Colossians 2, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals

 Max Lucado Daily: JESUS HAS BEEN THERE

Millions facing the chill of empty pockets or the fears of sudden change turn to Christ. Why? Because he’s been there. He’s been to Nazareth, where he made deadlines and paid bills; to Jerusalem, where he stared down critics and stood up against cynics. We have our Nazareths as well. And Jesus wasn’t the last to build a team, and accusers didn’t disappear with Jerusalem’s temple. Why seek Jesus’ help with your challenges? Because he’s been there.

But most of all, he’s been to the grave. Not as a visitor, but as a corpse. Body wrapped and grave sealed. Buried. You haven’t yet, but you will be. And since you will, don’t you need someone who knows the way out? God has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead — a way to have life that cannot be destroyed.

Colossians 2

I want you to realize that I continue to work as hard as I know how for you, and also for the Christians over at Laodicea. Not many of you have met me face-to-face, but that doesn’t make any difference. Know that I’m on your side, right alongside you. You’re not in this alone.

2-4 I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God. Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ, God’s great mystery. All the richest treasures of wisdom and knowledge are embedded in that mystery and nowhere else. And we’ve been shown the mystery! I’m telling you this because I don’t want anyone leading you off on some wild-goose chase, after other so-called mysteries, or “the Secret.”

5 I’m a long way off, true, and you may never lay eyes on me, but believe me, I’m on your side, right beside you. I am delighted to hear of the careful and orderly ways you conduct your affairs, and impressed with the solid substance of your faith in Christ.

From the Shadows to the Substance
6-7 My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you’ve been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live him. You’re deeply rooted in him. You’re well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you’ve been taught. School’s out; quit studying the subject and start living it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving.

8-10 Watch out for people who try to dazzle you with big words and intellectual double-talk. They want to drag you off into endless arguments that never amount to anything. They spread their ideas through the empty traditions of human beings and the empty superstitions of spirit beings. But that’s not the way of Christ. Everything of God gets expressed in him, so you can see and hear him clearly. You don’t need a telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to realize the fullness of Christ, and the emptiness of the universe without him. When you come to him, that fullness comes together for you, too. His power extends over everything.

11-15 Entering into this fullness is not something you figure out or achieve. It’s not a matter of being circumcised or keeping a long list of laws. No, you’re already in—insiders—not through some secretive initiation rite but rather through what Christ has already gone through for you, destroying the power of sin. If it’s an initiation ritual you’re after, you’ve already been through it by submitting to baptism. Going under the water was a burial of your old life; coming up out of it was a resurrection, God raising you from the dead as he did Christ. When you were stuck in your old sin-dead life, you were incapable of responding to God. God brought you alive—right along with Christ! Think of it! All sins forgiven, the slate wiped clean, that old arrest warrant canceled and nailed to Christ’s cross. He stripped all the spiritual tyrants in the universe of their sham authority at the Cross and marched them naked through the streets.

16-17 So don’t put up with anyone pressuring you in details of diet, worship services, or holy days. All those things are mere shadows cast before what was to come; the substance is Christ.

18-19 Don’t tolerate people who try to run your life, ordering you to bow and scrape, insisting that you join their obsession with angels and that you seek out visions. They’re a lot of hot air, that’s all they are. They’re completely out of touch with the source of life, Christ, who puts us together in one piece, whose very breath and blood flow through us. He is the Head and we are the body. We can grow up healthy in God only as he nourishes us.

20-23 So, then, if with Christ you’ve put all that pretentious and infantile religion behind you, why do you let yourselves be bullied by it? “Don’t touch this! Don’t taste that! Don’t go near this!” Do you think things that are here today and gone tomorrow are worth that kind of attention? Such things sound impressive if said in a deep enough voice. They even give the illusion of being pious and humble and ascetic. But they’re just another way of showing off, making yourselves look important.

Our Daily Bread reading and devotion    
Thursday, August 27, 2020

Today's Scripture & Insight:

Psalm 82:3–4

Defend the weak and the fatherless;
    uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
4 Rescue the weak and the needy;
    deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

Insight
The psalms of Asaph (50; 73–83) take an honest look at the seeming absence of justice on the earth. These songs pose our toughest questions, including: Why do the wicked prosper? and Why do good people suffer? Here in Psalm 82 the pointed question is asked: “How long will you defend the unjust and show partiality to the wicked?” (v. 2). We might interpret that as an accusation against God, but the word translated “you” is plural. The psalmist is targeting his question against unjust judges who “will die like mere mortals; [and] will fall like every other ruler” (v. 7). The psalm affirms God’s sovereignty over all things: “God . . . renders judgment among the ‘gods’” (v. 1) and concludes with an appeal to the Lord to “rise up” and “judge the earth” (v. 8). Despite the pain that motivated this cry for justice, the songwriter knows God can be trusted to make things right.

Rescue the Weak
Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked. Psalm 82:4

Which would you choose—a skiing holiday in Switzerland or rescuing children from danger in Prague? Nicholas Winton, just an ordinary man, chose the latter. In 1938, war between Czechoslovakia and Germany seemed on the horizon. After Nicholas visited refugee camps in Prague, where many Jewish citizens lived in horrible conditions, he felt compelled to come up with a plan to help. He raised money to transport hundreds of children safely out of Prague to Great Britain to be cared for by British families before the onset of World War II.

His actions exemplified those called for in Psalm 82: “Uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed” (v. 3). Asaph, the writer of this psalm, wanted to stir his people to champion the cause of those in need: “Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked” (v. 4). Like the children Nicholas worked tirelessly to rescue, the psalmist spoke for those who couldn’t speak for themselves—the poor and the widowed who needed justice and protection.

Everywhere we look today we see people in need due to war, storms, and other hardships. Although we can’t solve every problem, we can prayerfully consider what we can do to help in the situations God brings into our lives. By:  Linda Washington

Reflect & Pray
What are some immediate needs of others you can help meet? How has God uniquely prepared you to rescue and care for others?

Loving God, open my eyes to the needs of those around me.

My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, August 27, 2020
Living Your Theology

Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you… —John 12:35

Beware of not acting upon what you see in your moments on the mountaintop with God. If you do not obey the light, it will turn into darkness. “If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matthew 6:23). The moment you forsake the matter of sanctification or neglect anything else on which God has given you His light, your spiritual life begins to disintegrate within you. Continually bring the truth out into your real life, working it out into every area, or else even the light that you possess will itself prove to be a curse.

The most difficult person to deal with is the one who has the prideful self-satisfaction of a past experience, but is not working that experience out in his everyday life. If you say you are sanctified, show it. The experience must be so genuine that it shows in your life. Beware of any belief that makes you self-indulgent or self-gratifying; that belief came from the pit of hell itself, regardless of how beautiful it may sound.

Your theology must work itself out, exhibiting itself in your most common everyday relationships. Our Lord said, “…unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20). In other words, you must be more moral than the most moral person you know. You may know all about the doctrine of sanctification, but are you working it out in the everyday issues of your life? Every detail of your life, whether physical, moral, or spiritual, is to be judged and measured by the standard of the atonement by the Cross of Christ.

WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS

The life of Abraham is an illustration of two things: of unreserved surrender to God, and of God’s complete possession of a child of His for His own highest end. Not Knowing Whither, 901 R

Bible in a Year: Psalms 120-122; 1 Corinthians 9

A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, August 27, 2020
Washing in Water That Cannot Make You Clean - #8772

It was one very hot day, and my granddaughter and I were watching some horses. One-by-one they made their way to the little pond to take in some more water. Now, this big old grey horse decided drinking wasn't enough. He didn't just get a little of the pond in him, he got into the pond and lay down in the water. He splashed around a little, stayed there for a while and finally pulled his big old body out of the water. Relating what she saw to her world, my granddaughter said, "He's taking a bath!" If that was his intention, I had bad news for that horse. He got out of that murky water with his light gray coat covered with dirt! So much for getting clean!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Washing in Water That Cannot Make You Clean."

No matter where you go in the world, no matter how primitive or advanced the culture, we humans have this sense in our soul that we have a problem with the Creator who put us here. In a sense, that's the reason most people practice whatever their religion is; to somehow do something to put us on God's good side to avoid whatever punishment we might deserve for the wrong things we know we've done. All of us have things that we wish we hadn't done and things we know we should have done. We feel the guilt; we feel the shame of things that we thought we would never do; of things that we've done that hurt other people - often people we love.

You might say we know we're dirty inside and that we'd better do something to get clean before we meet the Creator who decides our forever. The Bible tells the story actually of a military leader named Naaman who came down with terminal leprosy: corrosive spots all over his body. He was directed to God's prophet for a cure. He wanted to buy a cure. No way. He wanted to do something noble to be cured. "No way," the prophet said. He told him to wash seven times in the muddy waters of the Jordan River.

Naaman was enraged. There were nicer rivers back home that he wanted to wash in. But there was only one way to get cured and get clean...wash where God said to wash. In the Bible's words, he did "as the man of God told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy" (2 Kings 5:1-16).

We're all Naaman. We want to get right with God the way we want to get right with God: through doing good, through practicing our religion, through personal spirituality. But it's all water that can't make us clean. Here's why recorded in our word for today from the Word of God in Hebrews 9:22, "Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness." Sin is punishable by spiritual death. That's eternal separation from a sinless God. So only a death can pay for it. That's why all the religious water in the world will leave you unforgiven and unable to enter God's heaven.

A few verses later, God explains where our only hope really is. He says Jesus died "...to do away with sin by the sacrifice of Himself" (Hebrews 9:26). Only Jesus, the only sinless man that ever lived, could die in our place. And He loves you so much that He did - on an awful cross.

So, we have to come to God through the only way He's provided - His Son. Jesus alone can make you clean inside and right before a holy God. Jesus alone can get you into heaven. Not Christianity, not church, but Jesus. No other "water" can make you clean, however sincere your efforts to get clean. If you could have gotten clean any other way, believe me, God would have never put His Son through that brutal crucifixion.

You've got a decision to make: the ultimate life-or-death decision. Will you put your total trust in Jesus, in what He did to pay for your sins on the cross? Or will you put your hope in something else? The outcomes of that decision are heaven or hell, and God leaves it to you to choose. If you're ready to abandon all other hopes and hold onto Jesus like a drowning person would embrace a rescuer, would you tell Him that right now, right where you are? At that moment every wrong thing you've ever done will be forgiven by God and erased from His book. And your name will be entered in His "Book of Life" - the people who are going to be in heaven.

I would love to have you visit our website today, because there I think you'll get a brief explanation of how to be sure you belong to Jesus from this day on. The website is ANewStory.com.

Sin cannot be repaid. It has to be removed. And Jesus stands ready to do that for you this very day, and you will be clean.