Max Lucado Daily: Once And For All Time
Once And For All Time
Posted: 15 Jun 2011 11:01 PM PDT
“We are made holy through the sacrifice Christ made in his body once and for all time.” Hebrews 10:10
The Son of God became the Lamb of God, the cross became the altar, and we were made holy through the sacrifice Christ made in His body once and for all time.
What needed to be paid was paid. What had to be done was done. Innocent blood was required. Innocent blood was offered, once and for all time. Bury those five words deep in your heart. Once and for all time.
Deuteronomy 18
Offerings for Priests and Levites
1 The Levitical priests—indeed, the whole tribe of Levi—are to have no allotment or inheritance with Israel. They shall live on the food offerings presented to the LORD, for that is their inheritance. 2 They shall have no inheritance among their fellow Israelites; the LORD is their inheritance, as he promised them.
3 This is the share due the priests from the people who sacrifice a bull or a sheep: the shoulder, the internal organs and the meat from the head. 4 You are to give them the firstfruits of your grain, new wine and olive oil, and the first wool from the shearing of your sheep, 5 for the LORD your God has chosen them and their descendants out of all your tribes to stand and minister in the LORD’s name always.
6 If a Levite moves from one of your towns anywhere in Israel where he is living, and comes in all earnestness to the place the LORD will choose, 7 he may minister in the name of the LORD his God like all his fellow Levites who serve there in the presence of the LORD. 8 He is to share equally in their benefits, even though he has received money from the sale of family possessions.
Occult Practices
9 When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. 10 Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, 11 or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. 12 Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD; because of these same detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you. 13 You must be blameless before the LORD your God.
The Prophet
14 The nations you will dispossess listen to those who practice sorcery or divination. But as for you, the LORD your God has not permitted you to do so. 15 The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him. 16 For this is what you asked of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, “Let us not hear the voice of the LORD our God nor see this great fire anymore, or we will die.”
17 The LORD said to me: “What they say is good. 18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him. 19 I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name. 20 But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.”
21 You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the LORD?” 22 If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: Colossians 1:3-18
Thanksgiving and Prayer
3 We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4 because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people— 5 the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel 6 that has come to you. In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world—just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace. 7 You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant,[a] who is a faithful minister of Christ on our[b] behalf, 8 and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.
9 For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives,[c] 10 so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, 11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, 12 and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you[d] to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. 13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
The Supremacy of the Son of God
15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.
Rescued
June 16, 2011 — by David C. McCasland
He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love. —Colossians 1:13
In the aftermath of Haiti’s devastat- ing earthquake in January 2010, the scenes of destruction and death were often punctuated by someone being pulled alive from the rubble, even after all hope seemed gone. Relief and tears of joy were followed by deep gratitude toward those who worked around the clock, often risking their own lives to give someone else another chance to live.
How would you feel if it happened to you? Have you ever been rescued?
In Colossians 1, Paul wrote to people who had come to know Jesus Christ and whose lives showed evidence of their faith. After assuring them of his prayers for them to know God’s will and to please Him, Paul used a powerful word picture to describe what God had done for them all: “He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins” (vv.13-14).
In Christ, we have been rescued! He has taken us from danger to safety; from one power and destiny to another; from death to life.
It’s worth pondering all that being rescued means to us, as we thank God for His grace and power.
Amazing grace! how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost but now am found; Was blind, but now I see. —Newton
Those who’ve been rescued from sin
are best able to help in the rescue of others.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
June 16th, 2011
"Will You Lay Down Your Life?"
Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. . . . I have called you friends . . . —John 15:13, 15
Jesus does not ask me to die for Him, but to lay down my life for Him. Peter said to the Lord, “I will lay down my life for Your sake,” and he meant it (John 13:37). He had a magnificent sense of the heroic. For us to be incapable of making this same statement Peter made would be a bad thing— our sense of duty is only fully realized through our sense of heroism. Has the Lord ever asked you, “Will you lay down your life for My sake?” (John 13:38). It is much easier to die than to lay down your life day in and day out with the sense of the high calling of God. We are not made for the bright-shining moments of life, but we have to walk in the light of them in our everyday ways. There was only one bright-shining moment in the life of Jesus, and that was on the Mount of Transfiguration. It was there that He emptied Himself of His glory for the second time, and then came down into the demon-possessed valley (seeMark 9:1-29). For thirty-three years Jesus laid down His life to do the will of His Father. “By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” (1 John 3:16). Yet it is contrary to our human nature to do so.
If I am a friend of Jesus, I must deliberately and carefully lay down my life for Him. It is a difficult thing to do, and thank God that it is. Salvation is easy for us, because it cost God so much. But the exhibiting of salvation in my life is difficult. God saves a person, fills him with the Holy Spirit, and then says, in effect, “Now you work it out in your life, and be faithful to Me, even though the nature of everything around you is to cause you to be unfaithful.” And Jesus says to us, “. . . I have called you friends. . . .” Remain faithful to your Friend, and remember that His honor is at stake in your bodily life.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Not in a Hurry - #6374
Not in a Hurry - #6374
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Our daughter was in a big hurry to get home that night in February, but her aunt wasn't. Her aunt had taken her shopping, and her aunt was taking her time. One more thing to buy; one more store to go to; oh, yeah, one more stop to make. Oh, we need to fill up with gas. Okay, I only need two gallons, but we need to fill up with gas. By the time our daughter finally got home, man, she was frustrated. She sort of sputtered as she walked in the front door only to be greeted by 25 of her best friends jumping out of the darkness shouting, "Surprise!"
Yeah, you guessed it; it was her birthday and believe me, it was a surprise. After she had some oxygen and some smelling salts, she began to realize the reason for all those delays. Time was needed to get her surprise ready. Maybe that's why you're waiting right now.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Not in a Hurry."
Our word for today from the Word of God is a phrase out of Ecclesiastes 3:11 that I've gone back to as an anchor so many times to interpret what God was doing or seemed like He wasn't doing in my life. It says this: "He has made everything beautiful in its time." It kind of goes with that fullness of time principle the Bible talks about when it refers to the coming of Christ in these words: "And in the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son" (Ecclesiastes 3:11). That little phrase explains so many of the waiting periods of our life. "In the fullness of time, God..."
You know, I heard about a pastor not too long ago whose secretary walked into his office, and she found him pacing back and forth, which was not what he usually did in his office. She said, "Hey, what's the matter." He said, "I'm in a hurry and God isn't." Did you ever feel that way? You say, "Well, that's my life right now. I'm in a hurry and God isn't." And maybe you're asking, "Where is that answer? What's taking so long?" Well, God is following a careful process, invisible to you, but it will bring glory to Him and it will bring lasting joy to you. But right now He's taking time to get you ready for the answer, recreating you into someone who has mountain-moving faith. If you don't have to wait, you don't have to develop faith.
Someone who has taken that time to do some self-examination said, "Boy, I need to change don't I?" And He's taking time to get the answer ready for you. There's a person, or a position, or a location that right now God is making just right for you. He's working even though it's invisible to you. Now if you panic while He's getting everything ready, oh you're going to ruin the plan, or maybe you're going to end up with a short-term fix, or worse yet, a long-term mess.
Trust your Father's timing. He does make everything beautiful in its time. Trust God's timing even if it seems late to you. God always seems to work a little more slowly than I want Him to, but He's always right on time. My daughter learned that the delays were only to set up a wonderful surprise for her.
So be patient with all the stops and waits right now, because you'll love the surprise at the end of this wait.
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