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daily devotional
Morning ...
1 Corinthians 15:20
But now is Christ risen from the dead.
The whole system of Christianity rests upon the fact that "Christ is risen
from the dead;" for, "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and
your faith is also vain: ye are yet in your sins." The divinity of Christ finds
its surest proof in His resurrection, since He was "Declared to be the Son of
God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from
the dead." It would not be unreasonable to doubt His Deity if He had not risen.
Moreover, Christ's sovereignty depends upon His resurrection, "For to this end
Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that He might be Lord both of the dead
and living." Again, our justification, that choice blessing of the covenant, is
linked with Christ's triumphant victory over death and the grave; for "He was
delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification." Nay,
more, our very regeneration is connected with His resurrection, for we are
"Begotten again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the
dead." And most certainly our ultimate resurrection rests here, for, "If the
Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised
up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit
that dwelleth in you." If Christ be not risen, then shall we not rise; but if
He be risen then they who are asleep in Christ have not perished, but in their
flesh shall surely behold their God. Thus, the silver thread of resurrection
runs through all the believer's blessings, from his regeneration onwards to his
eternal glory, and binds them together. How important then will this glorious
fact be in his estimation, and how will he rejoice that beyond a doubt it is
established, that "now is Christ risen from the dead."
"The promise is fulfill'd,
Redemption's work is done,
Justice with mercy's reconciled,
For God has raised His Son."
May 10
Evening ...
John 1:14
The only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
Believer, YOU can bear your testimony that Christ is the only begotten of the
Father, as well as the first begotten from the dead. You can say, "He is divine
to me, if He be human to all the world beside. He has done that for me which
none but a God could do. He has subdued my stubborn will, melted a heart of
adamant, opened gates of brass, and snapped bars of iron." "He hath turned for
me my mourning into laughter, and my desolation into joy; He hath led my
captivity captive, and made my heart rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of
glory. Let others think as they will of Him, to me He must be the only begotten
of the Father: blessed be His name." "And He is full of grace. Ah! had He not
been I should never have been saved. He drew me when I struggled to escape from
His grace; and when at last I came all trembling like a condemned culprit to
His mercy-seat He said, 'Thy sins which are many are all forgiven thee: be of
good cheer.'" "And He is full of truth. True have His promises been, not one
has failed. I bear witness that never servant had such a master as I have;
never brother such a kinsman as He has been to me; never spouse such a husband
as Christ has been to my soul; never sinner a better Saviour; never mourner a
better comforter than Christ hath been to my spirit. I want none beside Him."
"In life He is my life, and in death He shall be the death of death; in poverty
Christ is my riches; in sickness He makes my bed; in darkness He is my star,
and in brightness He is my sun; He is the manna of the camp in the wilderness,
and He shall be the new corn of the host when they come to Canaan." "Jesus is
to me all grace and no wrath, all truth and no falsehood: and of truth and
grace He is full, infinitely full." "My soul, this night, bless with all thy
might 'the only Begotten.'"
Mark 15:42-46
(42) And now when the even was come, because it was the preparation, that
is, the day before the sabbath, (43) Joseph of Arimathaea, an honourable
counsellor, which also waited for the kingdom of God, came, and went in boldly
unto Pilate, and craved the body of Jesus. (44) And Pilate marvelled if he were
already dead: and calling unto him the centurion, he asked him whether he had
been any while dead. (45) And when he knew it of the centurion, he gave the
body to Joseph. (46) And he bought fine linen, and took him down, and wrapped
him in the linen, and laid him in a sepulchre which was hewn out of a rock, and
rolled a stone unto the door of the sepulchre.
Several points stand out in this passage:
a.. Evening was beginning-at best Joseph had only about three hours
before sunset, when the Sabbath would begin. The task of preparing and applying
the spices for burial required work, which is expressly forbidden on the
Sabbath ( Exodus 20:8-10). Additionally, Deuteronomy 21:22-23 demands that an
executed criminal be buried before nightfall, and the Jewish law of the time
required all dead bodies to be buried before a Sabbath or a feast day ( John
19:31).
b.. Before he could take the body down, Joseph had to go before Pilate
and receive permission. At first Pilate did not believe Jesus had died so
quickly, so he called the centurion of the crucifixion detail to verify it (
Mark 15:44-45). This delay must have taken at least a half hour.
c.. After being granted the body, Joseph went to a local shop and
bought several yards of fine linen in which to wrap Jesus. With the help of
Nicodemus, he then took the body down, wrapped it in the linen-along with about
a hundred pounds of spices-and placed it in the tomb ( John 19:39-41).
With all this activity and work between the various locations, Joseph and
Nicodemus must have had very little daylight left when they finally rolled the
stone over the entrance to the tomb. On this point all the accounts again
concur; sunset was very near ( Matthew 27:57; Luke 23:54; John 19:31).
No one disputes that Jesus was laid " in the heart of the earth" at
sunset. If, as we have shown, He was buried for exactly 72 hours, He was also
resurrected at sunset-not at dawn!
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
From 'After Three Days'
Isaiah 1:10-14
(10) Hear the word of the LORD, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law
of our God, ye people of Gomorrah. (11) To what purpose is the multitude of
your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of
rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or
of lambs, or of he goats. (12) When ye come to appear before me, who hath
required this at your hand, to tread my courts? (13) Bring no more vain
oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the
calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn
meeting. (14) Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are
a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.
Amos 5:21-22
(21) I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your
solemn assemblies. (22) Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat
offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of
your fat beasts.
Just because He calls them your Sabbaths, or your feast days, does not
necessarily mean that they were not even meeting on the correct days. The
context shows that they were doing the ceremonial things ( Isaiah 1:11, 13;
Amos 5:22).
If Israel regarded the Sabbath as merely ceremonial, then they were at
least keeping the Sabbath in a ceremonial way. When He says "your new moons,"
or "your Sabbaths," they could very well have been on the same days that God
commanded, and not something "new" that they came up with. There is a
possibility in the book of Amos, because of Jeroboam I, that they indeed may
have been keeping different days. But, in Isaiah 1, it seems "the Sabbaths" He
refers to there, are "the Sabbaths" that we know of today as Saturday.
Thus, if indeed they were still keeping the weekly Sabbaths and the holy
days (at least in terms of the right days on the calendar), then God's
displeasure was caused by the way that they were keeping them, their attitude
and lack of understanding as to why they should be keeping them. That is what
concerned God. So bad were these issues, that as far as God was concerned,
those days that they were keeping were no longer His, and He was separating
Himself from them.
For short periods of time, small groups of people in Israel kept it
right-but how to keep it was almost always a bone of contention between God and
Israel. That issue is written about frequently in the Bible. It is not that
they were keeping the wrong days, but how they were keeping them and their lack
of understanding as to why they were keeping them that God was concerned about.
There is a great deal in the Bible about this commandment. When one
includes what is written concerning keeping the holy days, the annual Sabbaths,
with what is written concerning keeping the weekly Sabbath, there is more
written directly about this commandment than any other, except the first
commandment. We are not without instruction as to God's mind toward it-far from
it. We have a great deal of instruction on how we should to keep the Sabbath.
It is well understood that God did not inspire a list of hundreds of dos
and don'ts to be written down. Instead, He chose to reveal by means of a few
commands, examples, and broad principles, that we are supposed to study into,
meditate upon, reach conclusions, and put them into practice in our lives. It
was done this way to teach us to think through the process of choosing and
coming to an understanding of why we are doing these things, developing our
understanding of the mind of God.
The goal of this way is not that we would become creatures of rote, but
rather, that we would do things because they are right and avoid other things
because they are wrong. We would be making choices of our own free will that
are in line with the mind and will of God.
The Sabbath has often been referred to as the "test commandment." God is
testing the intention, the motivation that precedes the act and provides us
with our justification, as well as what we will permit ourselves to do.
Sometimes, in defending ourselves, we will say, "Well, I didn't mean to hurt
you." Maybe not, but the fact is that the other person was hurt. This position
is not good enough, because it still falls short of the glory of God. It is
good to remember "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." God wants
our intentions and our acts to be right. If we get the intention right, there
is a far greater chance that the acts we permit ourselves to do on the Sabbath
will be right. It must be this way, because the batting average for right
intentions bringing forth right acts is exceedingly higher than the other way
around. God wants us to understand why we are doing what we do before we do it.
John W. Ritenbaugh
From Sabbathkeeping (Part 1)
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