people that are downright unbiblical clutters up our spiritual lives and blocks our way to the simple truths that set us free. This idea of testing everything can carry into almost every aspect of our lives and when the Holy Spirit reveals what is good and acceptable before the Lord and we throw out everything except the good, it produces ground that is free of thorns and stones and makes a wonderful seedbed for the precious Word of God. It can be hard to part with things that have sentimental qualities, things that cause us to reexamine our faith and our convictions but the end result is peace, freedom, and a good path to a better future.