Max Lucado Daily: An Imperfect Family
“Jesus had to be made like his brothers . . . so he could be their merciful and faithful high priest.” Hebrews 2:17
Jesus displays the bad apples of his family tree in the first chapter of the New Testament . . . Rahab was a Jericho
harlot . . . David had a personality as irregular as a Picasso painting—one day writing Psalms, another day seducing his captain’s wife. But did Jesus erase his name from the list? Not at all . . .
If your family tree has bruised fruit, then Jesus wants you to know, “I’ve been there.”
Deuteronomy 32
1 Listen, you heavens, and I will speak;
hear, you earth, the words of my mouth.
2 Let my teaching fall like rain
and my words descend like dew,
like showers on new grass,
like abundant rain on tender plants.
3 I will proclaim the name of the LORD.
Oh, praise the greatness of our God!
4 He is the Rock, his works are perfect,
and all his ways are just.
A faithful God who does no wrong,
upright and just is he.
5 They are corrupt and not his children;
to their shame they are a warped and crooked generation.
6 Is this the way you repay the LORD,
you foolish and unwise people?
Is he not your Father, your Creator,[a]
who made you and formed you?
7 Remember the days of old;
consider the generations long past.
Ask your father and he will tell you,
your elders, and they will explain to you.
8 When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance,
when he divided all mankind,
he set up boundaries for the peoples
according to the number of the sons of Israel.[b]
9 For the LORD’s portion is his people,
Jacob his allotted inheritance.
10 In a desert land he found him,
in a barren and howling waste.
He shielded him and cared for him;
he guarded him as the apple of his eye,
11 like an eagle that stirs up its nest
and hovers over its young,
that spreads its wings to catch them
and carries them aloft.
12 The LORD alone led him;
no foreign god was with him.
13 He made him ride on the heights of the land
and fed him with the fruit of the fields.
He nourished him with honey from the rock,
and with oil from the flinty crag,
14 with curds and milk from herd and flock
and with fattened lambs and goats,
with choice rams of Bashan
and the finest kernels of wheat.
You drank the foaming blood of the grape.
15 Jeshurun[c] grew fat and kicked;
filled with food, they became heavy and sleek.
They abandoned the God who made them
and rejected the Rock their Savior.
16 They made him jealous with their foreign gods
and angered him with their detestable idols.
17 They sacrificed to false gods, which are not God—
gods they had not known,
gods that recently appeared,
gods your ancestors did not fear.
18 You deserted the Rock, who fathered you;
you forgot the God who gave you birth.
19 The LORD saw this and rejected them
because he was angered by his sons and daughters.
20 “I will hide my face from them,” he said,
“and see what their end will be;
for they are a perverse generation,
children who are unfaithful.
21 They made me jealous by what is no god
and angered me with their worthless idols.
I will make them envious by those who are not a people;
I will make them angry by a nation that has no understanding.
22 For a fire will be kindled by my wrath,
one that burns down to the realm of the dead below.
It will devour the earth and its harvests
and set afire the foundations of the mountains.
23 “I will heap calamities on them
and spend my arrows against them.
24 I will send wasting famine against them,
consuming pestilence and deadly plague;
I will send against them the fangs of wild beasts,
the venom of vipers that glide in the dust.
25 In the street the sword will make them childless;
in their homes terror will reign.
The young men and young women will perish,
the infants and those with gray hair.
26 I said I would scatter them
and erase their name from human memory,
27 but I dreaded the taunt of the enemy,
lest the adversary misunderstand
and say, ‘Our hand has triumphed;
the LORD has not done all this.’”
28 They are a nation without sense,
there is no discernment in them.
29 If only they were wise and would understand this
and discern what their end will be!
30 How could one man chase a thousand,
or two put ten thousand to flight,
unless their Rock had sold them,
unless the LORD had given them up?
31 For their rock is not like our Rock,
as even our enemies concede.
32 Their vine comes from the vine of Sodom
and from the fields of Gomorrah.
Their grapes are filled with poison,
and their clusters with bitterness.
33 Their wine is the venom of serpents,
the deadly poison of cobras.
34 “Have I not kept this in reserve
and sealed it in my vaults?
35 It is mine to avenge; I will repay.
In due time their foot will slip;
their day of disaster is near
and their doom rushes upon them.”
36 The LORD will vindicate his people
and relent concerning his servants
when he sees their strength is gone
and no one is left, slave or free.[d]
37 He will say: “Now where are their gods,
the rock they took refuge in,
38 the gods who ate the fat of their sacrifices
and drank the wine of their drink offerings?
Let them rise up to help you!
Let them give you shelter!
39 “See now that I myself am he!
There is no god besides me.
I put to death and I bring to life,
I have wounded and I will heal,
and no one can deliver out of my hand.
40 I lift my hand to heaven and solemnly swear:
As surely as I live forever,
41 when I sharpen my flashing sword
and my hand grasps it in judgment,
I will take vengeance on my adversaries
and repay those who hate me.
42 I will make my arrows drunk with blood,
while my sword devours flesh:
the blood of the slain and the captives,
the heads of the enemy leaders.”
43 Rejoice, you nations, with his people,[e][f]
for he will avenge the blood of his servants;
he will take vengeance on his enemies
and make atonement for his land and people.
44 Moses came with Joshua[g] son of Nun and spoke all the words of this song in the hearing of the people. 45 When Moses finished reciting all these words to all Israel, 46 he said to them, “Take to heart all the words I have solemnly declared to you this day, so that you may command your children to obey carefully all the words of this law. 47 They are not just idle words for you—they are your life. By them you will live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.”
Moses to Die on Mount Nebo
48 On that same day the LORD told Moses, 49 “Go up into the Abarim Range to Mount Nebo in Moab, across from Jericho, and view Canaan, the land I am giving the Israelites as their own possession. 50 There on the mountain that you have climbed you will die and be gathered to your people, just as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his people. 51 This is because both of you broke faith with me in the presence of the Israelites at the waters of Meribah Kadesh in the Desert of Zin and because you did not uphold my holiness among the Israelites. 52 Therefore, you will see the land only from a distance; you will not enter the land I am giving to the people of Israel.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Read: John 15:9-17
9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.
He Calls Me Friend
July 5, 2011 — by Julie Ackerman Link
All things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you . . . that you should go and bear fruit. —John 15:15-16
Someone has defined friendship as “knowing the heart of another and sharing one’s heart with another.” We share our hearts with those we trust, and trust those who care about us. We confide in our friends because we have confidence that they will use the information to help us, not harm us. They in turn confide in us for the same reason.
We often refer to Jesus as our friend because we know that He wants what is best for us. We confide in Him because we trust Him. But have you ever considered that Jesus confides in His people?
Jesus began calling His disciples friends rather than servants because He had entrusted them with everything He had heard from His Father (John 15:15). Jesus trusted the disciples to use the information for the good of His Father’s kingdom.
Although we know that Jesus is our friend, can we say that we are His friends? Do we listen to Him? Or do we only want Him to listen to us? Do we want to know what’s on His heart? Or do we only want to tell Him what’s on ours? To be a friend of Jesus, we need to listen to what He wants us to know and then use the information to bring others into friendship with Him.
Sweet thought! We have a Friend above,
Our weary, faltering steps to guide,
Who follows with His eye of love
The precious child for whom He died. —Anon.
Christ’s friendship calls for our faithfulness.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
July 5th, 2011
Don’t Plan Without God
Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass —Psalm 37:5
Don’t plan without God. God seems to have a delightful way of upsetting the plans we have made, when we have not taken Him into account. We get ourselves into circumstances that were not chosen by God, and suddenly we realize that we have been making our plans without Him— that we have not even considered Him to be a vital, living factor in the planning of our lives. And yet the only thing that will keep us from even the possibility of worrying is to bring God in as the greatest factor in all of our planning.
In spiritual issues it is customary for us to put God first, but we tend to think that it is inappropriate and unnecessary to put Him first in the practical, everyday issues of our lives. If we have the idea that we have to put on our “spiritual face” before we can come near to God, then we will never come near to Him. We must come as we are.
Don’t plan with a concern for evil in mind. Does God really mean for us to plan without taking the evil around us into account? “Love . . . thinks no evil” (1 Corinthians 13:4-5). Love is not ignorant of the existence of evil, but it does not take it into account as a factor in planning. When we were apart from God, we did take evil into account, doing all of our planning with it in mind, and we tried to reason out all of our work from its standpoint.
Don’t plan with a rainy day in mind. You cannot hoard things for a rainy day if you are truly trusting Christ. Jesus said, “Let not your heart be troubled . . .” (John 14:1). God will not keep your heart from being troubled. It is a command— “Let not. . . .” To do it, continually pick yourself up, even if you fall a hundred and one times a day, until you get into the habit of putting God first and planning with Him in mind.
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monster On the Loose - #6387
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
I was ten years old, and I saw a movie I never should have seen. It's about this dinosaur that got thawed out at the North Pole somewhere, and he'd been kept there for several million years. He really should have stayed there. Yeah, because see, he made his way to New York City. Don't ask me how. I didn't think about that at the time. All I know is, I will never forget the scene of this big, old Tyrannosaurus Rex roaming the city, ripping up the roller coaster at Coney Island, knocking down buildings, grabbing a policeman in his hands, and devastating pedestrians.
Of course, it's dangerous to be a pedestrian in New York even when there isn't a monster there, but it was especially dangerous in this movie. I had nightmares for months to come about that stupid thing.
Did you know there's a monster on the loose right now? He's tearing up the Christian world, and it really is a nightmare.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Monster On the Loose."
Now, our word for today from the Word of God is from the life of John the Baptist. I'm reading from John 3, beginning at verse 26. "And they came to John and said, 'Rabbi, that man who was with you on the other side of the Jordan, (that's Jesus) the one you testified about, well, he's baptizing and everyone's going to him.' To this John replied, 'A man can receive only what is given him from heaven. You yourselves can testify that I said, "I am not the Christ, but I'm sent ahead of Him. The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens to him and is full of joy when He hears the bridegroom's voice." That joy is mine and is now complete. He must become greater; I must become less.'"
John the Baptist refuses to take the spotlight. He insists on getting people's attention off of himself and onto Jesus. And he sums it up in p>
How many personal empires are we building in Jesus' name? Getting people attached to us more than to Jesus, taking privileges for ourselves that Jesus would never take. And I don't mean just in big ministries. We're all vulnerable to this, and it makes us a laughing stock for unbelievers; it makes for disillusionment among believers. It doesn't usually start that way of course. Oh, usually a leader starts out being submissive and humble, but we get a little taste of people looking at us and looking to us, and needing us, and complimenting us, and it tastes good.
Oh, our vocabulary doesn't change, but our motives do; our attitudes do. And we start to think, "Hey, aren't I something!" Instead of, "Isn't He something?" You begin to think it's you instead of Him. You start enjoying seeing your name on things. You expect special recognition, special treatment, and you are being set up for a fall. The Devil exploits inflated egos to pull leaders into greed, and adultery, and the worship of power.
Then there's John. Jesus said he was the best man ever born. He refuses the glory. You know, we could point the finger at some folks who have made the headlines, but I think we should look in the mirror. Is the monster of ego on the loose inside of you? Before that monster does any more damage, deal with him. Repent of that pride and come back to the simplicity and humility of being surprised that it's you He's using.
Take it from my childhood trauma, "A monster on the loose, especially the monster of ego, can only lead to nightmares."
