Mark 8:22-38 , Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals

Max Lucado Daily:  Why Joseph? - December 9, 2021

Jesus’ earthly father is a small-town carpenter who lives in Nazareth. Why Joseph? A major part of the answer lies in his reputation, and he gives it up for Jesus. Nazareth viewed Joseph as we might view an elder, deacon, or Bible class teacher. Now what? His fiancée is blemished, tainted; he is righteous, godly. The law says stone her. Love says forgive her. And Joseph is caught in the middle. Then comes the angel’s announcement, “She carries the Son of God in her womb.” But who would believe it?

Joseph makes his decision. “Joseph…took to him his wife, and did not know her until she had brought forth her firstborn Son” (Matthew 1:24-25). He swapped his Torah studies for a pregnant fiancée and an illegitimate son and made the big decision of discipleship. He placed God’s plan ahead of his own.

Mark 8:22-38

They arrived at Bethsaida. Some people brought a sightless man and begged Jesus to give him a healing touch. Taking him by the hand, he led him out of the village. He put spit in the man’s eyes, laid hands on him, and asked, “Do you see anything?”

24-26 He looked up. “I see men. They look like walking trees.” So Jesus laid hands on his eyes again. The man looked hard and realized that he had recovered perfect sight, saw everything in bright, twenty-twenty focus. Jesus sent him straight home, telling him, “Don’t enter the village.”
The Messiah

27 Jesus and his disciples headed out for the villages around Caesarea Philippi. As they walked, he asked, “Who do the people say I am?”

28 “Some say ‘John the Baptizer,’” they said. “Others say ‘Elijah.’ Still others say ‘one of the prophets.’”

29 He then asked, “And you—what are you saying about me? Who am I?”

Peter gave the answer: “You are the Christ, the Messiah.”

30-32 Jesus warned them to keep it quiet, not to breathe a word of it to anyone. He then began explaining things to them: “It is necessary that the Son of Man proceed to an ordeal of suffering, be tried and found guilty by the elders, high priests, and religion scholars, be killed, and after three days rise up alive.” He said this simply and clearly so they couldn’t miss it.

32-33 But Peter grabbed him in protest. Turning and seeing his disciples wavering, wondering what to believe, Jesus confronted Peter. “Peter, get out of my way! Satan, get lost! You have no idea how God works.”

34-37 Calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for?

38 “If any of you are embarrassed over me and the way I’m leading you when you get around your fickle and unfocused friends, know that you’ll be an even greater embarrassment to the Son of Man when he arrives in all the splendor of God, his Father, with an army of the holy angels.”

Our Daily Bread reading and devotion   
Thursday, December 09, 2021

Today's Scripture
Revelation 7:9–12
(NIV)

The Great Multitude in White Robes

9 After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language,b standing before the thronec and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robesd and were holding palm branches in their hands. 10 And they cried out in a loud voice:

“Salvation belongs to our God,e

who sits on the throne,f

and to the Lamb.”

11 All the angels were standing around the throne and around the eldersg and the four living creatures.h They fell down on their facesi before the throne and worshiped God, 12 saying:

“Amen!

Praise and glory

and wisdom and thanks and honor

and power and strength

be to our God for ever and ever.

Amen!”

Insight

It’s interesting to note some differences in the description of the two crowds in Revelation 7. John heard of the first group (v. 4), while he saw the second (v. 9). The first group was numbered at 144,000 (v. 4); the second group “no one could count” (v. 9). The first crowd was of a single nationality (the tribes of Israel, vv. 4–8); the second was “from every nation” (v. 9). Bible scholar Craig Keener suggests that “the first vision portrays symbolically God’s end-time spiritual army, then this second vision is a more literal interpretation of the first” (Revelation, NIV Application Commentary). According to this view, God’s army is victorious over their enemies by dying a martyr’s death rather than by killing their enemies (see 11:7–13; 12:11; 13:7; 15:2; 21:7). Keener goes on to note that “in this, we are like our Lord.”

A Great Multitude

Before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language.
Revelation 7:9

We came together for our Sunday morning church service with joy and anticipation. Although we were spatially distanced because of the coronavirus pandemic, we welcomed the opportunity to celebrate Gavin and Tijana’s wedding. Our technologically gifted Iranian friends broadcast the service to friends and family spread out geographically—including in Spain, Poland, and Serbia. This creative approach helped us overcome the constraints as we rejoiced in the covenant of marriage. God’s Spirit united us and gave us joy.

That Sunday morning with our wonderfully multinational congregation was a small taste of the glory to come when people from “every nation, tribe, people and language” will stand before God in heaven (Revelation 7:9). The beloved disciple John glimpsed this “great multitude” in a vision he recounts in the book of Revelation. There those gathered will worship God together along with the angels and elders: “Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever” (v. 12).

The union and marriage of Jesus and His international bride in the “wedding supper of the Lamb” (19:9) will be an amazing time of worship and celebration. Our experience at our Sunday church service with people from many nations points to this celebration that one day we’ll enjoy.

While we wait in hope for that joyful event, we can embrace the practice of feasting and rejoicing among God’s people. By:  Amy Boucher Pye

Reflect & Pray

How do you picture the wedding supper of the Lamb? How does being invited to this celebration affect your daily life?

Lamb of God, thank You for the invitation to the heavenly wedding.

My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, December 09, 2021
The Opposition of the Natural

Those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. —Galatians 5:24

The natural life itself is not sinful. But we must abandon sin, having nothing to do with it in any way whatsoever. Sin belongs to hell and to the devil. I, as a child of God, belong to heaven and to God. It is not a question of giving up sin, but of giving up my right to myself, my natural independence, and my self-will. This is where the battle has to be fought. The things that are right, noble, and good from the natural standpoint are the very things that keep us from being God’s best. Once we come to understand that natural moral excellence opposes or counteracts surrender to God, we bring our soul into the center of its greatest battle. Very few of us would debate over what is filthy, evil, and wrong, but we do debate over what is good. It is the good that opposes the best. The higher up the scale of moral excellence a person goes, the more intense the opposition to Jesus Christ. “Those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh….” The cost to your natural life is not just one or two things, but everything. Jesus said, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself…” (Matthew 16:24). That is, he must deny his right to himself, and he must realize who Jesus Christ is before he will bring himself to do it. Beware of refusing to go to the funeral of your own independence.

The natural life is not spiritual, and it can be made spiritual only through sacrifice. If we do not purposely sacrifice the natural, the supernatural can never become natural to us. There is no high or easy road. Each of us has the means to accomplish it entirely in his own hands. It is not a question of praying, but of sacrificing, and thereby performing His will.

Wisdom From Oswald Chambers

There is nothing, naturally speaking, that makes us lose heart quicker than decay—the decay of bodily beauty, of natural life, of friendship, of associations, all these things make a man lose heart; but Paul says when we are trusting in Jesus Christ these things do not find us discouraged, light comes through them.  The Place of Help, 1032 L

Bible in a Year: Daniel 11-12; Jude

A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, December 09, 2021

Spiritual Snowmen - #9109

My theory is that inside every man there's a little boy. And when the boy dies, the man might as well. Then the kid comes out at Christmas, you know, at certain amusement parks, and when it snows. Inside most of us is this kid who looks out the window at new-fallen snow and hopes like crazy this will be one of those most glorious of winter days - a snow day! If it is, and you've got kids or grandkids, it can mean an opportunity for one of life's great creative moments - building a snowman! Or snow person, excuse me, as the case may be. Now, when you're done, there stands your personal or team masterpiece - fat, friendly, probably with a hat, a button nose, two eyes (made out of coal?). The problem is that they don't stay those handsome creatures you formed so laboriously. As the temperature rises, Snow Guy or Girl slowly becomes Soft Guy or Girl, slowly losing its shape and identity until it's more like Mush Guy and Mush Girl.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Spiritual Snowmen."

Sadly, what happens to snowmen seems to be happening to more and more of God's people. They're slowly going soft, melted by the heat of a culture that applies heavy pressure to compromise both Christian convictions and Christian lifestyles. And some of us are becoming so melted you can hardly tell the difference between us and the lost people around us. We watch what they watch, we wear what they wear, we talk like they talk, we do business like they do business, we bail out of marriages like they do - actually more than they do sometimes, and slowly melt away morally the Jesus-difference that is meant to draw people to a life-changing - not life-conforming - Savior.

Increasingly, we seem to be practicing our culture rather than practicing our faith; more of an echo of our culture than a choice. A culture that casually accepts the unacceptable has caused us to grow soft about what we'll watch and listen to and what we'll allow our children to let into their hearts and minds. Things we never would have considered allowing into our lives or our minds maybe only a few years ago.

We've gotten soft on something God says in the Book of Malachi that He hates. It says He hates divorce (Malachi 2:10). It doesn't say He hates divorced people. But in relatively few years, a trickle of Christians at one time ending their lifetime marriage commitment has grown to a flood. It looks increasingly as if Jesus makes little or no difference in life's most intimate, most committed relationship.

The heat has made us more and more soft on issues like the sanctity of life, whether it's standing without compromise for the life of an unborn child, or the life of a born child who's living in awful need, or the life of the elders who gave us our life. Again, where's the Jesus-difference? We can't turn soft just because the issue all of a sudden has the face of someone we know. God hasn't changed His mind.

Premarital sex - living together before you're married, business ethics - so many compromises. So much melting! Now it's time for our word for today from the Word of God in Ephesians 6:13, "Put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then..." There it is. We can't change our minds on the things God never changes His mind on.

When we let the heat of an out-of-control, spiritually uncaring world keep melting us down, making us soft, pretty soon there's nothing left but spiritual mush. If you belong to Jesus, your life is supposed to offer a loving choice, not an echo for a lost and dying world. We have to stand our ground. Or lose the very things that make a Jesus-follower the light of their world.