Max Lucado Daily: Oh, to See Jesus
Oh, to See Jesus
Posted: 15 Dec 2010 10:01 PM PST
Glory to God in the highest! Luke 2:14, NKJV
For the shepherds it wasn’t enough to see the angels. You’d think it would have been. Night sky shattered with light. Stillness erupting with song. Simple shepherds roused from their sleep and raised to their feet by a choir of angels: “Glory to God in the highest!” Never had these men seen such splendor.
But it wasn’t enough to see the angels. The shepherds wanted to see the one who sent the angels.
Matthew 22
The Parable of the Wedding Banquet
1 Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: 2 “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.
4 “Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’
5 “But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. 6 The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. 7 The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.
8 “Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. 9 So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ 10 So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.
11 “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. 12 He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.
13 “Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
14 “For many are invited, but few are chosen.”
Paying the Imperial Tax to Caesar
15 Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. 16 They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. “Teacher,” they said, “we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are. 17 Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?”
18 But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? 19 Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius, 20 and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”
21 “Caesar’s,” they replied.
Then he said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
22 When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Isaiah 6:1-8
Isaiah 6:1-8 (NIV)Isa 1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory." 4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. 5 "Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty." 6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, "See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for." 8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!"
The Great Miracle
December 16, 2010 — by Marvin Williams
He touched my mouth with it, and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged.” —Isaiah 6:7
Leonard Ravenhill (1907–1994), a British evangelist, once said, “The greatest miracle God can do today is take an unholy man out of an unholy world, make that man holy, then put him back into that unholy world and keep him holy in it.” This seems to be what God did to Isaiah when He called him to speak to His people.
Around the time of the death of Uzziah, one of Judah’s more successful kings, Isaiah had a vision of God. The prophet saw Him as the true King of the universe, sitting on a lofty throne. In the vision, Isaiah saw seraphim worshiping God with a hymn that praised His holiness, majesty, and glory.
Isaiah’s vision of God led to a true vision of himself as unholy and broken before God. “Woe is me, for I am undone!” Isaiah said (6:5). This recognition of sin led him to a need for and the reception of God’s cleansing grace (v.7). Newly cleansed, Isaiah was commissioned to spread God’s message (v.9). The Lord sent Isaiah into an unholy world, not only to live a holy life but also to tell an unholy people about a holy God.
The Lord wants to show Himself to us, thus giving us a truer vision of ourselves, a deeper need for His grace, and a greater commitment to live and speak for Him. What a miracle!
Upon my life shed forth Thy grace,
Till others seek Thy loving face;
Oh, may no thing be seen in me
To cause a soul to stray from Thee! —Roberts
Amid the darkness of sin, the light of God’s grace shines brightest.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
December 16th, 2010
Wrestling Before God
Take up the whole armor of God . . . praying always . . . —Ephesians 6:13,18
You must learn to wrestle against the things that hinder your communication with God, and wrestle in prayer for other people; but to wrestle with God in prayer is unscriptural. If you ever do wrestle with God, you will be crippled for the rest of your life. If you grab hold of God and wrestle with Him, as Jacob did, simply because He is working in a way that doesn’t meet with your approval, you force Him to put you out of joint (see Genesis 32:24-25). Don’t become a cripple by wrestling with the ways of God, but be someone who wrestles before God with the things of this world, because “we are more than conquerors through Him . . .” (Romans 8:37). Wrestling before God makes an impact in His kingdom. If you ask me to pray for you, and I am not complete in Christ, my prayer accomplishes nothing. But if I am complete in Christ, my prayer brings victory all the time. Prayer is effective only when there is completeness— “take up the whole armor of God . . . .”
Always make a distinction between God’s perfect will and His permissive will, which He uses to accomplish His divine purpose for our lives. God’s perfect will is unchangeable. It is with His permissive will, or the various things that He allows into our lives, that we must wrestle before Him. It is our reaction to these things allowed by His permissive will that enables us to come to the point of seeing His perfect will for us. “We know that all things work together for good to those who love God . . .” (Romans 8:28)— to those who remain true to God’s perfect will— His calling in Christ Jesus. God’s permissive will is the testing He uses to reveal His true sons and daughters. We should not be spineless and automatically say, “Yes, it is the Lord’s will.” We don’t have to fight or wrestle with God, but we must wrestle before God with things. Beware of lazily giving up. Instead, put up a glorious fight and you will find yourself empowered with His strength.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
How God Makes You a Masterpiece - #6244
Thursday, December 16, 2010
OK, I'm a history buff. So my kids had the opportunity to visit many houses and villages that are historic preservations or restorations. They might put that a little differently. "We got dragged to all this history stuff!" Our two sons especially got to dreading that word "tour." In fact, they made it a much longer word. It went something like this: "Oh, we're not going on another toooooo-urrrrr?" One thing that made the toooo-urrrs a little more interesting, were the craftsmen working their crafts. Like the potter, for example. Even the kids enjoyed stopping to watch him do his work. He'd start with this worthless lump of clay and slowly, painstakingly, he would transform it into something really beautiful and valuable. I could tell that, by the gift shop prices on his pottery.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "How God Makes You a Masterpiece."
I'm glad I've had the opportunities to watch the ways of the potter. Because, according to the Bible, when I watch the potter, I'm watching a picture of the ways of my God. And that potter picture might give you some meaning to what's going on in your life right now.
Here's how the ways of God are described in Isaiah 64:8 . It's our word for today from the Word of God. "Yet, O lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, You are the potter; we are all the work of Your hand." There it is. Me clay, Lord; You potter.
When God wanted to explain to His people the painful events in their lives, He sent His prophet Jeremiah down to the potter's house for an illustration. Jeremiah said: "I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as it seemed best to him." Then the Lord sent this message: "Like the clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in My hand" (Jeremiah 18:1-6 ).
Since this potter parallel is God's idea, let's consider how the ways of the potter may shed some light on the ways of God in your life, in the past and even in your current circumstances. We're all that shapeless lump of clay until we put ourselves in the hands of the Master Potter. Only the One who gave you your life can shape your life into what it was created to be.
How does He make you into a masterpiece? First, there's the purifying. The Potter works to wash out and work out impurities that keep you from becoming something beautiful. And then, there's the poking and the squeezing - the pain which makes us want to ask the Potter, "Why?"
His answer: "I'm shaping you into something of great value. Trust Me." And then there's the heat - 2,000 degrees in that kiln oven. If the clay could talk, it would probably scream, "You're killin' me in here!" No, see the heat solidifies and makes permanent the beautifying work that the Potter's been doing. Without the heat, you lose what He's made you. The heat makes it last.
So whatever you're going through right now is a tool in the hands of the Master Potter. It's not random, it's not just about the situation you can see in front of you. It's the chosen tool of the Potter who is also your loving Father. Let Him do His wonderful work. Trust His loving hands even when you can't understand what He's doing. He's using what's happening to make you more beautiful and more valuable than you could ever imagine.
