Ezekiel 42
Rooms for the Priests 1 Then the man led me northward into the outer court and brought me to the rooms opposite the temple courtyard and opposite the outer wall on the north side. 2 The building whose door faced north was a hundred cubits [a] long and fifty cubits wide. 3 Both in the section twenty cubits from the inner court and in the section opposite the pavement of the outer court, gallery faced gallery at the three levels. 4 In front of the rooms was an inner passageway ten cubits wide and a hundred cubits [b] long. Their doors were on the north. 5 Now the upper rooms were narrower, for the galleries took more space from them than from the rooms on the lower and middle floors of the building. 6 The rooms on the third floor had no pillars, as the courts had; so they were smaller in floor space than those on the lower and middle floors. 7 There was an outer wall parallel to the rooms and the outer court; it extended in front of the rooms for fifty cubits. 8 While the row of rooms on the side next to the outer court was fifty cubits long, the row on the side nearest the sanctuary was a hundred cubits long. 9 The lower rooms had an entrance on the east side as one enters them from the outer court. 10 On the south side [c] along the length of the wall of the outer court, adjoining the temple courtyard and opposite the outer wall, were rooms 11 with a passageway in front of them. These were like the rooms on the north; they had the same length and width, with similar exits and dimensions. Similar to the doorways on the north 12 were the doorways of the rooms on the south. There was a doorway at the beginning of the passageway that was parallel to the corresponding wall extending eastward, by which one enters the rooms.
13 Then he said to me, "The north and south rooms facing the temple courtyard are the priests' rooms, where the priests who approach the LORD will eat the most holy offerings. There they will put the most holy offerings—the grain offerings, the sin offerings and the guilt offerings—for the place is holy. 14 Once the priests enter the holy precincts, they are not to go into the outer court until they leave behind the garments in which they minister, for these are holy. They are to put on other clothes before they go near the places that are for the people."
15 When he had finished measuring what was inside the temple area, he led me out by the east gate and measured the area all around: 16 He measured the east side with the measuring rod; it was five hundred cubits. [d] 17 He measured the north side; it was five hundred cubits [e] by the measuring rod. 18 He measured the south side; it was five hundred cubits by the measuring rod. 19 Then he turned to the west side and measured; it was five hundred cubits by the measuring rod. 20 So he measured the area on all four sides. It had a wall around it, five hundred cubits long and five hundred cubits wide, to separate the holy from the common.
Matthew 6:25-34 (New International Version)New International Version (NIV)Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society
Do Not Worry 25"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life[a]? 28"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
November 19, 2007
Don’t Worry
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READ: Matthew 6:25-34
Do not worry . . . . Your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. —Matthew 6:31-32 About this cover My nephew’s job was soon to be eliminated, so I was glad to hear from his wife that he had just accepted an offer for a new position.
“We prayed, I worried, and Eric was determined to get another job,” Angie wrote in an e-mail, explaining the journey they’d been on for the last few months.
It’s easy for us to panic when we face serious concerns—the loss of a job, a family member with cancer, a wayward child.
So we pray. And we get busy. We start doing everything we can think of to move forward in a positive way.
And we worry. We know it’s a waste of time. Yet a lot of us find ourselves in this dilemma—we know we should trust God, but we wonder just what He’s going to do.
That’s when we turn to His Word—to remind us that He is walking with us and inviting us to hand over to Him our worries and burdens. Scripture tells us, “[Cast] all your care upon Him, for He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7), and “God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:19).
When your mind turns to anxious thoughts about the future, remember that “your heavenly Father knows” (Matt. 6:32) and will give you what you need. —Cindy Hess Kasper
I don’t know about tomorrow,It may bring me poverty;But the One who feeds the sparrowIs the One who stands by me. —Stanphill© 1950 by Ira Stanphill
Worry is a burden God never intended us to bear.
November 19th.
WHEN HE IS COME
"And when He is come, He will convict the world of sin. . . ." John 16:8 (R.V.)
Very few of us know anything about conviction of sin; we know the experience of being disturbed because of having done wrong things; but conviction of sin by the Holy Ghost blots out every relationship on earth and leaves one relationship only - "Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned!" When a man is convicted of sin in this way, he knows with every power of his conscience that God dare not forgive him; if God did forgive him, the man would have a stronger sense of justice than God. God does forgive, but it cost the rending of His heart in the Death of Christ to enable Him to do so. The great miracle of the grace of God is that He forgives sin, and it is the death of Jesus Christ alone that enables the Divine nature to forgive and to remain true to itself in doing so. It is shallow nonsense to say that God forgives us because He is love. When we have been convicted of sin we will never say this again. The love of God means Calvary, and nothing less; the love of God is spelt on the Cross and nowhere else. The only ground on which God can forgive me is through the Cross of my Lord. There, His conscience is satisfied.
Forgiveness means not merely that I am saved from hell and made right for heaven (no man would accept forgiveness on such a level); forgiveness means that I am forgiven into a recreated relationship, into identification with God in Christ. The miracle of Redemption is that God turns me, the unholy one, into the standard of Himself, the Holy One, by putting into me a new disposition, the disposition of Jesus Christ.
Your Opportunity to Live Forever - #5441 Monday, November 19, 2007
"Please help us." That's what the people stranded on the roof of their house had written on the sign that they waved over their heads. They represented so many thousands of New Orleans residents who were left stranded and in deadly danger by the floods of Hurricane Katrina. The wind and the rain of that category four hurricane were bad enough - but it was when the levees broke that suddenly major parts of the city were underwater, literally up to the rooftops. Harrowing stories began to unfold of how people had moved from a first floor to a second floor to escape the toxic waters. Then, as the second floor filled with water, how they moved to their last point of refuge - the roof. And many were stranded there, without food, without water, and increasingly without hope. And then hope showed up - in the shape of a Coast Guard helicopter, hovering over their rooftop refuge. Hope was a man coming down a cable to where they were; a man who secured their rescue and saved their lives.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Your Opportunity to Live Forever."
There was no way those folks could save themselves. Literally, their only hope was a rescuer. That's our only hope, too - spiritually, that is. Because whether we realize it or not, whether or not we want to admit it, we are that man or woman who is facing certain death unless a rescuer comes and does for us what we could never do for ourselves.
Now we may like to think of ourselves as being in pretty good shape spiritually. After all, we're religious, we live better than most folks, and we may even know a lot about the Bible. We even listen to Christian radio sometimes! But here's how God sees our spiritual condition: "He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand" (Psalm 40:2). The Bible clearly spells out that our sin has placed us in an inescapable pit, in mud and mire that we can't get ourselves out of. Our only hope, like the desperate people on those New Orleans rooftops, is if He "lifts me out."
I wonder if you've ever asked Him to do that. God has shown us in His book how deadly our situation is. All of us - including the most religious of us - have essentially hijacked our life from the One who gave it to us and insisted on running it our way instead of His way. We are spiritual rebels, defying by our lives the God of the universe. And the Bible makes it very clear that "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23) - eternal death, separated from God - separated from His love. But then here comes the hope in our word for today from the Word of God in Romans 5:6, 8. "At just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
Jesus literally poured out His love for you by dying for you - by taking your place, taking all your punishment for all your sin when He died on the cross. And this very day, the Rescuer from above is coming to you, extending His hand, offering you a chance to live forever instead of perishing in your sin. John 3:16 in the Bible promises that "whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life." But you have to grab Jesus as your only hope - just as those people on the rooftops grabbed the one who had come to rescue them. Jesus wants to bring you out of the pit and the penalty of your sin and to bring you into a never-ending love relationship with the God who made you.
But you have to grab the Rescuer. That's what "believing in Him" is all about. You can do that right where you are because He's coming to you right where you are. You tell Him, "Jesus, You really are my only hope of having my sins forgiven, of being right with God, of going to heaven when I die. So with all the faith I've got, Lord, I'm yours."
If you're ready to belong to Jesus, if you're ready to be rescued by Jesus, I've got something I'd like to send you that I think will help you really understand this life-saving relationship. It's a little booklet called Yours For Life and I'll send it to you without any obligation if you'll just let me know you want it. Just go to our website at yoursforlife.net or call us toll free at 877-741-1200.
Your rescue cost the Rescuer His life. And now He's come to you, His hand is reaching for you. Grab it - while there's time.
To find out how you can begin a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, please visit: yoursforlife.net or call 1-888-966-7325.
