From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
daily devotional
Evening...
Exodus 34:20
But the firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou redeem
him not, then shalt thou break his neck.
Every firstborn creature must be the Lord's, but since the ass was unclean,
it could not be presented in sacrifice. What then? Should it be allowed to go
free from the universal law? By no means. God admits of no exceptions. The ass
is His due, but He will not accept it; He will not abate the claim, but yet He
cannot be pleased with the victim. No way of escape remained but redemption-the
creature must be saved by the substitution of a lamb in its place; or if not
redeemed, it must die. My soul, here is a lesson for thee. That unclean animal
is thyself; thou art justly the property of the Lord who made thee and
preserves thee, but thou art so sinful that God will not, cannot, accept thee;
and it has come to this, the Lamb of God must stand in thy stead, or thou must
die eternally. Let all the world know of thy gratitude to that spotless Lamb
who has already bled for thee, and so redeemed thee from the fatal curse of the
law. Must it not sometimes have been a question with the Israelite which should
die, the ass or the lamb? Would not the good man pause to estimate and compare?
Assuredly there was no comparison between the value of the soul of man and the
life of the Lord Jesus, and yet the Lamb dies, and man the ass is spared. My
soul, admire the boundless love of God to thee and others of the human race.
Worms are bought with the blood of the Son of the Highest! Dust and ashes
redeemed with a price far above silver and gold! What a doom had been mine had
not plenteous redemption been found! The breaking of the neck of the ass was
but a momentary penalty, but who shall measure the wrath to come to which no
limit can be imagined? Inestimably dear is the glorious Lamb who has redeemed
us from such a doom.
Jeremiah 5:30-31
(30) A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land; (31) The
prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my
people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?
The entire nation-Jeremiah is reporting here on Judah around the time
Nebuchadnezzar invaded in 607 BC-was spiritually and morally sick. "And the
priests rule by their own power" means in more modern language that the priests
were functioning on their own authority, that is, they had pushed the law of
God aside.
The people loved it because in so doing, they allowed themselves to be
deceived into thinking that the restraints and penalties of God's law would not
affect them. "It will not happen to me." That is what God shows happened in the
Garden of Eden. Satan said, "You shall not surely die," and Adam and Eve became
convinced that the penalty for sin would not affect them if they disobeyed what
God said. They fell for what Satan sold them.
Why does God concentrate on morals in His Book? There are many things He
could have written about, but He chose to write a great deal about the morals
of the people with whom He had made a covenant.
One reason is that morals are like a weathervane. They show the direction
a nation, a church, or an individual is headed in.
A second reason why God concentrates on morals focuses on the prophets
and the preachers. Why? Because He has appointed them to be the conscience of
His people. Preachers tend to lead the people either into morality or
immorality-one or the other. They are like the tip of the spear or the point of
an arrow that points the direction of the nation. They are leading indicators.
So it says in verse 30, "An astonishing and horrible thing has been committed
in the land: the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule by their own
power."
Even if a minister is not doing his job, pointing out the sins of the
people for whom he is responsible to God, we still, individually, have the
responsibility to obey God regardless.
John W. Ritenbaugh
From The Sin of Self-Deception
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
daily devotional
Evening...
Jeremiah 15:21
And I will deliver thee out of the hand of the wicked, and I will redeem thee
out of the hand of the terrible.
Note the glorious personality of the promise. I will, I will. The Lord
Jehovah Himself interposes to deliver and redeem His people. He pledges Himself
personally to rescue them. His own arm shall do it, that He may have the glory.
Here is not a word said of any effort of our own which may be needed to assist
the Lord. Neither our strength nor our weakness is taken into the account, but
the lone I, like the sun in the heavens, shines out resplendent in
all-sufficience. Why then do we calculate our forces, and consult with flesh
and blood to our grievous wounding? Jehovah has power enough without borrowing
from our puny arm. Peace, ye unbelieving thoughts, be still, and know that the
Lord reigneth. Nor is there a hint concerning secondary means and causes. The
Lord says nothing of friends and helpers: He undertakes the work alone, and
feels no need of human arms to aid Him. Vain are all our lookings around to
companions and relatives; they are broken reeds if we lean upon them-often
unwilling when able, and unable when they are willing. Since the promise comes
alone from God, it would be well to wait only upon Him; and when we do so, our
expectation never fails us. Who are the wicked that we should fear them? The
Lord will utterly consume them; they are to be pitied rather than feared. As
for terrible ones, they are only terrors to those who have no God to fly to,
for when the Lord is on our side, whom shall we fear? If we run into sin to
please the wicked, we have cause to be alarmed, but if we hold fast our
integrity, the rage of tyrants shall be overruled for our good. When the fish
swallowed Jonah, he found him a morsel which he could not digest; and when the
world devours the church, it is glad to be rid of it again. In all times of
fiery trial, in patience let us possess our souls.
Jeremiah 31:31-34
(31) Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new
covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: (32) Not
according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took
them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they
brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: (33) But this shall
be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days,
saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their
hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. (34) And they shall
teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know
the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest
of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember
their sin no more.
The ultimate fulfillment of this process will culminate when we are
completely composed of spirit, and God's law will be our first nature, not just
second nature. But, while we are in an embryonic stage, the process has already
begun in us, incrementally, as God gradually displaces our carnality and sin,
replacing it with His Holy Spirit, leading to righteous behavior and godliness.
Actually, no human being is completely converted, but many people are in
various stages of conversion.
Conversion, then, is a life-long process in which we move from a reactive
approach to lawkeeping-motivated by rewards and punishments-to a proactive
approach-motivated by a deeply placed inner desire to yield and comply to the
law's principles, knowing intrinsically from experience that they work for the
good and harmony of all. (Proactive is a term author-speaker Steven Covey uses
to distinguish internal motivation to do or accomplish something as opposed to
external motivation.)
As the process of conversion begins, God must use carrots and sticks to
keep us moving in the right direction. The blessings and curses of Leviticus 26
and Deuteronomy 28 served as carrots and sticks to encourage righteous and
godly behavior in our Israelite forebears. God uses carrots and sticks in the
early part of our calling-for instance, the carrot of the Place of Safety and
the stick of the Tribulation-and literally drives us into a frantic study of
prophecy. Carrots and sticks have motivated our educational system in the forms
of gold stars, grades, praise, trophies, extra homework, and detention.
Recently, Dr. Alfie Kohn, in his book, Punished By Rewards, questions the
long-term effects of external motivators, such as grades, financial incentives,
gold stars, or tokens, to sustain learning behavior. He supplies some
surprising evidence that carrots and sticks-reflecting the philosophy, "Do this
and you'll get that"- actually become detrimental in the long run, diverting
the focus away from the learning outcome onto the reward or punishment. Dr.
Kohn, Dr. Jerome Bruner, and a host of other educators suggest that internal
motivators, such as satisfying curiosity, imitating role models, and attaining
competency, work better to motivate over the long term than do G.P.A.'s,
scholarships and grants, and other external incentives.
To illustrate this, one of the supreme tragedies in the music world
occurred when the government of Finland supplied composer Jean Sibelius a
guaranteed pension and a large mansion in the woods near Jarvenpaa. After this
huge reward, an external motivation, not one musical idea-not one
note!-emanated from his pen. Likewise, our spiritual growth and maturity will
become stunted if our motivation for righteous behavior is externally
determined rather than internally determined.
To an individual truly endowed with God's Spirit, the laws cranked out
yearly in Washington, DC, our state capitals, and our local city halls should
strike us as juvenile and elementary-or as one minister would call
it-knee-pants stuff. Consider the carrots and sticks used by lawmakers to
control litter: up to $1,000 fine for littering, or a sign reading, "This
segment of highway adopted by Yourtown Jaycees."
These examples ignore the heart and core of the problem. Until the law
gets from stone-tablet pages of the Scripture, or the statute books of a local,
state, or federal assembly, into our hearts and minds-unless the motivation for
doing what is right comes from the inside out-we are no more converted than a
donkey. On second thought, a donkey at least behaves as it is programmed to act.
David F. Maas
From Righteousness from Inside-Out
