Hebrews 10:1-18, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals

Max Lucado Daily: SET YOUR COMPASS

This life contains many walks from Cana to Capernaum, journeys between prayer offered and prayer answered.  Jesus promised the boy’s father a sure blessing at the end of the journey; He promises the same to us. We will meet this father when we get to heaven, and when we do, I’m going to ask him about that walk. I want to hear how he felt. I want to know what he thought. But most of all, I want to thank him for inspiring this verse: “The man took Jesus at his word and departed” (John 4:50 NIV).

Do likewise. Set your compass on the pole star of God’s promise. Place one weary foot in front of the other. Jesus has spoken! Let his word do what it was intended to do, and that is lead you home. Remember my friend, you are never alone.

Hebrews 10:1-18

The Sacrifice of Jesus

The old plan was only a hint of the good things in the new plan. Since that old “law plan” wasn’t complete in itself, it couldn’t complete those who followed it. No matter how many sacrifices were offered year after year, they never added up to a complete solution. If they had, the worshipers would have gone merrily on their way, no longer dragged down by their sins. But instead of removing awareness of sin, when those animal sacrifices were repeated over and over they actually heightened awareness and guilt. The plain fact is that bull and goat blood can’t get rid of sin. That is what is meant by this prophecy, put in the mouth of Christ:

You don’t want sacrifices and offerings year after year;
    you’ve prepared a body for me for a sacrifice.
It’s not fragrance and smoke from the altar
    that whet your appetite.
So I said, “I’m here to do it your way, O God,
    the way it’s described in your Book.”

When he said, “You don’t want sacrifices and offerings,” he was referring to practices according to the old plan. When he added, “I’m here to do it your way,” he set aside the first in order to enact the new plan—God’s way—by which we are made fit for God by the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus.

11-18 Every priest goes to work at the altar each day, offers the same old sacrifices year in, year out, and never makes a dent in the sin problem. As a priest, Christ made a single sacrifice for sins, and that was it! Then he sat down right beside God and waited for his enemies to cave in. It was a perfect sacrifice by a perfect person to perfect some very imperfect people. By that single offering, he did everything that needed to be done for everyone who takes part in the purifying process. The Holy Spirit confirms this:

This new plan I’m making with Israel
    isn’t going to be written on paper,
    isn’t going to be chiseled in stone;
This time “I’m writing out the plan in them,
    carving it on the lining of their hearts.”

He concludes,

I’ll forever wipe the slate clean of their sins.

Once sins are taken care of for good, there’s no longer any need to offer sacrifices for them.

Our Daily Bread reading and devotion    
Tuesday, October 06, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight:

1 Corinthians 15:3–4, 12–22

 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance[a]: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,

The Resurrection of the Dead
12 But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

20 But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. 22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.

Insight
When Paul says that “if only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:19), he’s writing in light of the personal sufferings he described earlier in his letter (4:8–13). Though his readers were enjoying the present benefits of knowing Jesus, he’d endured great pain and loss to bring them the good news of everlasting life. While affirming that he’d found in Christ a treasure worth living and dying for, he wanted them to see his suffering as Spirit-enabled evidence of the eternal love and power of God (2:3–5).

You’ll See Her Again
For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. 1 Corinthians 15:22

The room was dim and silent as I pulled a chair close to Jacquie’s bed. Before a three-year battle with cancer, my friend had been a vibrant person. I could still picture her laughing—eyes full of life, her face lit with a smile. Now she was quiet and still, and I was visiting her in a special care facility.

Not knowing what to say, I decided to read some Scripture. I pulled my Bible out of my purse and turned to a reference in 1 Corinthians and began to read.

After the visit and an emotional time in the seclusion of my parked car, a thought came to mind that slowed my tears: You’ll see her again. Caught up in sadness, I had forgotten that death is only temporary for believers (1 Corinthians 15:21–22). I knew I’d see Jacquie again because both of us had trusted in Jesus’ death and resurrection for the forgiveness of our sin (vv. 3–4). When Jesus came back to life after His crucifixion, death lost its ultimate power to separate believers from each other and from God. After we die, we’ll live again in heaven with God and all of our spiritual brothers and sisters—forever.

Because Jesus is alive today, believers in Him have hope in times of loss and sorrow. Death has been swallowed up in the victory of the cross (v. 54). By:  Jennifer Benson Schuldt

Reflect & Pray
How has God comforted you in times of sorrow? How might He want to use you to comfort someone who’s grieving today?

Dear Jesus, thank You for dying for my sin. I believe that You’re alive today because God raised You from the dead.

Read Life After Loss: Grieving with Hope at DiscoverySeries.org/CB131.

My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, October 06, 2020
The Nature of Regeneration

When it pleased God…to reveal His Son in me… —Galatians 1:15-16

If Jesus Christ is going to regenerate me, what is the problem He faces? It is simply this— I have a heredity in which I had no say or decision; I am not holy, nor am I likely to be; and if all Jesus Christ can do is tell me that I must be holy, His teaching only causes me to despair. But if Jesus Christ is truly a regenerator, someone who can put His own heredity of holiness into me, then I can begin to see what He means when He says that I have to be holy. Redemption means that Jesus Christ can put into anyone the hereditary nature that was in Himself, and all the standards He gives us are based on that nature— His teaching is meant to be applied to the life which He puts within us. The proper action on my part is simply to agree with God’s verdict on sin as judged on the Cross of Christ.

The New Testament teaching about regeneration is that when a person is hit by his own sense of need, God will put the Holy Spirit into his spirit, and his personal spirit will be energized by the Spirit of the Son of God— “…until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19). The moral miracle of redemption is that God can put a new nature into me through which I can live a totally new life. When I finally reach the edge of my need and know my own limitations, then Jesus says, “Blessed are you…” (Matthew 5:11). But I must get to that point. God cannot put into me, the responsible moral person that I am, the nature that was in Jesus Christ unless I am aware of my need for it.

Just as the nature of sin entered into the human race through one man, the Holy Spirit entered into the human race through another Man (see Romans 5:12-19). And redemption means that I can be delivered from the heredity of sin, and that through Jesus Christ I can receive a pure and spotless heredity, namely, the Holy Spirit.

WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS

It is perilously possible to make our conceptions of God like molten lead poured into a specially designed mould, and when it is cold and hard we fling it at the heads of the religious people who don’t agree with us. Disciples Indeed, 388 R

Bible in a Year: Isaiah 26-27; Philippians 2

A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, October 06, 2020
Your Stabilizer When You're Crashing - #8802

There have been a lot of airplane crashes over the years. And there's a few that you just don't forget. I'll tell you, one was the crash of United Flight 232 many years ago. Captain Al Haynes and his crew were desperately trying to control a plane that was almost out of control because of an equipment failure. They were diverted from Chicago to Sioux City, Iowa. Man, I still remember this. There was no way they were able to maneuver that plane to the airport. Their best hope of saving at least some lives was to try to bring it down in a nearby cornfield. Captain Haynes became literally a national hero when somehow he managed to do just that. Tragically, there were lives lost in the crash landing and the subsequent fire, but there were many survivors from a crash that could have easily killed all aboard. Captain Haynes said he had a hero that day himself. His crew had checked every procedure book to see what to do in an emergency like they were facing. There was no procedure. So Captain Haynes' hero was the flight controller that talked him through that terrifying crisis. Here's how the captain put it: "There's nothing like a calm, soothing voice talking to you, telling you everything you need to know."

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Your Stabilizer When You're Crashing."

That's part of what saved lives that day of the crash - one voice, one person who was outside the situation, who had the big picture, who gave them guidance no one else could give them. The "calm, soothing voice, telling you everything you need to know" - the flight controller.

Every one of us needs a flight controller to help us know what to do when all the usual procedures aren't enough for what we're facing. To give us guidance in a world that has more unpredictables and more uncertainties than ever. Actually, much like a jetliner, we were designed for a flight controller. We were designed by a flight controller; by the Flight Controller of a hundred billion galaxies. He runs the universe. God's supposed to be the One who's running us. He's not. In the Bible's words, "We all...have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way" (Isaiah 53:6).

So we're confused about our direction, we're unsure of the flight plan that will give our life some meaning, and we're missing the One who can help us avoid our crashes or survive life's crashes. So many people have discovered, in Jesus Christ, the flight plan they were made for and the Flight Controller who made the rest of their life secure.

It just doesn't get any more secure than this promise from Jesus, recorded in Hebrews 13:5 and 8. It's our word for today from the Word of God. Jesus says: "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you." Others could make that promise; but only the Son of God can keep that promise. So you never need to face another life situation, another storm without the personal love and power of Jesus Christ Himself. He is, the Bible continues, "the same yesterday and today and forever" - your one fixed point in a world that is constantly changing. He'll never leave you because He loves you beyond words. And He loves you so much that He died for you to pay for the sin that would otherwise keep you from Him and from heaven forever.

Jesus has been the Flight Controller for my life, for all her years for my wife and through our most painful times. When we lost a baby, Jesus was the difference. When the finances were caving in, Jesus was the difference. When the accident was nearly fatal, when the loss of a loved one was very sudden and very painful, when they said my wife might not make it, when the doctor's news was awful; always, Jesus was the difference. And when she suddenly went to heaven four years ago, on that day (the worst day of my life), Jesus was the difference.

He wants to be that for you. Acknowledge Him as your only hope of having a personal relationship with God, having your sins forgiven, and tell Him, "Jesus, I'm yours." We'd love to help you do that. Just go to our website. It's ANewStory.com.

I know you will find Jesus to be what so many have found Him to be, including me, that calm, soothing voice in your soul, talking to you and telling you everything you need to know.