From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
daily devotional
Evening...
Isaiah 33:16 His place of defence shall be the munitions of rocks: bread shall
be given him; his waters shall be sure.
Do you doubt, O Christian, do you doubt as to whether God will fulfil His
promise? Shall the munitions of rock be carried by storm? O Shall the
storehouses of heaven fail? Do you think that your heavenly Father, though He
knoweth that you have need of food and raiment, will yet forget you? When not a
sparrow falls to the ground without your Father, and the very hairs of your
head are all numbered, will you mistrust and doubt Him? Perhaps your affliction
will continue upon you till you dare to trust your God, and then it shall end.
Full many there be who have been tried and sore vexed till at last they have
been driven in sheer desperation to exercise faith in God, and the moment of
their faith has been the instant of their deliverance; they have seen whether
God would keep His promise or not. Oh, I pray you, doubt Him no longer! Please
not Satan, and vex not yourself by indulging any more those hard thoughts of
God. Think it not a light matter to doubt Jehovah. Remember, it is a sin; and
not a little sin either, but in the highest degree criminal. The angels never
doubted Him, nor the devils either: we alone, out of all the beings that God
has fashioned, dishonour Him by unbelief, and tarnish His honour by mistrust.
Shame upon us for this! Our God does not deserve to be so basely suspected; in
our past life we have proved Him to be true and faithful to His word, and with
so many instances of His love and of His kindness as we have received, and are
daily receiving, at His hands, it is base and inexcusable that we suffer a
doubt to sojourn within our heart. May we henceforth wage constant war against
doubts of our God-enemies to our peace and to His honour; and with an
unstaggering faith believe that what He has promised He will also perform.
"Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief."
Morning...
Deuteronomy 33:27 The eternal God is thy refuge.
The word refuge may be translated "mansion," or "abiding-place," which gives
the thought that God is our abode, our home. There is a fulness and sweetness
in the metaphor, for dear to our hearts is our home, although it be the
humblest cottage, or the scantiest garret; and dearer far is our blessed God,
in whom we live, and move, and have our being. It is at home that we feel safe:
we shut the world out and dwell in quiet security. So when we are with our God
we "fear no evil." He is our shelter and retreat, our abiding refuge. At home,
we take our rest; it is there we find repose after the fatigue and toil of the
day. And so our hearts find rest in God, when, wearied with life's conflict, we
turn to Him, and our soul dwells at ease. At home, also, we let our hearts
loose; we are not afraid of being misunderstood, nor of our words being
misconstrued. So when we are with God we can commune freely with Him, laying
open all our hidden desires; for if the "secret of the Lord is with them that
fear Him," the secrets of them that fear Him ought to be, and must be, with
their Lord. Home, too, is the place of our truest and purest happiness: and it
is in God that our hearts find their deepest delight. We have joy in Him which
far surpasses all other joy. It is also for home that we work and labour. The
thought of it gives strength to bear the daily burden, and quickens the fingers
to perform the task; and in this sense we may also say that God is our home.
Love to Him strengthens us. We think of Him in the person of His dear Son; and
a glimpse of the suffering face of the Redeemer constrains us to labour in His
cause. We feel that we must work, for we have brethren yet to be saved, and we
have our Father's heart to make glad by bringing home His wandering sons; we
would fill with holy mirth the sacred family among whom we dwell. Happy are
those who have thus the God of Jacob for their refuge!
Jeremiah 5:7-8
(New King James Version)
(7) “ How shall I pardon you for this?
Your children have forsaken Me
And sworn by those that are not gods.
When I had fed them to the full,
Then they committed adultery
And assembled themselves by troops in the harlots’ houses.
(8) They were like well-fed lusty stallions;
Every one neighed after his neighbor’s wife.
Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Prophet after prophet makes similar statements. Israel has trouble
being faithful to anything: God, mate, country, employer, and contracts! Our
national mind runs like quicksilver from here to there—always running to get
the best for the self, willing to bend in any direction to gain advantage and
have our pleasure. We work very hard at this. At times, it almost seems to be
in our genes!
Nationally syndicated columnists Sydney J. Harris writes on the
subject of reliability:
Most virtues exist on a sliding scale, all the way from
excellence to ineptitude, and most of us are tolerably somewhere in the middle,
without too much damage to ourselves or others. But there is one virtue that is
all or nothing: and that is reliability. You are either reliable or you are
not; and, if not, it doesn't much matter how nearly or how often you are
reliable.
If I were an employer of any sort, I would be willing to put up
with many kinds of personal or professional deficiencies, but never with this.
A person who is not dependable is bound to fail you (and himself as well) at
precisely the wrong time.
It reminds me of the debonair Viennese gentlemen who, when
asked, "Have you been faithful to your wife?" replied, "Frequently." It is
plain that a man who is frequently faithful is not faithful at all; he might as
well never be.
Reliability is one of the hardest character traits to identify
by testing or "screening" or anything except personal acquaintance.
Some people are "rocks" by nature or training, while others are
papier-maché painted to resemble rocks, who crumble when sudden pressure is
applied by circumstances.
If you are married to someone who cannot be depended upon to
pull his or her own weight, it hardly matters what other admirable traits your
mate may possess, because you can never know when or where you will be let down.
It is the same as being married to an alcoholic, who is only
"there" part of the time—and usually not when most needed.
Consistency is what is required in the people we associate
with: the confident knowledge of what we can rightfully expect of them, barring
sudden illness or catastrophe beyond anyone's control. Otherwise there is no
real relationship, but only a shifting accommodation to the winds of caprice
and self-indulgence.
It is easy to feel affection for another; what is harder is to
translate this feeling into acts, daily acts, that demonstrate steadfastness of
purpose in a domestic routine that may not be as dramatic as some heroic
rescue, but that keeps the craft afloat no matter which way the wind happens to
blow.
The deepest and most important virtues are often the dullest
ones; they win no medals, and get no glory; but they are the glue that binds
society together and makes it work, now and always.
John W. Ritenbaugh
From The Seventh Commandment (1997)
.
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
daily devotional
Evening...
John 12:2 Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with Him.
He is to be envied. It was well to be Martha and serve, but better to be
Lazarus and commune. There are times for each purpose, and each is comely in
its season, but none of the trees of the garden yield such clusters as the vine
of fellowship. To sit with Jesus, to hear His words, to mark His acts, and
receive His smiles, was such a favour as must have made Lazarus as happy as the
angels. When it has been our happy lot to feast with our Beloved in His
banqueting-hall, we would not have given half a sigh for all the kingdoms of
the world, if so much breath could have bought them. He is to be imitated. It
would have been a strange thing if Lazarus had not been at the table where
Jesus was, for he had been dead, and Jesus had raised him. For the risen one to
be absent when the Lord who gave him life was at his house, would have been
ungrateful indeed. We too were once dead, yea, and like Lazarus stinking in the
grave of sin; Jesus raised us, and by His life we live-can we be content to
live at a distance from Him? Do we omit to remember Him at His table, where He
deigns to feast with His brethren? Oh, this is cruel! It behoves us to repent,
and do as He has bidden us, for His least wish should be law to us. To have
lived without constant intercourse with one of whom the Jews said, "Behold how
He loved him," would have been disgraceful to Lazarus, is it excusable in us
whom Jesus has loved with an everlasting love? To have been cold to Him who
wept over his lifeless corpse, would have argued great brutishness in Lazarus.
What does it argue in us over whom the Saviour has not only wept, but bled?
Come, brethren, who read this portion, let us return unto our heavenly
Bridegroom, and ask for His Spirit that we may be on terms of closer intimacy
with Him, and henceforth sit at the table with Him.
Morning...
Hosea 12:12 Israel served for a wife, and for a wife he kept sheep.
Jacob, while expostulating with Laban, thus describes his own toil, "This
twenty years have I been with thee. That which was torn of beasts I brought not
unto thee: I bare the loss of it; of my hand didst thou require it, whether
stolen by day, or stolen by night. Thus I was; in the day the drought consumed
me, and the frost by night; and my sleep departed from mine eyes." Even more
toilsome than this was the life of our Saviour here below. He watched over all
His sheep till He gave in as His last account, "Of all those whom Thou hast
given me I have lost none." His hair was wet with dew, and His locks with the
drops of the night. Sleep departed from His eyes, for all night He was in
prayer wrestling for His people. One night Peter must be pleaded for; anon,
another claims His tearful intercession. No shepherd sitting beneath the cold
skies, looking up to the stars, could ever utter such complaints because of the
hardness of his toil as Jesus Christ might have brought, if He had chosen to do
so, because of the sternness of His service in order to procure His spouse-
"Cold mountains and the midnight air,
Witnessed the fervour of His prayer;
The desert His temptations knew,
His conflict and His victory too."
It is sweet to dwell upon the spiritual parallel of Laban having required all
the sheep at Jacob's hand. If they were torn of beasts, Jacob must make it
good; if any of them died, he must stand as surety for the whole. Was not the
toil of Jesus for His Church the toil of one who was under suretiship
obligations to bring every believing one safe to the hand of Him who had
committed them to His charge? Look upon toiling Jacob, and you see a
representation of Him of whom we read, "He shall feed His flock like a
shepherd."
Revelation 6:5-6
(5) When He opened the third seal, I heard the third living
creature say, "Come and see." So I looked, and behold, a black horse, and he
who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. (6) And I heard a voice in the
midst of the four living creatures saying, "A quart of wheat for a denarius,
and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not harm the oil and the
wine."
Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
"Pair of scales" translates the Greek word zugón, which literally
means "yoke," as in a yoke of oxen or the yoke of bondage. The beam of a
balance, which resembles a yoke's crossbeam, joins or couples the two pans just
as a yoke joins the oxen. Just as it is better if the yoked oxen are evenly
matched, so the purpose of the balance is to determine that the contents of the
two pans are equal.
Today, we have little experience with pairs of scales or balances,
yet until recently, they were the commonly used means of weighing substances.
Perhaps we are familiar with a pair of scales from its use in a Western movie
to determine the weight of a gold nugget. In addition, most of us are aware
that a balance is an international symbol of justice, depicting the supposed
equality of all before the law. Elements of both of these common uses appear in
the third horseman.
In ancient times, the value or quantity of a thing was determined
by weighing it on scales. In fact, people bought and sold items by weight or
measure rather than by our currency-based system. For instance, the shekel was
not originally a unit of money but of weight according to which the price and
quantity of things were determined. As such, scales were common marketplace
items, and God demanded they be used justly (Leviticus 19:36; Proverbs 11:1;
16:11; Amos 8:4-10; Matthew 7:2).
Interestingly, because scales are easily manipulated, they can also
be a symbol of fraudulent exaction and oppression, as Hosea 12:7 illustrates:
"A cunning Canaanite [or merchant, referring to Ephraim, which stands for all
Israel]! Deceitful scales are in his hand; he loves to oppress." Micah concurs:
"Shall I count pure those with the wicked balances, and with the bag of
deceitful weights? For her rich men are full of violence, her inhabitants have
spoken lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth" (Micah 6:11-12).
When mentioned in terms of foodstuffs, particularly bread, scales
become a symbol of scarcity because, normally, bread would be sold by the loaf
without much concern for exact weight. However, during a famine when each ounce
of flour was valuable, flour would be rationed by weight or measure, and
neither buyer nor seller would want to be cheated. Notice God's prophetic
warning in Leviticus 26:26: "When I have cut off your supply of bread, ten
women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall bring back to you your
bread by weight, and you shall eat and not be satisfied." The prophet Ezekiel
also mentions rationing by weight as a judgment from God:
And your food which you eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a
day; from time to time you shall eat it. . . . Son of man, surely I will cut
off the supply of bread in Jerusalem; they shall eat bread by weight and with
anxiety, and shall drink water by measure and with dread. (Ezekiel 4:10, 16)
God is often depicted in the Old Testament as holding scales. For
example, Hannah prays, "For the Lord is the God of knowledge; and by Him
actions are weighed" (I Samuel 2:3). Solomon declares, "The Lord weighs the
spirits," or the motives and attitudes of people (Proverbs 16:2). Job cries,
"Let me be weighed [margin, Let Him weigh me] in a just balance, that God may
know my integrity" (Job 31:6). Perhaps the best known use of the scales in this
sense appears in Daniel 5:25, where God tells Belshazzar through Daniel's
interpretation, "You have been weighed in the balances, and found wanting."
It is certainly possible that God wants us to understand all these
seemingly disparate meanings in the third horseman. His lethal power is a
terrible, divine judgment on mankind for its violent oppression and greed, and
it takes the form of famine and wasting through malnutrition.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
From The Four Horsemen (Part Four): The Black Horse
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