From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] daily devotional
Evening...
Luke 2:20
And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that
they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.
What was the subject of their praise? They praised God for what they had
heard-for the good tidings of great joy that a Saviour was born unto them. Let
us copy them; let us also raise a song of thanksgiving that we have heard of
Jesus and His salvation. They also praised God for what they had seen. There is
the sweetest music-what we have experienced, what we have felt within, what we
have made our own-"the things which we have made touching the King." It is not
enough to hear about Jesus: mere hearing may tune the harp, but the fingers of
living faith must create the music. If you have seen Jesus with the God-giving
sight of faith, suffer no cobwebs to linger among the harpstrings, but loud to
the praise of sovereign grace, awake your psaltery and harp. One point for
which they praised God was the agreement between what they had heard and what
they had seen. Observe the last sentence-"As it was told unto them." Have you
not found the gospel to be in yourselves just what the Bible said it would be?
Jesus said He would give you rest-have you not enjoyed the sweetest peace in
Him? He said you should have joy, and comfort, and life through believing in
Him-have you not received all these? Are not His ways ways of pleasantness, and
His paths paths of peace? Surely you can say with the queen of Sheba, "The half
has not been told me." I have found Christ more sweet than His servants ever
said He was. I looked upon His likeness as they painted it, but it was a mere
daub compared with Himself; for the King in His beauty outshines all imaginable
loveliness. Surely what we have "seen" keeps pace with, nay, far exceeds, what
we have "heard." Let us, then, glorify and praise God for a Saviour so
precious, and so satisfying.
Morning...
2 Corinthians 4:18
The things which are not seen.
In our Christian pilgrimage it is well, for the most part, to be looking
forward. Forward lies the crown, and onward is the goal. Whether it be for
hope, for joy, for consolation, or for the inspiring of our love, the future
must, after all, be the grand object of the eye of faith. Looking into the
future we see sin cast out, the body of sin and death destroyed, the soul made
perfect, and fit to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light.
Looking further yet, the believer's enlightened eye can see death's river
passed, the gloomy stream forded, and the hills of light attained on which
standeth the celestial city; he seeth himself enter within the pearly gates,
hailed as more than conqueror, crowned by the hand of Christ, embraced in the
arms of Jesus, glorified with Him, and made to sit together with Him on His
throne, even as He has overcome and has sat down with the Father on His throne.
The thought of this future may well relieve the darkness of the past and the
gloom of the present. The joys of heaven will surely compensate for the sorrows
of earth. Hush, hush, my doubts! death is but a narrow stream, and thou shalt
soon have forded it. Time, how short-eternity, how long! Death, how
brief-immortality, how endless! Methinks I even now eat of Eshcol's clusters,
and sip of the well which is within the gate. The road is so, so short! I shall
soon be there.
"When the world my heart is rending
With its heaviest storm of care,
My glad thoughts to heaven ascending,
Find a refuge from despair.
Faith's bright vision shall sustain me
Till life's pilgrimage is past;
Fears may vex and troubles pain me,
I shall reach my home at last."
Exodus 20:14
(14) Thou shalt not commit adultery.
As far as we know, the crisis of AIDS has been with us since 1981,
although blood samples from as early as 1959 show evidence of the HIV virus.
Approximately 6.4 million have died from AIDS already, and since 30 million
people are HIV-positive, another 13 million are expected to die by the year
2000. Although the disease can be spread by other means, the primary vehicle
for the contagion is sexual contact.
Before AIDS, sexually transmissible diseases (STDs) like gonorrhea,
syphilis, herpes, and chlamydia—politely called "social" or venereal
diseases—raged around the world for centuries. Like AIDS, these are primarily
spread by sexual contact, usually of an illicit nature. Today, the Centers for
Disease Control reports, 87 percent of all reportable disease is sexually
transmitted!
This means, of course, that 87 percent of all disease is
preventable—by keeping the seventh commandment, "You shall not commit adultery"
(Exodus 20:14), which includes all forms of sexual immorality. Mankind could
eliminate nearly nine-tenths of all disease by changing sexual behavior to
conform to the standard of God's law! Imagine the health, joy, and peace this
would cause!
What a breakthrough, right? Wrong! The medical establishment
worldwide—except for a few "radical" countries, most of which are
Muslim—utterly rejects behavioral changes in favor of the politically correct
"safe sex" procedures. Dr. Ed Payne, a faculty member at the Medical College of
Georgia, calls the medical community's attitude of rejection of moral values
"deliberate naiveté" (World, November 1, 1997, p. 5). Like children, they
believe that if they just shut their eyes to the underlying cause of the
problem, it really does not exist.
Dr. Payne writes:
The crisis of American medicine is not tobacco, AIDS, silicone, the
Gulf War Syndrome, breast or any other form of cancer. . . . The crisis of
American medicine is far greater than any one of these problems; indeed, it is
far greater than all of them combined, because the answers to these problems do
not come from within them, but from medical ethics. It is the same crisis that
faces our culture in every other area: How do we decide ethics? That is, how do
we decide what is right and what is wrong? (ibid.)
What is the result? In the case of STDs, the medical establishment
actually promotes promiscuity and immorality. Rather than "weigh in" on
pre-marital sex, it provides sex education, condoms, and birth-control pills to
adolescents. To the majority of "health professionals," homosexuality is not
wrong, but unsafe homosexual sex is "at-risk behavior." The risk is not that
God will punish for sin but that a person might get a fatal disease.
Wrong becomes right, and if it is so right, their actions say, we
should do more of it!
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
From Right? Wrong?
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daily devotional
Evening...
Judges 15:18
He was sore athirst, and called on the Lord, and said, Thou hast given this
great deliverance into the hand of Thy servant: and now shall I die for thirst?
Samson was thirsty and ready to die. The difficulty was totally different
from any which the hero had met before. Merely to get thirst assuaged is
nothing like so great a matter as to be delivered from a thousand Philistines!
but when the thirst was upon him, Samson felt that little present difficulty
more weighty than the great past difficulty out of which he had so specially
been delivered. It is very usual for God's people, when they have enjoyed a
great deliverance, to find a little trouble too much for them. Samson slays a
thousand Philistines, and piles them up in heaps, and then faints for a little
water! Jacob wrestles with God at Peniel, and overcomes Omnipotence itself, and
then goes "halting on his thigh!" Strange that there must be a shrinking of the
sinew whenever we win the day. As if the Lord must teach us our littleness, our
nothingness, in order to keep us within bounds. Samson boasted right loudly
when he said, "I have slain a thousand men." His boastful throat soon grew
hoarse with thirst, and he betook himself to prayer. God has many ways of
humbling His people. Dear child of God, if after great mercy you are laid very
low, your case is not an unusual one. When David had mounted the throne of
Israel, he said, "I am this day weak, though anointed king." You must expect to
feel weakest when you are enjoying your greatest triumph. If God has wrought
for you great deliverances in the past, your present difficulty is only like
Samson's thirst, and the Lord will not let you faint, nor suffer the daughter
of the uncircumcised to triumph over you. The road of sorrow is the road to
heaven, but there are wells of refreshing water all along the route. So, tried
brother, cheer your heart with Samson's words, and rest assured that God will
deliver you ere long.
January 22
Morning...
Ezekiel 15:2
Son of man, What is the vine tree more than any tree, or than a branch which is
among the trees of the forest?
These words are for the humbling of God's people; they are called God's vine,
but what are they by nature more than others? They, by God's goodness, have
become fruitful, having been planted in a good soil; the Lord hath trained them
upon the walls of the sanctuary, and they bring forth fruit to His glory; but
what are they without their God? What are they without the continual influence
of the Spirit, begetting fruitfulness in them? O believer, learn to reject
pride, seeing that thou hast no ground for it. Whatever thou art, thou hast
nothing to make thee proud. The more thou hast, the more thou art in debt to
God; and thou shouldst not be proud of that which renders thee a debtor.
Consider thine origin; look back to what thou wast. Consider what thou wouldst
have been but for divine grace. Look upon thyself as thou art now. Doth not thy
conscience reproach thee? Do not thy thousand wanderings stand before thee, and
tell thee that thou art unworthy to be called His son? And if He hath made thee
anything, art thou not taught thereby that it is grace which hath made thee to
differ? Great believer, thou wouldst have been a great sinner if God had not
made thee to differ. O thou who art valiant for truth, thou wouldst have been
as valiant for error if grace had not laid hold upon thee. Therefore, be not
proud, though thou hast a large estate-a wide domain of grace, thou hadst not
once a single thing to call thine own except thy sin and misery. Oh! strange
infatuation, that thou, who hast borrowed everything, shouldst think of
exalting thyself; a poor dependent pensioner upon the bounty of thy Saviour,
one who hath a life which dies without fresh streams of life from Jesus, and
yet proud! Fie on thee, O silly heart!
Genesis 1:26
(26) And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and
let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air,
and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that
creepeth upon the earth.
Genesis 1:28
(28) And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and
multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the
fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that
moveth upon the earth.
Genesis 2:15
(15) And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to
dress it and to keep it.
To environmentalists, letting man have dominion over the animals and
being told to subdue the earth means that God gives man free rein to do
anything he wants to the planet—bend it to his uses and abuses, rape it of all
its beauty and diversity—for his own benefit. "Does not the land have any
rights?" they cry. "What about the plants and animals, birds and fish? What
gives us the right to mine and burn and kill without care for nature?"
Certainly, God did not give man the authority to degrade and destroy His
earth. Environmentalists are correct in saying that mankind should consider and
address environmental concerns. They are quite wrong, however, to blame God for
the earth's ecological problems; He is not responsible for man's destruction of
the natural world.
To think that God gave man carte blanche to plunder and destroy the earth
is simply ludicrous. He is its Creator! Why would He immediately command Adam
to ruin it? Would any woodworker, upon just finishing a beautifully stained
piece of furniture, tell his son to break it up for firewood? No! Just as God
desires for His creation, the woodworker would put his handiwork to use and
also care for it by keeping it waxed and dusted to prolong its life.
This is exactly what God told Adam. Genesis 2 contains a parallel account
of creation, adding detail to certain parts of the narrative of the first
chapter. Notice God's expanded instruction: "Then the LORD God took the man and
put him in the garden of Eden to tend [dress, KJV] and keep it" (verse 15).
This greatly modifies the force of "have dominion" and "subdue it" from Genesis
1:26, 28!
Tend (Hebrew 'abad) means "to work or serve," and thus referring to the
ground or a garden, it can be defined as "to till or cultivate." It possesses
the nuance seen in the KJV's choice in its translation: "dress," implying
adornment, embellishment, and improvement.
Keep (Hebrew shamar) means "to exercise great care over." In the context
of Genesis 2:15, it expresses God's wish that mankind, in the person of Adam,
"take care of," "guard," or "watch over" the garden. A caretaker maintains and
protects his charge so that he can return it to its owner in as good or better
condition than when he received it.
To Noah, God gives a similar command after the Flood:
So God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them: "Be fruitful and
multiply, and fill the earth. And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be
on every beast of the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that move on the
earth, and on all the fish of the sea. They are given into your hand. ( Genesis
9:1-2)
Once again God gives man dominion over all other life on the earth, and
with this renewed authority comes the implicit responsibility to tend and keep
what was explicitly given to Adam. In this post-Flood world, God gives mankind
a second chance to use and preserve the resources He had so abundantly
provided. To that end Noah, after 120 years as a preacher and shipwright, took
up farming and planted a vineyard (verse 20). We can assume, from what we know
of human nature, that this attitude of stewardship did not pass to very many of
his descendants.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
From The Bible and the Environment
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