Max Lucado Daily: God’s Idea - January 18, 2022
“This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him” (1 John 4:9).
A divine spark indwells you. When you say yes to God he blows on that holy ember, and it begins to flame. It grows day by day within you. Are you perfect? No. But you are being made perfect. And he has a wild and inexplicable love for you. You are God’s idea, God’s child.
You were loved in heaven before you were known on earth. You aren’t an accident. You are being made into God’s image. You are a diamond, a rose, and a jewel, purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ. In the eyes of God you are worth dying for. Would you let this truth find its way into your heart?
Numbers 18
Duties in the Tent of Testimony
God said to Aaron, “You and your sons, along with your father’s family, are responsible for taking care of sins having to do with the Sanctuary; you and your sons are also responsible for sins involving the priesthood. So enlist your brothers of the tribe of Levi to join you and assist you and your sons in your duties in the Tent of Testimony. They will report to you as they go about their duties related to the Tent, but they must not have anything to do with the holy things of the Altar under penalty of death—both they and you will die! They are to work with you in taking care of the Tent of Meeting, whatever work is involved in the Tent. Outsiders are not allowed to help you.
5-7 “Your job is to take care of the Sanctuary and the Altar so that there will be no more outbreaks of anger on the People of Israel. I personally have picked your brothers, the Levites, from Israel as a whole. I’m giving them to you as a gift, a gift of God, to help with the work of the Tent of Meeting. But only you and your sons may serve as priests, working around the Altar and inside the curtain. The work of the priesthood is my exclusive gift to you; it cannot be delegated—anyone else who invades the Sanctuary will be executed.”
8-10 God spoke to Aaron, “I am personally putting you in charge of my contributions, all the holy gifts I get from the People of Israel. I am turning them over to you and your children for your personal use. This is the standing rule. You and your sons get what’s left from the offerings, whatever hasn’t been totally burned up on the Altar—the leftovers from Grain-Offerings, Absolution-Offerings, and Compensation-Offerings. Eat it reverently; it is most holy; every male may eat it. Treat it as holy.
11-13 “You also get the Wave-Offerings from the People of Israel. I present them to you and your sons and daughters as a gift. This is the standing rule. Anyone in your household who is ritually clean may eat it. I also give you all the best olive oil, the best new wine, and the grain that is offered to God as the firstfruits of their harvest—all the firstfruits they offer to God are yours. Anyone in your household who is ritually clean may eat it.
14-16 “You get every Totally-Devoted gift. Every firstborn that is offered to God, whether animal or person, is yours. Except you don’t get the firstborn itself, but its redemption price; firstborn humans and ritually unclean animals are bought back and you get the redemption price. When the firstborn is a month old it must be redeemed at the redemption price of five shekels of silver, using the standard of the Sanctuary shekel, which weighs twenty gerahs.
17-19 “On the other hand, you don’t redeem a firstborn ox, sheep, or goat—they are holy. Instead splash their blood on the Altar and burn their fat as a Fire-Gift, a pleasing fragrance to God. But you get the meat, just as you get the breast from the Wave-Offering and the right thigh. All the holy offerings that the People of Israel set aside for God, I’m turning over to you and your children. That’s the standard rule and includes both you and your children—a Covenant-of-Salt, eternal and unchangeable before God.”
20 God said to Aaron, “You won’t get any inheritance in land, not so much as a small plot of ground: I am your plot of ground, I am your inheritance among the People of Israel.
21-24 “I’m giving the Levites all the tithes of Israel as their pay for the work they do in the Tent of Meeting. Starting now, the rest of the People of Israel cannot wander in and out of the Tent of Meeting; they’ll be penalized for their sin and the penalty is death. It’s the Levites and only the Levites who are to work in the Tent of Meeting and they are responsible for anything that goes wrong. This is the regular rule for all time. They get no inheritance among the People of Israel; instead I turn over to them the tithes that the People of Israel present as an offering to God. That’s why I give the ruling: They are to receive no land-inheritance among the People of Israel.”
* * *
25-29 God spoke to Moses: “Speak to the Levites. Tell them, When you get the tithe from the People of Israel, the inheritance that I have assigned to you, you must tithe that tithe and present it as an offering to God. Your offerings will be treated the same as other people’s gifts of grain from the threshing floor or wine from the wine vat. This is your procedure for making offerings to God from all the tithes you get from the People of Israel: give God’s portion from these tithes to Aaron the priest. Make sure that God’s portion is the best and holiest of everything you get.
30-32 “Tell the Levites, When you offer the best part, the rest will be treated the same as grain from the threshing floor or wine from the wine vat that others give. You and your households are free to eat the rest of it anytime and anyplace—it’s your wages for your work at the Tent of Meeting. By offering the best part, you’ll avoid guilt, you won’t desecrate the holy offerings of the People of Israel, and you won’t die.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Tuesday, January 18, 2022
Today's Scripture
Isaiah 53:1–6
(NIV)
Who has believed our messageu
and to whom has the armv of the Lord been revealed?w
2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,x
and like a rooty out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearancez that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering,a and familiar with pain.b
Like one from whom people hidec their faces
he was despised,d and we held him in low esteem.
4 Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,e
yet we considered him punished by God,f
stricken by him, and afflicted.g
5 But he was piercedh for our transgressions,i
he was crushedj for our iniquities;
the punishmentk that brought us peacel was on him,
and by his woundsm we are healed.n
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,o
each of us has turned to our own way;p
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquityq of us all.
Insight
Isaiah 53:1–6 is part of the “Song of the Suffering Servant” that begins in 52:13 and ends in 53:12. It was this song that the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:26–40 was reading. In that New Testament story, Philip the evangelist tells an Ethiopian official that Isaiah is speaking of Jesus the Messiah (Acts 8:32–35). Isaiah prophesied how the Messiah would be mistreated: “his appearance was . . . disfigured beyond that of any human being” (Isaiah 52:14). He would be “a man of suffering, and familiar with pain” (53:3). This was so Christ could pay the penalty for our sins: “he was pierced for our transgressions,” and “the punishment that brought us peace was on him” (v. 5). This is the elusive peace for which the human race yearns and is at the very heart of the gospel Philip shared with the Ethiopian.
By: Tim Gustafson
Love’s Greatest Gift
We all, like sheep, have gone astray.
Isaiah 53:6
My son Geoff was leaving a store when he saw an abandoned walking frame (a mobility aid) on the ground. I hope there isn’t a person back there who needs help, he thought. He glanced behind the building and found a homeless man unconscious on the pavement.
Geoff roused him and asked if he was okay. “I’m trying to drink myself to death,” he responded. “My tent broke in a storm, and I lost everything. I don’t want to live.”
Geoff called a Christian rehabilitation ministry, and while they waited for help, he ran home briefly and brought the man his own camping tent. “What’s your name?” Geoff asked. “Geoffrey,” the homeless man answered, “with a G.” Geoff hadn’t mentioned his own name or its uncommon spelling. “Dad,” he told me later, “that could have been me.”
Geoff once struggled with substance abuse himself, and he helped the man because of the kindness he’d received from God. Isaiah the prophet used these words to anticipate God’s mercy to us in Jesus: “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6).
Christ, our Savior, didn’t leave us lost, alone, and hopeless in despair. He chose to identify with us and lift us in love, so that we may be set free to live anew in Him. There’s no greater gift.
By: James Banks
Reflect & Pray
Where would you be without Jesus? How can you be His hands and feet for someone in need?
Thank You, Jesus, for coming to rescue me. Help me to join in Your search-and-rescue mission and to share Your love with someone who needs You today.
Read Remade in the Image of Jesus .
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Tuesday, January 18, 2022
“It Is the Lord!”
Thomas answered and said to Him, "My Lord and my God!" —John 20:28
“Jesus said to her, ‘Give Me a drink’ ” (John 4:7). How many of us are expecting Jesus Christ to quench our thirst when we should be satisfying Him! We should be pouring out our lives, investing our total beings, not drawing on Him to satisfy us. “You shall be witnesses to Me…” (Acts 1:8). That means lives of pure, uncompromising, and unrestrained devotion to the Lord Jesus, which will be satisfying to Him wherever He may send us.
Beware of anything that competes with your loyalty to Jesus Christ. The greatest competitor of true devotion to Jesus is the service we do for Him. It is easier to serve than to pour out our lives completely for Him. The goal of the call of God is His satisfaction, not simply that we should do something for Him. We are not sent to do battle for God, but to be used by God in His battles. Are we more devoted to service than we are to Jesus Christ Himself?
Wisdom From Oswald Chambers
We are all based on a conception of importance, either our own importance, or the importance of someone else; Jesus tells us to go and teach based on the revelation of His importance. “All power is given unto Me.… Go ye therefore ….” So Send I You, 1325 R
Bible in a Year: Genesis 43-45; Matthew 12:24-50
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Tuesday, January 18, 2022
Five Minutes Til Midnight - #9137
There were two stories in that day's news that stuck out to me. The first troubling story said that Twinkies could be going bankrupt. Yeah, how could that be? I mean, you talk about too big to fail! But, alas, the company that was making Twinkies was talking about filing for Chapter 11. Maybe if I ate enough of them in the next couple of weeks, I could make a difference.
But, then, there was the other story that was legitimately sobering; sort of a mirror of the times we're living in. They just reset the Doomsday Clock at that point, and it's been reset to five minutes before midnight, and three minutes to midnight, and even closer now. See, since 1947, that symbol of how close humans may be to imminent destruction has been set by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Now, in 1947, it was set at seven minutes to midnight. Its "happy hour," I guess you could say, was 1991, when the Cold War thaw caused the Bulletin to set the clock at 17 minutes to midnight.
But recently, the dark shadows in our world have pushed the clock closer than ever to midnight.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Five Minutes Til Midnight."
Why do these world-watching scientists think it's so late? Well, the Japanese nuclear meltdown a few years ago, that didn't help. And the deployment of over 20,000 nuclear weapons they said "there was enough power to destroy this world's inhabitants many times over." And then they talked about "the prospect of nuclear weapons being used by some lone wolf, non-state actor, and environmental change." So many things.
Personally, I'm very glad that the hand that sets the real "doomsday clock" is the hand of Almighty God. I'll go with King David's declaration in our word for today from the Word of God in Psalm 31:14-15. He says, "I trust in You, O Lord; I say,' You are my God.' My times are in Your hands."
The symbolic "last days" language of the Book of Revelation describes a time when "a third of mankind was killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur" (Revelation 8:18). Peter said that "the day of God...will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat" (2 Peter 3:12). Those are hints of something cataclysmic, but it's hard to know just what it will actually look like in earth's final act.
But honestly, I'm not worried about it. Oh, I would be if I weren't sure about what happens when time is up, whether on this world's clock or, more personally, on the clock of my life. See, when Jesus came, He added a word to "life" - Eternal. As in life that nothing could take from you, unending, unloseable life, even beyond my life's final breath or my world's final moment.
Days before His brutal death on a cross, Jesus announced, "The hour has come...What shall I say? 'Father, save Me from this hour?' No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour" (John 12:23, 27). The reason He came - to die. The only Son of God. Why? Here's the Bible: "He Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree" so that "whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life" (1 Peter 2:24; John 3:16).
That's the love that captured my heart. He took my spiritual doom on Himself, He absorbed all the hell for all my sin. He did that for you, too. Three days later, He proved He's the only One who can give a person eternal life by blowing the doors off His grave.
So, God bursts the bubble of "I'll get to heaven by being good" when He describes eternal life as something that can't be earned. A gift, not wages you receive. That's "the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life." (Romans 6:23). There was the day I reached out by faith and took that gift He paid for with His life.
So there'll be no doomsday for me or anyone who has made the Savior their Savior. And maybe this is your day to do that; to reach out and say, "Jesus, I believe You were dying for my sins. Because You walked out of your grave, you're alive, walk into my life today."
Our website - it will help you realize how you can belong to Him for sure - it's ANewStory.com.
The clock on each of our lives is ticking. We can't see the clock. When it strikes our personal midnight, destination will be set by decision; the one you made about Jesus. I know where I'm going when it's midnight. I'm going Home. I hope you are too.