Max Lucado Daily: DNA TEST FOR LOVE - May 25, 2018
Have you ever made decisions about your relationships based on your feelings instead of the facts? When it comes to love, feelings rule the day. Emotions guide the ship.
Ever wish you had a DNA test for love? Paul offers us one, “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6). In this verse lies a test for love. Love doesn’t ask someone to do what is wrong. If you find yourself prompting evil in others, heed the alarm. And if others prompt evil in you, be alert. That siren you hear? It’s the phony-love detector.
Love doesn’t tear down the convictions of others. Quite the contrary. “Love builds up!” (1 Corinthians 8:1). Ask yourself this: Do I encourage this person to do what is right? For true love “takes no pleasure in other people’s sins but delights in the truth.”
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Numbers 15
Matters of Worship
1-5 God spoke to Moses: “Speak to the People of Israel. Tell them, When you enter your homeland that I am giving to you and sacrifice a Fire-Gift to God, a Whole-Burnt-Offering or any sacrifice from the herd or flock for a Vow-Offering or Freewill-Offering at one of the appointed feasts, as a pleasing fragrance for God, the one bringing the offering shall present to God a Grain-Offering of two quarts of fine flour mixed with a quart of oil. With each lamb for the Whole-Burnt-Offering or other sacrifice, prepare a quart of oil and a quart of wine as a Drink-Offering.
6-7 “For a ram prepare a Grain-Offering of four quarts of fine flour mixed with one and a quarter quarts of oil and one and a quarter quarts of wine as a Drink-Offering. Present it as a pleasing fragrance to God.
8-10 “When you prepare a young bull as a Whole-Burnt-Offering or sacrifice for a special vow or a Peace-Offering to God, bring with the bull a Grain-Offering of six quarts of fine flour and two quarts of oil. Also bring two quarts of wine as a Drink-Offering. It will be a Fire-Gift, a pleasing fragrance to God.
11-12 “Each bull or ram, each lamb or young goat, is to be prepared in this same way. Carry out this procedure for each one, no matter how many you have to prepare.
13-16 “Every native-born Israelite is to follow this procedure when he brings a Fire-Gift as a pleasing fragrance to God. In future generations, when a foreigner or visitor living at length among you presents a Fire-Gift as a pleasing fragrance to God, the same procedures must be followed. The community has the same rules for you and the foreigner living among you. This is the regular rule for future generations. You and the foreigner are the same before God. The same laws and regulations apply to both you and the foreigner who lives with you.”
17-21 God spoke to Moses: “Speak to the People of Israel. Tell them, When you enter the land into which I’m bringing you, and you eat the food of that country, set some aside as an offering for God. From the first batch of bread dough make a round loaf for an offering—an offering from the threshing floor. Down through the future generations make this offering to God from each first batch of dough.
22-26 “But if you should get off the beaten track and not keep the commands which God spoke to Moses, any of the things that God commanded you under the authority of Moses from the time that God first commanded you right up to this present time, and if it happened more or less by mistake, with the congregation unaware of it, then the whole congregation is to sacrifice one young bull as a Whole-Burnt-Offering, a pleasing fragrance to God, accompanied by its Grain-Offering and Drink-Offering as stipulated in the rules, and a he-goat as an Absolution-Offering. The priest is to atone for the entire community of the People of Israel and they will stand forgiven. The sin was not deliberate, and they offered to God the Fire-Gift and Absolution-Offering for their inadvertence. The whole community of Israel including the foreigners living there will be absolved, because everyone was involved in the error.
27-28 “But if it’s just one person who sins by mistake, not realizing what he’s doing, he is to bring a yearling she-goat as an Absolution-Offering. The priest then is to atone for the person who accidentally sinned, to make atonement before God so that it won’t be held against him.
29 “The same standard holds for everyone who sins by mistake; the native-born Israelites and the foreigners go by the same rules.
30-31 “But the person, native or foreigner, who sins defiantly, deliberately blaspheming God, must be cut off from his people: He has despised God’s word, he has violated God’s command; that person must be kicked out of the community, ostracized, left alone in his wrongdoing.”
32-35 Once, during those wilderness years of the People of Israel, a man was caught gathering wood on the Sabbath. The ones who caught him hauled him before Moses and Aaron and the entire congregation. They put him in custody until it became clear what to do with him. Then God spoke to Moses: “Give the man the death penalty. Yes, kill him, the whole community hurling stones at him outside the camp.”
36 So the whole community took him outside the camp and threw stones at him, an execution commanded by God and given through Moses.
37-41 God spoke to Moses: “Speak to the People of Israel. Tell them that from now on they are to make tassels on the corners of their garments and to mark each corner tassel with a blue thread. When you look at these tassels you’ll remember and keep all the commandments of God, and not get distracted by everything you feel or see that seduces you into infidelities. The tassels will signal remembrance and observance of all my commandments, to live a holy life to God. I am your God who rescued you from the land of Egypt to be your personal God. Yes, I am God, your God.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Friday, May 25, 2018
Read: Philippians 4:4–9
Celebrate God all day, every day. I mean, revel in him! Make it as clear as you can to all you meet that you’re on their side, working with them and not against them. Help them see that the Master is about to arrive. He could show up any minute!
6-7 Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.
8-9 Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.
INSIGHT
The virtuous life described in Philippians 4:8 is to be the believer’s focus. What is “true” refers to basing one’s life on reality according to God’s Word. “Noble” means honest or worthy of respect. “Right” corresponds to a moral sense of what is fair. “Pure” indicates a character that is not polluted by sin. “Lovely” means expressing love toward others in relationships. Finally, “admirable” carries with it the idea of a positive reputation and reliable Christian character.
What are some specific ways you can display these virtues this week?
For further reading, see Kingdom Living: Embracing the Virtues of the King at discoveryseries.org/hp091.- Dennis Fisher
Accidental Wisdom
By Randy Kilgore
Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable . . . think about such things. Philippians 4:8
A few years ago, a woman shared with me a story about finding her preteen son watching news coverage of a violent event. Instinctively, she reached for the remote and changed the channel. “You don’t need to be watching that stuff,” she told him rather abruptly. An argument followed, and eventually she shared that he needed to fill his mind with “whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely . . .” (Philippians 4:8). After dinner, she and her husband were watching the news when suddenly their five-year-old daughter burst in and turned off the television. “You don’t need to be watching that stuff,” she declared in her best “mom” voice. “Now, think about those Bible things!”
As adults, we can better absorb and process the news than our children. Still, the couple’s daughter was both amusing and wise when she echoed her mother’s earlier instructions. Even well-adjusted adults can be affected by a steady diet of the darker side of life. Meditating on the kind of things Paul lists in Philippians 4:8 is a powerful antidote to the gloom that sometimes settles on us as we see the condition of our world.
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Making careful decisions about what fills our minds is an excellent way to honor God and guard our hearts as well.
Father, open our eyes today to what’s beautiful. Teach us to meditate on You.
What we let into our minds shapes the state of our souls.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, May 25, 2018
The Good or The Best?
If you take the left, then I will go to the right; or, if you go to the right, then I will go to the left. —Genesis 13:9
As soon as you begin to live the life of faith in God, fascinating and physically gratifying possibilities will open up before you. These things are yours by right, but if you are living the life of faith you will exercise your right to waive your rights, and let God make your choice for you. God sometimes allows you to get into a place of testing where your own welfare would be the appropriate thing to consider, if you were not living the life of faith. But if you are, you will joyfully waive your right and allow God to make your choice for you. This is the discipline God uses to transform the natural into the spiritual through obedience to His voice.
Whenever our right becomes the guiding factor of our lives, it dulls our spiritual insight. The greatest enemy of the life of faith in God is not sin, but good choices which are not quite good enough. The good is always the enemy of the best. In this passage, it would seem that the wisest thing in the world for Abram to do would be to choose. It was his right, and the people around him would consider him to be a fool for not choosing.
Many of us do not continue to grow spiritually because we prefer to choose on the basis of our rights, instead of relying on God to make the choice for us. We have to learn to walk according to the standard which has its eyes focused on God. And God says to us, as He did to Abram, “…walk before Me…” (Genesis 17:1).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
To live a life alone with God does not mean that we live it apart from everyone else. The connection between godly men and women and those associated with them is continually revealed in the Bible, e.g., 1 Timothy 4:10. Not Knowing Whither, 867 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, May 25, 2018
No Birthday Without Him - #8185
Amid all the amusement and theme parks clustered in Orlando, Florida, there's one that is pretty distinctive. It's that Holy Land theme park that attempts to bring some of the scenes and the stories of the Bible to life. Our daughter and son-in-law were there once with two of our grandsons. And the kids, who are pretty up on their Bible stories, really enjoyed walking through those stories and meeting some of the characters (Well, actually, people portraying some of those characters.). The one that impressed our then two-year-old grandson the most was Jesus. A man portraying Jesus stood in the middle of that small crowd and He spoke some of the very stories He told in the Bible. But then came the moment our little guy will not soon forget. Jesus came over and picked Him up, just like Jesus did with the children when He was here. The next day Mom and our little guy were talking about his upcoming third birthday party, and suddenly out of the blue, he said, "I want Jesus at my birthday party."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "No Birthday Without Him."
That's a great idea: Jesus at your birthday party. Talk about a guest of honor! Actually, when it comes to the most important birthday of all, there's no birthday without Jesus. And if there's no birthday, there's no life. Well, eternal life, that is. The most important birthday of all is the day you get born into God's family. You say, "Isn't everyone God's child?" Well, everyone is God's creation, but you're not God's child unless you've been born spiritually into the family of the Heavenly Father.
Jesus Himself put it this way in John 3:3, our word for today from the Word of God. "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again." Obviously, Birth One was the day you were born into your parents' family. No birthday, no life. Jesus is talking here about Birth Two-the day you actually begin to belong to God. No birthday, no life. Whatever "born again" is, Jesus said you can't enter God's heaven without it, because heaven is only for family-God's family. Anyone can be in God's family, no matter what their religion or their background, but not everyone is, because they've never been born again.
John 1:12 describes just how a person gets born into God's family: "To all who received Him (that's Jesus), to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God." So you see, it's all about what you do with Jesus. Why? Because the only way to be in God's family is to take care of what keeps you from being one of His kids, and that is something called sin. He's an all-holy, totally perfect God. You and I have turned our back on Him-sometimes with a lot of religion in our lives that gives us a sense of being okay. That's false security. We've used our mouth He gave us to hurt people, to lie and to swear. We've used the hands and eyes and ears He gave us to touch and explore what we never should have touched. We've hurt most the people we love the most, we've lusted, we've boasted and we've been selfish. All that sin has to be paid for, but Jesus died as our substitute paying for it.
He's the only One who could forgive your sin, because He's the only One who died for your sin and then rose again to prove that He can. He's the only One who can get you into heaven. But you need a birthday-a definite beginning with Him. If you don't have that, you have no chance of being God's child.
You may have had a baptism day, a confirmation day, a lot of church days, but you've missed your spiritual birthday. Which only comes the day you, as it says, "believe in" Jesus; which means welcoming Him into your life with total trust in Him as your only hope. Have you ever done that? If you've done that, you know you have. If you don't know, you probably haven't. But you can get that done this very day. Just tell Him, "Jesus, I'm Yours. You died for me; I am Yours."
Look, our website is all about being sure you belong to Jesus, a great place for you to go and get the information that will help you nail this down once and for all. The website is ANewStory.com.
See, today's date could become the most important day of your life if you'll make it your Jesus-day-your birthday. The day you receive the most awesome, most expensive birthday present of all-eternal life paid for with the life of God's Son.