Matthew 18:1-20, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals

 

Max Lucado Daily: Where to Stare in the Storm - August 13, 2021

“‘Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.’ So He said, ‘Come.’ And when Peter had come down out of the boat, he walked on the water to go to Jesus” (Matthew 14:28-29).

Peter never would have made this request on a calm sea. I doubt Peter would have ever stepped out of the boat. Storms prompt us to take unprecedented journeys. For a few heart-stilling moments, Peter did the impossible. He defied every law of gravity and nature.

Matthew moves us quickly to the major message of the event, and that is where to stare in a storm. “But when [Peter] saw that the wind was boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink he cried out, saying, ‘Lord, save me!'” (v. 30). Focus on Christ, you can do the impossible. Focus on the storm, you begin to sink.

Matthew 18:1-20

Whoever Becomes Simple Again

At about the same time, the disciples came to Jesus asking, “Who gets the highest rank in God’s kingdom?”

2-5 For an answer Jesus called over a child, whom he stood in the middle of the room, and said, “I’m telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God’s kingdom. What’s more, when you receive the childlike on my account, it’s the same as receiving me.

6-7 “But if you give them a hard time, bullying or taking advantage of their simple trust, you’ll soon wish you hadn’t. You’d be better off dropped in the middle of the lake with a millstone around your neck. Doom to the world for giving these God-believing children a hard time! Hard times are inevitable, but you don’t have to make it worse—and it’s doomsday to you if you do.

8-9 “If your hand or your foot gets in the way of God, chop it off and throw it away. You’re better off maimed or lame and alive than the proud owners of two hands and two feet, godless in a furnace of eternal fire. And if your eye distracts you from God, pull it out and throw it away. You’re better off one-eyed and alive than exercising your twenty-twenty vision from inside the fire of hell.

10 “Watch that you don’t treat a single one of these childlike believers arrogantly. You realize, don’t you, that their personal angels are constantly in touch with my Father in heaven?
Work It Out Between You

12-14 “Look at it this way. If someone has a hundred sheep and one of them wanders off, doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine and go after the one? And if he finds it, doesn’t he make far more over it than over the ninety-nine who stay put? Your Father in heaven feels the same way. He doesn’t want to lose even one of these simple believers.

15-17 “If a fellow believer hurts you, go and tell him—work it out between the two of you. If he listens, you’ve made a friend. If he won’t listen, take one or two others along so that the presence of witnesses will keep things honest, and try again. If he still won’t listen, tell the church. If he won’t listen to the church, you’ll have to start over from scratch, confront him with the need for repentance, and offer again God’s forgiving love.

18-20 “Take this most seriously: A yes on earth is yes in heaven; a no on earth is no in heaven. What you say to one another is eternal. I mean this. When two of you get together on anything at all on earth and make a prayer of it, my Father in heaven goes into action. And when two or three of you are together because of me, you can be sure that I’ll be there.”

Our Daily Bread reading and devotion    
Friday, August 13, 2021
Today's Scripture
2 Corinthians 8:1–9
(NIV)

The Collection for the Lord’s People

8 And now, brothers and sisters, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedoniang churches. 2 In the midst of a very severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity.h 3 For I testify that they gave as much as they were able,i and even beyond their ability. Entirely on their own, 4 they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharingj in this servicek to the Lord’s people.l 5 And they exceeded our expectations: They gave themselves first of all to the Lord, and then by the will of God also to us. 6 So we urgedm Titus,n just as he had earlier made a beginning, to bring also to completiono this act of grace on your part. 7 But since you excel in everythingp—in faith, in speech, in knowledge,q in complete earnestness and in the love we have kindled in youa—see that you also excel in this grace of giving.

8 I am not commanding you,r but I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it with the earnestness of others. 9 For you know the graces of our Lord Jesus Christ,t that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor,u so that you through his poverty might become rich.v

Insight

Most of Paul’s epistles are bookended with greetings and benedictions that include the word grace. We see this in 2 Corinthians: “Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (1:2) and “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ . . . be with you all” (13:14). What’s in view is “favor or kindness of some sort that’s freely given.” Grace is a translation of the Greek word cháris. Next to the book of Romans, this word appears in 2 Corinthians more than any other book in the New Testament. In 2 Corinthians 8, cháris occurs seven times. In the NIV in verses 1, 6, 7, and 9, it’s translated as grace. However, it can also be translated “the privilege” (v. 4), “thanks” (v. 16), and “the offering” (v. 19).
By: Arthur Jackson

The True Nature of Love

They gave as much as they were able.
2 Corinthians 8:3

During the pandemic lockdown, Jerry was forced to close his fitness center and had no income for months. One day he received a text from a friend asking to meet him at his facility at 6:00 p.m. Jerry wasn’t sure why but made his way there. Soon cars started streaming into the parking lot. The driver in the first car placed a basket on the sidewalk near the building. Then car after car (maybe fifty of them) came by. Those inside waved at Jerry or hollered out a hello, stopped at the basket, and dropped in a card or cash. Some sacrificed their money; all gave their time to encourage him.

The true nature of love is sacrificial, according to the apostle Paul. He explained to the Corinthians that the Macedonians gave “even beyond their ability” so they could meet the needs of the apostles and others (2 Corinthians 8:3). They even “pleaded” with Paul for the opportunity to give to them and to God’s people. The basis for their giving was the sacrificial heart of Jesus Himself. He left the riches of heaven to come to earth to be a servant and to give His very life. “Though he was rich, yet for [our] sake he became poor” (v. 9).

May we too plead with God so that we might “excel in this grace of giving” (v. 7) in order to lovingly meet the needs of others.

By:  Anne Cetas

Reflect & Pray

How might sacrificial service or giving fit into your life this week? Who needs your encouragement?

Loving God, You are so good. Please give me opportunities to bless others for You in Your power and wisdom.

My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Friday, August 13, 2021
"Do Not Quench the Spirit”

Do not quench the Spirit. —1 Thessalonians 5:19

The voice of the Spirit of God is as gentle as a summer breeze— so gentle that unless you are living in complete fellowship and oneness with God, you will never hear it. The sense of warning and restraint that the Spirit gives comes to us in the most amazingly gentle ways. And if you are not sensitive enough to detect His voice, you will quench it, and your spiritual life will be impaired. This sense of restraint will always come as a “still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12), so faint that no one except a saint of God will notice it.

Beware if in sharing your personal testimony you continually have to look back, saying, “Once, a number of years ago, I was saved.” If you have put your “hand to the plow” and are walking in the light, there is no “looking back”— the past is instilled into the present wonder of fellowship and oneness with God (Luke 9:62 ; also see 1 John 1:6-7). If you get out of the light, you become a sentimental Christian, and live only on your memories, and your testimony will have a hard metallic ring to it. Beware of trying to cover up your present refusal to “walk in the light” by recalling your past experiences when you did “walk in the light” (1 John 1:7). When-ever the Spirit gives you that sense of restraint, call a halt and make things right, or else you will go on quenching and grieving Him without even knowing it.

Suppose God brings you to a crisis and you almost endure it, but not completely. He will engineer the crisis again, but this time some of the intensity will be lost. You will have less discernment and more humiliation at having disobeyed. If you continue to grieve His Spirit, there will come a time when that crisis cannot be repeated, because you have totally quenched Him. But if you will go on through the crisis, your life will become a hymn of praise to God. Never become attached to anything that continues to hurt God. For you to be free of it, God must be allowed to hurt whatever it may be.

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

Bible in a Year: Psalms 87-88; Romans 13

A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Friday, August 13, 2021

Singing in the Rubble - #9025

It was several years ago now, but that last earthquake in Haiti; I think the images of that quake will be with us for a long time. For a while there they were looking for any hope they could get, because it was just all about so much death and disaster. You remember that when it seemed that no one else could still be alive in all those collapsed buildings, a boy thought he heard a voice from the rubble of a bank building. The husband of a woman who worked there had been frantically trying to find his wife. When the boy told that man about what he had heard, that husband went for a nearby rescue team from California.

And they found her! Buried deep in there, and they found her singing. Over a week after that quake leveled much of Port-au-Prince, a woman was still alive. And when she wasn't singing, they said she was praying, "Jesus, help me! Jesus, help me!" And when they brought out this miracle lady, yep, she just kept singing. Actually loudly, the rescuers said.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Singing in the Rubble."

Again, that defiant quakeproof faith was on display for all the world to see. That's a faith rooted in a man named Jesus, who has sustained His children through life and through death across the centuries.

I know this Jesus, too. My prayer is that I, too, can hold Him so tightly in my personal quakes that I also can sing in the rubble, because nothing validates the reality of a living Savior more than having His peace when your world's come down around you. Because that's when all eyes are on you.

Our word for today from the word of God is about God's first century ambassadors, Paul and Silas, and it's found in Acts 16:25. (By the way, there's an earthquake here.) They had been brutally beaten, unjustly imprisoned and locked up in stocks. But it says, "About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them." That was right before a violent earthquake that actually helped liberate Paul and Silas and drove their jailer to ask them how to know the Jesus who gave them songs at midnight.

This is the peace that Jesus promised to His friends the night He was going to be arrested; the night their world would collapse. He said, "Peace I leave with you. I do not give you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid." "I have told you these things so that in Me you might have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world" (John 14:27; 16:33).

If you have this Jesus, you can have this peace, even when there seems to be no reason. In the Bible's words, "The peace of God...transcends all understanding" (Philippians 4:7). One Haitian rescued from a collapsed school was asked what he was saying to himself in those long hours when he didn't know if he would live or die. He said, "As a Christian, I'm saying, 'Jesus, my life is in Your hands.'"

I wonder if you could say that, that you've placed your life in the hands of Jesus? There comes a time when we realize that all the places we've looked for answers haven't answered our questions, and all the places we've looked for love and satisfaction have left us empty and disappointed. It's at a point like that that we find our way to the cross where Jesus died to bring us together with God by paying for our sin that keeps us from God.

I still remember the moment when I said, "Jesus, I'm Yours." Do you have a moment like that? If you haven't, let this day be that one for you. Let this be the day you say, "Jesus, I want to pin all my hopes on You" so that you can begin to have the peace that withstands every quake you ever face.

You want to know more about how to begin this relationship with Him? Please go to our website. It's why it's there. It's ANewStory.com.

Our kids used to go to sleep singing a little chorus that says, "Safe am I, safe am I, in the hollow of His hands." You know living or dying, working or out of work, healthy or deathly sick, loved or all alone, if you belong to Jesus, you really are safe.

I pray that God will give you and me the grace to sing in the rubble.