Max Lucado Daily: CHRIST IN OUR PLACE
Just suppose you were to stand on a stage while a film of every secret and selfish second of your life was projected on the screen behind you? Wouldn’t you shout to the heavens to have mercy?
Imagine what Christ felt on the cross! Scripture says “He personally carried all our sins in his body. . .” (1 Peter 2:24). See Christ on the cross? That’s a gossiper hanging there. See Jesus? Embezzler. Liar. See the crucified carpenter? He’s an addict and murderer.
Hold it, Max. Don’t you lump Christ with those evildoers. I didn’t. HE did. More than place his name in the same sentence, he placed himself in their place. With hands nailed open, he invited God, “Treat me as you would treat them!” And God did.
“My God, my God, why did you abandon me?” (Matthew 27:46). Why did Christ scream those words? So you’ll never have to.
From Next Door Savior
Daniel 5
The Writing of a Disembodied Hand
1-4 King Belshazzar held a great feast for his one thousand nobles. The wine flowed freely. Belshazzar, heady with the wine, ordered that the gold and silver chalices his father Nebuchadnezzar had stolen from God’s Temple of Jerusalem be brought in so that he and his nobles, his wives and concubines, could drink from them. When the gold and silver chalices were brought in, the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines, drank wine from them. They drank the wine and drunkenly praised their gods made of gold and silver, bronze and iron, wood and stone.
5-7 At that very moment, the fingers of a human hand appeared and began writing on the lamp-illumined, whitewashed wall of the palace. When the king saw the disembodied hand writing away, he went white as a ghost, scared out of his wits. His legs went limp and his knees knocked. He yelled out for the enchanters, the fortunetellers, and the diviners to come. He told these Babylonian magi, “Anyone who can read this writing on the wall and tell me what it means will be famous and rich—purple robe, the great gold chain—and be third-in-command in the kingdom.”
8-9 One after the other they tried, but could make no sense of it. They could neither read what was written nor interpret it to the king. So now the king was really frightened. All the blood drained from his face. The nobles were in a panic.
10-12 The queen heard of the hysteria among the king and his nobles and came to the banquet hall. She said, “Long live the king! Don’t be upset. Don’t sit around looking like ghosts. There is a man in your kingdom who is full of the divine Holy Spirit. During your father’s time he was well known for his intellectual brilliance and spiritual wisdom. He was so good that your father, King Nebuchadnezzar, made him the head of all the magicians, enchanters, fortunetellers, and diviners. There was no one quite like him. He could do anything—interpret dreams, solve mysteries, explain puzzles. His name is Daniel, but he was renamed Belteshazzar by the king. Have Daniel called in. He’ll tell you what is going on here.”
13-16 So Daniel was called in. The king asked him, “Are you the Daniel who was one of the Jewish exiles my father brought here from Judah? I’ve heard about you—that you’re full of the Holy Spirit, that you’ve got a brilliant mind, that you are incredibly wise. The wise men and enchanters were brought in here to read this writing on the wall and interpret it for me. They couldn’t figure it out—not a word, not a syllable. But I’ve heard that you interpret dreams and solve mysteries. So—if you can read the writing and interpret it for me, you’ll be rich and famous—a purple robe, the great gold chain around your neck—and third-in-command in the kingdom.”
17 Daniel answered the king, “You can keep your gifts, or give them to someone else. But I will read the writing for the king and tell him what it means.
18-21 “Listen, O king! The High God gave your father Nebuchadnezzar a great kingdom and a glorious reputation. Because God made him so famous, people from everywhere, whatever their race, color, and creed, were totally intimidated by him. He killed or spared people on whim. He promoted or humiliated people capriciously. He developed a big head and a hard spirit. Then God knocked him off his high horse and stripped him of his fame. He was thrown out of human company, lost his mind, and lived like a wild animal. He ate grass like an ox and was soaked by heaven’s dew until he learned his lesson: that the High God rules human kingdoms and puts anyone he wants in charge.
22-23 “You are his son and have known all this, yet you’re as arrogant as he ever was. Look at you, setting yourself up in competition against the Master of heaven! You had the sacred chalices from his Temple brought into your drunken party so that you and your nobles, your wives and your concubines, could drink from them. You used the sacred chalices to toast your gods of silver and gold, bronze and iron, wood and stone—blind, deaf, and imbecile gods. But you treat with contempt the living God who holds your entire life from birth to death in his hand.
24-26 “God sent the hand that wrote on the wall, and this is what is written: mene, teqel, and peres. This is what the words mean:
“Mene: God has numbered the days of your rule and they don’t add up.
27 “Teqel: You have been weighed on the scales and you don’t weigh much.
28 “Peres: Your kingdom has been divided up and handed over to the Medes and Persians.”
29 Belshazzar did what he had promised. He robed Daniel in purple, draped the great gold chain around his neck, and promoted him to third-in-charge in the kingdom.
30-31 That same night the Babylonian king Belshazzar was murdered. Darius the Mede was sixty-two years old when he succeeded him as king.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, March 31, 2017
Read: Isaiah 55:1–7
Buy Without Money
1-5 “Hey there! All who are thirsty,
come to the water!
Are you penniless?
Come anyway—buy and eat!
Come, buy your drinks, buy wine and milk.
Buy without money—everything’s free!
Why do you spend your money on junk food,
your hard-earned cash on cotton candy?
Listen to me, listen well: Eat only the best,
fill yourself with only the finest.
Pay attention, come close now,
listen carefully to my life-giving, life-nourishing words.
I’m making a lasting covenant commitment with you,
the same that I made with David: sure, solid, enduring love.
I set him up as a witness to the nations,
made him a prince and leader of the nations,
And now I’m doing it to you:
You’ll summon nations you’ve never heard of,
and nations who’ve never heard of you
will come running to you
Because of me, your God,
because The Holy of Israel has honored you.”
6-7 Seek God while he’s here to be found,
pray to him while he’s close at hand.
Let the wicked abandon their way of life
and the evil their way of thinking.
Let them come back to God, who is merciful,
come back to our God, who is lavish with forgiveness.
INSIGHT:
In Isaiah 55, the prophet draws on the imagery of a royal banquet to give discouraged Judeans hope that, despite their suffering, God’s promises to them remained trustworthy. In the background of Isaiah 55 is God’s promise of an eternal covenant with the line of David (Ps. 89:28–29). Isaiah’s report broadens God’s promise to the line of David even further, depicting a royal feast where all Judeans share the kingly role of representing Yahweh to the nations (55:3–5). When Jesus came, He said He was the ultimate fulfillment of Isaiah’s promise (John 7:37) and invited everyone, especially the forgotten and marginalized, to His feast (Matt. 22:1–14). Through His Spirit, Jesus’s followers can enjoy Christ’s abundant life and, as His representatives, invite all the world to the banquet. Who might you invite to the feast?
The Greatest Invitation
By David McCasland
Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Isaiah 55:1
During a recent week, I received several invitations in the mail. Those inviting me to attend “free” seminars on retirement, real estate, and life insurance were immediately thrown away. But the invitation to a gathering honoring a longtime friend caused me to reply immediately, “Yes! I accept.” Invitation + Desire = Acceptance.
Isaiah 55:1 is one of the great invitations in the Bible. The Lord said to His people who were in difficult circumstances, “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.” This is God’s remarkable offer of inner nourishment, deep spiritual satisfaction, and everlasting life (vv. 2–3).
Lord Jesus, thank You for Your promise of mercy, forgiveness, and eternal life.
Jesus’s invitation is repeated in the last chapter of the Bible: “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come!’ Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life” (Rev. 22:17).
We often think of eternal life as beginning when we die. In reality, it begins when we receive Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord.
God’s invitation to find eternal life in Him is the greatest invitation of all! Invitation + Desire = Acceptance.
Lord Jesus, thank You for Your promise of mercy, pardon, and eternal life. I acknowledge my failures and receive Jesus as my Savior today.
When we accept Jesus’s invitation to follow Him, our whole life changes direction.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, March 31, 2017
Heedfulness or Hypocrisy in Ourselves?
If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin which does not lead to death, he will ask, and He will give him life for those who commit sin not leading to death. —1 John 5:16
If we are not heedful and pay no attention to the way the Spirit of God works in us, we will become spiritual hypocrites. We see where other people are failing, and then we take our discernment and turn it into comments of ridicule and criticism, instead of turning it into intercession on their behalf. God reveals this truth about others to us not through the sharpness of our minds but through the direct penetration of His Spirit. If we are not attentive, we will be completely unaware of the source of the discernment God has given us, becoming critical of others and forgetting that God says, “…he will ask, and He will give him life for those who commit sin not leading to death.” Be careful that you don’t become a hypocrite by spending all your time trying to get others right with God before you worship Him yourself.
One of the most subtle and illusive burdens God ever places on us as saints is this burden of discernment concerning others. He gives us discernment so that we may accept the responsibility for those souls before Him and form the mind of Christ about them (see Philippians 2:5). We should intercede in accordance with what God says He will give us, namely, “life for those who commit sin not leading to death.” It is not that we are able to bring God into contact with our minds, but that we awaken ourselves to the point where God is able to convey His mind to us regarding the people for whom we intercede.
Can Jesus Christ see the agony of His soul in us? He can’t unless we are so closely identified with Him that we have His view concerning the people for whom we pray. May we learn to intercede so wholeheartedly that Jesus Christ will be completely and overwhelmingly satisfied with us as intercessors.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
There is no allowance whatever in the New Testament for the man who says he is saved by grace but who does not produce the graceful goods. Jesus Christ by His Redemption can make our actual life in keeping with our religious profession. Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, 1465 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, March 31, 2017
My Father Is Missing - #7885
There was a time when single parenting was kind of an exception in America. Not any more - millions of families where it's just a mom or a dad now. There's been a lot of conversation and a lot of articles written...a lot of commentary about the impact of not having a dad who's really being a father to you. A little while back, one of the leading health officers in the United States said, "The greatest issue facing us is fatherlessness." Then Time Magazine commented on women who actually choose to have a fatherless family. Here's what they said: "They are bringing a child into the world with a hole at the center of his life where a father should be."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I'd like to have A Word With You today about "My Father Is Missing."
However you feel about those comments and those quotes, we all know that life's a little tougher if you don't have a dad or somebody who isn't acting like a real dad.
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Luke 15. This is the familiar story of the prodigal son, who got his inheritance early from his father, went to a far country, spent it all, ended up feeding the pigs and having to eat with them. Verse 17 says, "When he came to his senses, he said, 'How many of my father's hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father, and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.' So he got up and went to his father."
This is the story of a searching man whose real problem was that he was away from his father. Maybe that's a picture of you right now. In the story, God is the father, and God has told us He wants us to know Him as our Heavenly Father. You say, "Well, if he's like the father I had, I'm not interested." Well, remember this. God is not like the father you had on earth. He's like the father we all wish we had, and what you're feeling down deep in your soul, that's father lonely. We have a hole – a daddy deficit – that we're waiting for a father to occupy.
How do we lose Him? How do we find Him? Look at the verbs in Luke 15. It says that the young man "set off for a distant country." The Bible says actually we've all done that. It says, "We have all sinned and fallen short of God's glorious ideal," we've wandered away like sheep. (the Bible says) We are away from God by our own choosing. The next verb says, "He squandered his wealth." See, all our years away from God are squandered years. They're wasted years until you know the relationship with a father that you were made for.
Then the next verb says, "He spent everything." You can do that so easily. We spend, in search of the missing part of us. We spend our self-respect, our relationships, our virginity, our reputation, and our future. We can't find ourselves in achievements. We can't find ourselves in relationships, or pleasure. We spend everything, and then it says, "He longed to fill his stomach." Maybe you feel an emptiness inside of you like a hunger that never goes away, a hole that's never been filled.
Then we read, "He came to his senses." Maybe that's where God is bringing you right now. It's hard to live without God. It's hell to die without Him. It says that the son went to his father. And see, there's only way you can get to the father you were made by and made for. In John 14:6, Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me." What would happen if you came to Him today? It says, "While the boy was a long way off, his father saw him, ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him." That's the welcome you would get from God today. He runs to you with His arms wide open no matter what you've done.
Why don't you run to Him and be born into His family today? Don't you want to begin this relationship? Tell Jesus, "I'm yours, Jesus. You paid the price for me to have my sin forgiven so I could belong to the Father I was made for."
ANewStory.com – that's our website. I want to urge you to go there, because that's where I can kind of meet you with the information that will help you be sure you finally belong to Him.
See, no longer would you then have the hole in the center of your life where a father should be. No father on earth could ever fill that hole anyway. It was made for your Heavenly Father. Come to Him and you'll never be father lonely again.