Daily Devotional by Max Lucado
“the One who came still comes and the One who spoke still speaks”
October 16
Perfected
Their sins and the evil things they do--I will not remember anymore.
Hebrews 10:17 (NCV)
[With one sacrifice] he made perfect forever those who are being made holy" (Heb. 10:14).
Underline the word perfect. Note that the word is not better. Not improving. Not on the upswing. God doesn't improve; he perfects. He doesn't enhance; he completes....
Now I realize that there's a sense in which we're imperfect. We still err. We still stumble. We still do exactly what we don't want to do. And that part of us is, according to the verse, "being made holy."
But when it comes to our position before God, we're perfect. When he sees each of us, he sees one who has been made perfect through the One who is perfect--Jesus Christ.
Leviticus 26
Reward for Obedience
1 " 'Do not make idols or set up an image or a sacred stone for yourselves, and do not place a carved stone in your land to bow down before it. I am the LORD your God.
2 " 'Observe my Sabbaths and have reverence for my sanctuary. I am the LORD.
3 " 'If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, 4 I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees of the field their fruit. 5 Your threshing will continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land.
6 " 'I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid. I will remove savage beasts from the land, and the sword will not pass through your country. 7 You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you. 8 Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand, and your enemies will fall by the sword before you.
9 " 'I will look on you with favor and make you fruitful and increase your numbers, and I will keep my covenant with you. 10 You will still be eating last year's harvest when you will have to move it out to make room for the new. 11 I will put my dwelling place [b] among you, and I will not abhor you. 12 I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people. 13 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians; I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk with heads held high.
Punishment for Disobedience
14 " 'But if you will not listen to me and carry out all these commands, 15 and if you reject my decrees and abhor my laws and fail to carry out all my commands and so violate my covenant, 16 then I will do this to you: I will bring upon you sudden terror, wasting diseases and fever that will destroy your sight and drain away your life. You will plant seed in vain, because your enemies will eat it. 17 I will set my face against you so that you will be defeated by your enemies; those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee even when no one is pursuing you.
18 " 'If after all this you will not listen to me, I will punish you for your sins seven times over. 19 I will break down your stubborn pride and make the sky above you like iron and the ground beneath you like bronze. 20 Your strength will be spent in vain, because your soil will not yield its crops, nor will the trees of the land yield their fruit.
21 " 'If you remain hostile toward me and refuse to listen to me, I will multiply your afflictions seven times over, as your sins deserve. 22 I will send wild animals against you, and they will rob you of your children, destroy your cattle and make you so few in number that your roads will be deserted.
23 " 'If in spite of these things you do not accept my correction but continue to be hostile toward me, 24 I myself will be hostile toward you and will afflict you for your sins seven times over. 25 And I will bring the sword upon you to avenge the breaking of the covenant. When you withdraw into your cities, I will send a plague among you, and you will be given into enemy hands. 26 When I cut off your supply of bread, ten women will be able to bake your bread in one oven, and they will dole out the bread by weight. You will eat, but you will not be satisfied.
27 " 'If in spite of this you still do not listen to me but continue to be hostile toward me, 28 then in my anger I will be hostile toward you, and I myself will punish you for your sins seven times over. 29 You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. 30 I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars and pile your dead bodies on the lifeless forms of your idols, and I will abhor you. 31 I will turn your cities into ruins and lay waste your sanctuaries, and I will take no delight in the pleasing aroma of your offerings. 32 I will lay waste the land, so that your enemies who live there will be appalled. 33 I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out my sword and pursue you. Your land will be laid waste, and your cities will lie in ruins. 34 Then the land will enjoy its sabbath years all the time that it lies desolate and you are in the country of your enemies; then the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths. 35 All the time that it lies desolate, the land will have the rest it did not have during the sabbaths you lived in it.
36 " 'As for those of you who are left, I will make their hearts so fearful in the lands of their enemies that the sound of a windblown leaf will put them to flight. They will run as though fleeing from the sword, and they will fall, even though no one is pursuing them. 37 They will stumble over one another as though fleeing from the sword, even though no one is pursuing them. So you will not be able to stand before your enemies. 38 You will perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will devour you. 39 Those of you who are left will waste away in the lands of their enemies because of their sins; also because of their fathers' sins they will waste away.
40 " 'But if they will confess their sins and the sins of their fathers—their treachery against me and their hostility toward me, 41 which made me hostile toward them so that I sent them into the land of their enemies—then when their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they pay for their sin, 42 I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. 43 For the land will be deserted by them and will enjoy its sabbaths while it lies desolate without them. They will pay for their sins because they rejected my laws and abhorred my decrees. 44 Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or abhor them so as to destroy them completely, breaking my covenant with them. I am the LORD their God. 45 But for their sake I will remember the covenant with their ancestors whom I brought out of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God. I am the LORD.' "
46 These are the decrees, the laws and the regulations that the LORD established on Mount Sinai between himself and the Israelites through Moses.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
1 Thessalonians 4:15-18 (New International Version)
15According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. 18Therefore encourage each other with these words.
October 16, 2009
The Defeat Of Death
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READ: 1 Thess. 4:15-18
Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. —1 Corinthians 15:57
Christian faith ought to make a difference in how we live from day to day. But the final test of our trust in the gospel is how we react in the face of death. When we attend a memorial service for a departed friend who loved the Lord Jesus, we gather to honor a believer whose stalwart trust has richly blessed the lives of those who knew him. The words spoken are more an expression of praise to God than a tribute to an admired fellow pilgrim. The service is a God-glorifying testimony to our Savior’s victory over death and the grave (1 Cor. 15:54-57).
How different from the funeral service of Charles Bradlaugh, a belligerent British atheist. Writer Arthur Porritt recalls: “No prayer was said at the grave. Indeed, not a single word was uttered. The remains, placed in a light coffin, were lowered into the earth in a quite unceremonious fashion as if carrion were being hustled out of sight. . . . I came away heart-frozen. It only then dawned on me that loss of faith in the continuity of human personality after death gives death an appalling victory.”
Christians, however, believe in a face-to-face fellowship with our Lord after death and the eventual resurrection of our bodies (1 Cor. 15:42-55; 1 Thess. 4:15-18). Does your faith rejoice in victory over death? — Vernon C. Grounds
From earth’s wide bounds and ocean’s farthest coast,
Through gates of pearl stream in the countless host,
Singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost— Alleluia! Alleluia! —How
Because Christ is alive, we too shall live.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
October 16, 2009
The Key to the Master’s Orders
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READ:
Pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest —Matthew 9:38
The key to the missionary’s difficult task is in the hand of God, and that key is prayer, not work— that is, not work as the word is commonly used today, which often results in the shifting of our focus away from God. The key to the missionary’s difficult task is also not the key of common sense, nor is it the key of medicine, civilization, education, or even evangelization. The key is in following the Master’s orders— the key is prayer. "Pray the Lord of the harvest . . . ." In the natural realm, prayer is not practical but absurd. We have to realize that prayer is foolish from the commonsense point of view.
From Jesus Christ’s perspective, there are no nations, but only the world. How many of us pray without regard to the persons, but with regard to only one Person— Jesus Christ? He owns the harvest that is produced through distress and through conviction of sin. This is the harvest for which we have to pray that laborers be sent out to reap. We stay busy at work, while people all around us are ripe and ready to be harvested; we do not reap even one of them, but simply waste our Lord’s time in over-energized activities and programs. Suppose a crisis were to come into your father’s or your brother’s life— are you there as a laborer to reap the harvest for Jesus Christ? Is your response, "Oh, but I have a special work to do!" No Christian has a special work to do. A Christian is called to be Jesus Christ’s own, "a servant [who] is not greater than his master" (John 13:16 ), and someone who does not dictate to Jesus Christ what he intends to do. Our Lord calls us to no special work— He calls us to Himself. "Pray the Lord of the harvest," and He will engineer your circumstances to send you out as His laborer.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Climate Control - #5940
Friday, October 16, 2009
I was in a Board Meeting in a hotel conference room. It was in the 90s outside, but I was ready to put gloves on so I could write without shaking. The air conditioner in our conference room was set one notch past high. It was on arctic! We wandered over to the control box on the wall, and all we did was discover that the controls were locked up. Great! So, we called the desk and they had a hard time understanding us because our teeth were chattering. They finally got the message, and the maintenance man came and he turned down that ice machine. At that moment, he had the power in his hands. Summer or winter, he is the man who decides what the temperature will be. You know, that's a pretty significant position.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Climate Control."
Our word for today from the Word of God turns the spotlight on one of the Bible's greatest role models for leadership - my hero, Nehemiah. He led God's people in the effort to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem in just 52 days. As we join the story, Nehemiah is now governor for a poor group of people who are trying to establish life in their rebuilt city. In that difficult time, the climate was very important, and God had a man who knew how to establish just the right temperature.
Our word for today from the Word of God, Nehemiah 5 beginning in verse 14. "When I was appointed to be their governor...neither I nor my brothers ate the food allotted to the governor. But the earlier governors - those preceding me - placed a heavy burden on the people and took forty shekels of silver from them in addition to food and wine. Their assistants also lorded it over the people. But out of reverence for God, I did not act like that. Instead, I devoted myself to the work on this wall. All my men were assembled for the work; we did not acquire any land. Furthermore," Nehemiah says, "a hundred and fifty Jews and officials ate at my table, as well as those who came to us from the surrounding nations...I never demanded the food allotted to the governor, because the demands were heavy on these people."
In the intensity of this survival situation, the people desperately needed a climate of unselfishness, of sharing, of cooperation. But someone had to be the thermostat, and Nehemiah was that man. He led the way, setting a temperature of sharing, and you know what? The people followed.
The greatest responsibility of any leader is probably not even in his or her job description. It's establishing a climate. Parents do it at home; Dad establishes a climate when he walks in the door at night. Teachers set a temperature in a classroom. A chairman sets a temperature in a meeting. Leaders do it in a church. Supervisors set a climate in an office or factory. In a sense, we're all leaders to the extent that we set a climate where we are.
If you're in a position of influencing others, have you considered how the temperature feels where you are, what kind of climate you're establishing? Not so much with what you say, but more with the way you are. Is it tense around you or peaceful? Are people around you seeing a model of caring? Of unselfishness? Of pitching in on what needs to be done, as Governor Nehemiah did with the work on the wall? Are you setting a climate of respect for other people? If people are around you, do they become people of prayer?
You're a leader. You're setting a climate, whether you realize it or not. And the interesting thing is that you end up reaping the climate you sow. So make the place where you are feel like it would if Jesus were there. He is.
