Max Lucado Daily: ALREADY DEFEATED - January 18, 2023
Satan appears in the garden at the beginning. He is cast into the fire in the end. He tempted David, he bewildered Saul, and waged an attack on Job. Serious students of Scripture must be serious about Satan. Jesus was.
“The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work” (1 John 3:8). He squared off against Satan in the wilderness. Jesus saw Satan not as a mythological image, not an invention of allegory. He saw the devil as a superhuman narcissist. When Jesus taught us to pray, he did not say, “Deliver us from nebulous negative emotions.” He said, “Deliver us from the evil one” (Matthew 6:13).
We play into the devil’s hand when we pretend he does not exist. The devil is a real devil. But—and this is huge—the devil is a defeated devil.
Song of Solomon 3
Restless in bed and sleepless through the night,
I longed for my lover.
I wanted him desperately. His absence was painful.
So I got up, went out and roved the city,
hunting through streets and down alleys.
I wanted my lover in the worst way!
I looked high and low, and didn’t find him.
And then the night watchmen found me
as they patrolled the darkened city.
“Have you seen my dear lost love?” I asked.
No sooner had I left them than I found him,
found my dear lost love.
I threw my arms around him and held him tight,
wouldn’t let him go until I had him home again,
safe at home beside the fire.
5 Oh, let me warn you, sisters in Jerusalem,
by the gazelles, yes, by all the wild deer:
Don’t excite love, don’t stir it up,
until the time is ripe—and you’re ready.
6-10 What’s this I see, approaching from the desert,
raising clouds of dust,
Filling the air with sweet smells
and pungent aromatics?
Look! It’s Solomon’s carriage,
carried and guarded by sixty soldiers,
sixty of Israel’s finest,
All of them armed to the teeth,
trained for battle,
ready for anything, anytime.
King Solomon once had a carriage built
from fine-grained Lebanon cedar.
He had it framed with silver and roofed with gold.
The cushions were covered with a purple fabric,
the interior lined with tooled leather.
11 Come and look, sisters in Jerusalem.
Oh, sisters of Zion, don’t miss this!
My King-Lover,
dressed and garlanded for his wedding,
his heart full, bursting with joy!
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, January 18, 2023
Today's Scripture
Ezekiel 14:1–8
Idols in Their Hearts
Some of the leaders of Israel approached me and sat down with me. God’s Message came to me: “Son of Man, these people have installed idols in their hearts. They have embraced the wickedness that will ruin them. Why should I even bother with their prayers? Therefore tell them, ‘The Message of God, the Master: All in Israel who install idols in their hearts and embrace the wickedness that will ruin them and still have the gall to come to a prophet, be on notice: I, God, will step in and personally answer them as they come dragging along their mob of idols. I am ready to go to work on the hearts of the house of Israel, all of whom have left me for their idols.’
6-8 “Therefore, say to the house of Israel: ‘God, the Master, says, Repent! Turn your backs on your no-god idols. Turn your backs on all your outrageous obscenities. To every last person from the house of Israel, including any of the resident aliens who live in Israel—all who turn their backs on me and embrace idols, who install the wickedness that will ruin them at the center of their lives and then have the gall to go to the prophet to ask me questions—I, God, will step in and give the answer myself. I’ll oppose those people to their faces, make an example of them—a warning lesson—and get rid of them so you will realize that I am God.
Insight
As part of their subjugation strategy, the Babylonians forcibly exiled Jewish royalty, military leaders, and skilled workers to Babylon (2 Kings 24:10–16; Daniel 1:1–5), including the prophet and priest Ezekiel. He was with the Judean exiles beside the Kebar River in Babylon when he started ministering (Ezekiel 1:1–3) to the Jews in exile (3:11) as well as to those still residing in Judah (12:10). After condemning the false prophets who taught that God wouldn’t punish His people for their sins (chs. 12–13), Ezekiel confronted the Jewish leaders for their hypocrisy and idolatry and urged God’s people to repent and turn from their idols (14:1–8). By: K. T. Sim
Heart Problem
The Sovereign Lord says: Repent! Turn from your idols and renounce all your detestable practices! Ezekiel 14:6
“Do you see it, brother Tim?” My friend, a Ghanaian pastor, flashed his torchlight on a carved object leaning against a mud hut. Quietly he said, “That is the village idol.” Each Tuesday evening, Pastor Sam traveled into the bush to share the Bible in this remote village.
In the book of Ezekiel, we see how idolatry plagued the people of Judah. When Jerusalem’s leaders came to see the prophet Ezekiel, God told him, “These men have set up idols in their hearts” (14:3). God wasn’t merely warning them against idols carved of wood and stone. He was showing them that idolatry is a problem of the heart. We all struggle with it.
Bible teacher Alistair Begg describes an idol as “anything other than God that we regard as essential to our peace, our self-image, our contentment, or our acceptability.” Even things that have the appearance of being noble can become idols to us. When we seek comfort or self-worth from anything other than the living God, we commit idolatry.
“Repent!” God said. “Turn from your idols and renounce all your detestable practices!” (v. 6). Israel proved incapable of doing this. Thankfully, God had the solution. Looking forward to the coming of Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit, He promised, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you” (36:26). We can’t do this alone. By: Tim Gustafson
Reflect & Pray
When stress hits you, where do you turn for comfort? What might you need to turn away from today?
Father, show me the idols in my heart. Then help me destroy them and live in Your love.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, January 18, 2023
“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 all have the trick of saying—If only I were not where I am!—If only I had not got the kind of people I have to live with! If our faith or our religion does not help us in the conditions we are in, we have either a further struggle to go through, or we had better abandon that faith and religion. The Shadow of an Agony, 1178 L
Bible in a Year: Genesis 43-45; Matthew 12:24-50
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, January 18, 2023
WHAT KEEPS CHRISTIANS TOGETHER - AND APART - #9398
There are not too many TV shows you remember many years later. But I still remember a TV documentary that was filmed during the Vietnam War. It was called "Same Mud, Same Blood." This correspondent traveled with this infantry company that was made up of mostly white soldiers from the Deep South and a few others who were African American. But the unit was commanded by an African American sergeant.
We're talking about a time when America was convulsing with civil rights conflicts, right? But the documentary told the amazing story of how a company that started out with huge racial walls between them became molded into this group of guys who would die for each other. After all, they were "same mud, same blood." There was something about being in a war together that brought people close together who might otherwise have never had anything in common.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "What Keeps Christians Together - and Apart."
Mission glue - that's what held that racially mixed, potentially racially divided group of soldiers together. They had a life-or-death mission that brought them together and kept them together. And so do we; those of us who belong to Jesus Christ. But take away our focus on that mission, and we're back to the little things that divide us.
We can see that portrayed in our word for today from the Word of God in Philippians 4:2-3. Paul is writing about a controversy that was ripping up the church in Philippi because two women named Euodia and Syntyche, women who had been with him in many battles for the Lord were now fighting with each other. He said, "I plead with you, Euodia, and I plead with Syntyche to agree with each other in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you, loyal yokefellows, help these women who have contended at my side in the cause of the Gospel...whose names are in the Book of Life."
So, here were two women who had once been close together, going out on spiritual combat missions with Sergeant Paul. Their differences didn't matter when they were all focused on the spiritually dying people whose lives they were fighting for in the cause of the Gospel. But somewhere along the way, they lost their focus on their eternal rescue mission. They started to focus on each other, and they fell apart. Do you know how many churches have fallen apart that way? How many ministries? How many Christian relationships?
It just seems like so many Christians...we've forgotten our mission - the people who don't yet know our Jesus, who've never had a day with a Savior, who have no hope for eternity without Him. Our focus is supposed to be outward on the lost, not inward on ourselves. When we've got our hearts and our lives full of rescuing dying people, our differences are suddenly nowhere near as important as the mission and we come together! We become an answer to our Savior's prayer for us on the eve of His crucifixion - "Lord, may they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that You sent Me" (John 17:23).
But when we stray from our life-or-death mission, we start turning on each other. We start focusing on trivial things, and getting aggravated with the differences. We fall apart because suddenly what's really big has ended up being small to us - and what's really small, ends up looking really big.
As Paul once pleaded with former warriors in the battle to come together, I believe Jesus is pleading with us to get our eyes off each other and on the people who are dying without Him all around us. It is no one other than Satan who distracts us from our rescue mission so he can keep his prisoners. It's our mission that forces us to come together, to fight our common enemy, to fight for our common Savior.
We're same blood, remember? The blood of the Son of God!