Isaiah 3, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals

Max Lucado Daily: An Advocate

Not all guilt is bad.  God uses appropriate doses of guilt to awaken us to sin! God's guilt brings enough regret to change us! Satan's guilt, on the other hand, brings enough regret to enslave us.  Don't let Satan lock his shackles on you!
Colossians 3:3 reminds us, "your life is hidden with Christ in God."  When God looks at you, he sees Jesus first.  In the Chinese language the word for "righteousness" is a combination of two characters, the figure of a lamb and a person.  The lamb is on top, covering the person.  Whenever God looks down at you, this is what he sees:  The perfect Lamb of God covering you.
So, do you trust your Advocate, Jesus, or do you trust your Accuser-Satan?  Give no heed to Satan's voice!  You have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous! (I John 2:1).
From GRACE

Isaiah 3

The Master, God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
    is emptying Jerusalem and Judah
Of all the basic necessities,
    plain bread and water to begin with.
He’s withdrawing police and protection,
    judges and courts,
    pastors and teachers,
    captains and generals,
    doctors and nurses,
    and, yes, even the repairmen and jacks-of-all-trades.
He says, “I’ll put little kids in charge of the city.
    Schoolboys and schoolgirls will order everyone around.
People will be at each other’s throats,
    stabbing one another in the back:
Neighbor against neighbor, young against old,
    the no-account against the well-respected.
One brother will grab another and say,
    ‘You look like you’ve got a head on your shoulders.
Do something!
    Get us out of this mess.’
And he’ll say, ‘Me? Not me! I don’t have a clue.
    Don’t put me in charge of anything.’

8-9 “Jerusalem’s on its last legs.
    Judah is soon down for the count.
Everything people say and do
    is at cross-purposes with God,
    a slap in my face.
Brazen in their depravity,
    they flaunt their sins like degenerate Sodom.
Doom to their eternal souls! They’ve made their bed;
    now they’ll sleep in it.

10-11 “Reassure the righteous
    that their good living will pay off.
But doom to the wicked! Disaster!
    Everything they did will be done to them.

12 “Skinny kids terrorize my people.
    Silly girls bully them around.
My dear people! Your leaders are taking you down a blind alley.
    They’re sending you off on a wild-goose chase.”

13-15 God enters the courtroom.
    He takes his place at the bench to judge his people.
God calls for order in the court,
    hauls the leaders of his people into the dock:
“You’ve played havoc with this country.
    Your houses are stuffed with what you’ve stolen from the poor.
What is this anyway? Stomping on my people,
    grinding the faces of the poor into the dirt?”
That’s what the Master,
    God-of-the-Angel-Armies, says.

16-17 God says, “Zion women are stuck-up,
    prancing around in their high heels,
Making eyes at all the men in the street,
    swinging their hips,
Tossing their hair,
    gaudy and garish in cheap jewelry.”
The Master will fix it so those Zion women
    will all turn bald—
Scabby, bald-headed women.
    The Master will do it.

18-23 The time is coming when the Master will strip them of their fancy baubles—the dangling earrings, anklets and bracelets, combs and mirrors and silk scarves, diamond brooches and pearl necklaces, the rings on their fingers and the rings on their toes, the latest fashions in hats, exotic perfumes and aphrodisiacs, gowns and capes, all the world’s finest in fabrics and design.

24 Instead of wearing seductive scents,
    these women are going to smell like rotting cabbages;
Instead of modeling flowing gowns,
    they’ll be sporting rags;
Instead of their stylish hairdos,
    scruffy heads;
Instead of beauty marks,
    scabs and scars.

25-26 Your finest fighting men will be killed,
    your soldiers left dead on the battlefield.
The entrance gate to Zion will be clotted
    with people mourning their dead—
A city stooped under the weight of her loss,
    brought to her knees by her sorrows.

Our Daily Bread reading and devotion   
Saturday, March 14, 2020

Today's Scripture & Insight:
Psalm 63:1–8

You, God, are my God,

earnestly I seek you;

I thirst for you,m

my whole being longs for you,

in a dry and parched land

where there is no water.n

2 I have seen you in the sanctuaryo

and beheld your power and your glory.p

3 Because your love is better than life,q

my lips will glorify you.

4 I will praise you as long as I live,r

and in your name I will lift up my hands.s

5 I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods;t

with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

6 On my bed I remember you;

I think of you through the watches of the night.u

7 Because you are my help,v

I sing in the shadow of your wings.w

8 I cling to you; your right hand upholds me.

Insight
The superscription to Psalm 63 provides the author and setting: “A psalm of David. When he was in the Desert of Judah.” In verse 11, David refers to himself as “the king,” so we know it wasn’t written when King Saul was pursuing him. Instead it likely was written later during the events of 2 Samuel 15 when David’s son Absalom conspired against his father to gain the throne, gathered supporters, and even enlisted David’s close friend and counselor Ahithophel (vv. 10–12). These events drove David in haste from Jerusalem into the desert (vv. 14, 23).

Better than Life
Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. Psalm 63:3

Though Mary loved Jesus—life was hard, real hard. Two sons preceded her in death as did two grandsons, both victims of shootings. And Mary herself suffered a crippling stroke that left her paralyzed on one side. Yet, as soon as she was able she made her way to church services where it wasn’t uncommon for her—with fractured speech—to express praise to the Lord with words like, “My soul loves Jesus; bless His name!”

Long before Mary expressed her praise to God, David penned the words of Psalm 63. The heading of the psalm notes that David wrote it “when he was in the Desert of Judah.” Though in a less than desirable—even desperate—situation, he didn’t despair because he hoped in God. “You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you . . . in a dry and parched land where there is no water” (v. 1).

Perhaps you’ve found yourself in a place of difficulty, without clear direction or adequate resources. Uncomfortable situations can confuse us, but they need not derail us when we cling to the One who loves us (v. 3), satisfies us (v. 5), helps us (v. 7), and whose right hand upholds us (v. 8). Because God’s love is better than life, like Mary and David, we can express our satisfaction with lips that praise and honor God (vv. 3–5). By:  Arthur Jackson


Reflect & Pray
How would you describe your attitude when you find yourself in a “desert season” of life? How can Psalm 63 help you to better prepare for such seasons?

Jesus, I’m so grateful that I can praise You in the dry, desperate times of my life because Your love is better than life!

My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, March 14, 2020
Yielding
…you are that one’s slaves whom you obey… —Romans 6:16

The first thing I must be willing to admit when I begin to examine what controls and dominates me is that I am the one responsible for having yielded myself to whatever it may be. If I am a slave to myself, I am to blame because somewhere in the past I yielded to myself. Likewise, if I obey God I do so because at some point in my life I yielded myself to Him.

If a child gives in to selfishness, he will find it to be the most enslaving tyranny on earth. There is no power within the human soul itself that is capable of breaking the bondage of the nature created by yielding. For example, yield for one second to anything in the nature of lust, and although you may hate yourself for having yielded, you become enslaved to that thing. (Remember what lust is— “I must have it now,” whether it is the lust of the flesh or the lust of the mind.) No release or escape from it will ever come from any human power, but only through the power of redemption. You must yield yourself in utter humiliation to the only One who can break the dominating power in your life, namely, the Lord Jesus Christ. “…He has anointed Me…to proclaim liberty to the captives…” (Luke 4:18 and Isaiah 61:1).

When you yield to something, you will soon realize the tremendous control it has over you. Even though you say, “Oh, I can give up that habit whenever I like,” you will know you can’t. You will find that the habit absolutely dominates you because you willingly yielded to it. It is easy to sing, “He will break every fetter,” while at the same time living a life of obvious slavery to yourself. But yielding to Jesus will break every kind of slavery in any person’s life.

WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS

We never enter into the Kingdom of God by having our head questions answered, but only by commitment. The Highest Good—Thy Great Redemption, 565 R

Bible in a Year: Deuteronomy 23-25; Mark 14:1-26