Max Lucado Daily: WIDER AND DEEPER - October 26, 2023
Each day seems to bring a new way for us to wander off course. The Christian life is not difficult; it’s impossible. Need proof? Consider the Everest-level standard set in the Sermon on the Mount.
“Whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment” (Matthew 5:22). Or “Whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (verse 28). “Whoever slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other” (verse 39). “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you” (verse 44). Exactly how can we fulfill these commands? What hope do we have?
The same hope Jacob did: grace. “Though sin is shown to be wide and deep, thank God his grace is wider and deeper still!” (Romans 5:20 PHILLIPS). God never gives up on you.
Isaiah 3
Jerusalem on Its Last Legs
1–7 3 The Master, God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
is emptying Jerusalem and Judah
Of all the basic necessities,
plain bread and water to begin with.
He’s withdrawing police and protection,
judges and courts,
pastors and teachers,
captains and generals,
doctors and nurses,
and, yes, even the repairmen and jacks-of-all-trades.
He says, “I’ll put little kids in charge of the city.
Schoolboys and schoolgirls will order everyone around.
People will be at each other’s throats,
stabbing one another in the back:
Neighbor against neighbor, young against old,
the no-account against the well-respected.
One brother will grab another and say,
‘You look like you’ve got a head on your shoulders.
Do something!
Get us out of this mess.’
And he’ll say, ‘Me? Not me! I don’t have a clue.
Don’t put me in charge of anything.’
8–9 “Jerusalem’s on its last legs.
Judah is soon down for the count.
Everything people say and do
is at cross-purposes with God,
a slap in my face.
Brazen in their depravity,
they flaunt their sins like degenerate Sodom.
Doom to their eternal souls! They’ve made their bed;
now they’ll sleep in it.
10–11 “Reassure the righteous
that their good living will pay off.
But doom to the wicked! Disaster!
Everything they did will be done to them.
12 “Skinny kids terrorize my people.
Silly girls bully them around.
My dear people! Your leaders are taking you down a blind alley.
They’re sending you off on a wild-goose chase.”
A City Brought to Her Knees by Her Sorrows
13–15 God enters the courtroom.
He takes his place at the bench to judge his people.
God calls for order in the court,
hauls the leaders of his people into the dock:
“You’ve played havoc with this country.
Your houses are stuffed with what you’ve stolen from the poor.
What is this anyway? Stomping on my people,
grinding the faces of the poor into the dirt?”
That’s what the Master,
God-of-the-Angel-Armies, says.
16–17 God says, “Zion women are stuck-up,
prancing around in their high heels,
Making eyes at all the men in the street,
swinging their hips,
Tossing their hair,
gaudy and garish in cheap jewelry.”
The Master will fix it so those Zion women
will all turn bald—
Scabby, bald-headed women.
The Master will do it.
18–23 The time is coming when the Master will strip them of their fancy baubles—the dangling earrings, anklets and bracelets, combs and mirrors and silk scarves, diamond brooches and pearl necklaces, the rings on their fingers and the rings on their toes, the latest fashions in hats, exotic perfumes and aphrodisiacs, gowns and capes, all the world’s finest in fabrics and design.
24 Instead of wearing seductive scents,
these women are going to smell like rotting cabbages;
Instead of modeling flowing gowns,
they’ll be sporting rags;
Instead of their stylish hairdos,
scruffy heads;
Instead of beauty marks,
scabs and scars.
25–26 Your finest fighting men will be killed,
your soldiers left dead on the battlefield.
The entrance gate to Zion will be clotted
with people mourning their dead—
A city stooped under the weight of her loss,
brought to her knees by her sorrows.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Thursday, October 26, 2023
Today's Scripture
Isaiah 61:1–4
Announce Freedom to All Captives
1–7 61 The Spirit of God, the Master, is on me
because God anointed me.
He sent me to preach good news to the poor,
heal the heartbroken,
Announce freedom to all captives,
pardon all prisoners.
God sent me to announce the year of his grace—
a celebration of God’s destruction of our enemies—
and to comfort all who mourn,
To care for the needs of all who mourn in Zion,
give them bouquets of roses instead of ashes,
Messages of joy instead of news of doom,
a praising heart instead of a languid spirit.
Rename them “Oaks of Righteousness”
planted by God to display his glory.
They’ll rebuild the old ruins,
raise a new city out of the wreckage.
They’ll start over on the ruined cities,
take the rubble left behind and make it new.
Insight
“The year of the Lord’s favor” (Isaiah 61:2) is a reference to the year of Jubilee, established by God in His instructions to Moses (Leviticus 25:8–28). After every six years of farming, the people were to let their fields lie fallow for a sabbath year (vv. 2–7). God intended Jubilee to take place after every seven sets of sabbath years—after every forty-nine years. During Jubilee, all slaves were to be freed, all debts forgiven, and land that had been sold was to be returned to its original owners. Scholars debate how often Jubilee was practiced as there is little mention of it in Scripture or other historical writings.
Jesus read from Isaiah 61:1–4 in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:16–19). At that time, He said, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (v. 21). Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law the people disregarded. By: Tim Gustafson
Beauty for Ashes
The Lord has anointed me . . . to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes. Isaiah 61:1, 3
In the aftermath of the Marshall Fire, the most destructive fire in Colorado history, one ministry offered to help families search through the ashes for valuable items. Family members mentioned precious objects they hoped were still preserved. Very little was. One man spoke tenderly of his wedding ring. He’d placed it on his dresser in the upstairs bedroom. The house now gone, its contents had charred or melted into a single layer of debris at the basement level. Searchers looked for the ring in that same corner where the bedroom had been—without success.
The prophet Isaiah wrote mournfully of the impending destruction of Jerusalem, which would be leveled. Likewise, there are times we feel the life we’ve built has been reduced to ashes. We feel we have nothing left, emotionally and spiritually. But Isaiah offers hope: “He [God] has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted . . . to comfort all who mourn” (Isaiah 61:1–2). God converts our tragedy into glory: “[He will] bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes” (v. 3). He promises to “rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated” (v. 4).
At that Marshall Fire site, one woman searched the ashes on the opposite side. There, still in its case, she unearthed the husband’s wedding ring. In your despair, God reaches into your ashes and pulls out the one truly precious thing. You. By: Kenneth Petersen
Reflect & Pray
What experience in your life made you feel you had lost everything? How did God pull you out of the difficulty?
Dear God, please turn my ashes into beauty.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, October 26, 2023
What is a Missionary?
Jesus said to them again, "…As the Father has sent Me, I also send you." —John 20:21
A missionary is someone sent by Jesus Christ just as He was sent by God. The great controlling factor is not the needs of people, but the command of Jesus. The source of our inspiration in our service for God is behind us, not ahead of us. The tendency today is to put the inspiration out in front— to sweep everything together in front of us and make it conform to our definition of success. But in the New Testament the inspiration is put behind us, and is the Lord Jesus Himself. The goal is to be true to Him— to carry out His plans.
Personal attachment to the Lord Jesus and to His perspective is the one thing that must not be overlooked. In missionary work the great danger is that God’s call will be replaced by the needs of the people, to the point that human sympathy for those needs will absolutely overwhelm the meaning of being sent by Jesus. The needs are so enormous, and the conditions so difficult, that every power of the mind falters and fails. We tend to forget that the one great reason underneath all missionary work is not primarily the elevation of the people, their education, nor their needs, but is first and foremost the command of Jesus Christ— “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations…” (Matthew 28:19).
When looking back on the lives of men and women of God, the tendency is to say, “What wonderfully keen and intelligent wisdom they had, and how perfectly they understood all that God wanted!” But the keen and intelligent mind behind them was the mind of God, not human wisdom at all. We give credit to human wisdom when we should give credit to the divine guidance of God being exhibited through childlike people who were “foolish” enough to trust God’s wisdom and His supernatural equipment.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
If there is only one strand of faith amongst all the corruption within us, God will take hold of that one strand. Not Knowing Whither, 888 L
Bible in a Year: Jeremiah 9-11; 1 Timothy 6
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, October 26, 2023
Plowing the Road for Your Journey - #9599
I had been scheduled to speak at a winter retreat in Pennsylvania. I lived in New Jersey. It was the kind of thing where I could drive to Well, that day, winter decided it was time to do some serious wintering. We had heavy snow all day long and I knew it was going to be a very exciting drive along Interstate 80 out to Pennsylvania.
Actually, it turned out to be much easier than I expected. Much of the way I managed to get behind snow plows. Yeah, they were out, and they were doing a good job, and it was a whole lot easier because I was right behind them. So, where I was driving, the plows had already been. Now, if you have a snow plow ahead of you, you're a lot less likely to end up in a ditch.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Plowing the Road for Your Journey."
Our word for today from the Word of God is in John 10, and we're going to begin reading at verse 3. It's that great Good Shepherd passage. It says, "He calls His own sheep by name and He leads them out. And when He has brought out all His own, He goes on ahead of them." I love that!
These verses took on a very personal meaning for my wife and me some years ago. We were getting ready to leave the city of Chicago, where we had lived for many years, and we were going to move to northern New Jersey to begin a ministry in the New York area. And I'll tell you what, we were stepping into a total unknown. We had no office, no supporters, we had nobody that we knew, no friends, no kids to work with, and no staff. Other than that, everything was ready for us. Well, in Chicago, I knew people, I knew how to get things done, I knew what number to call, I knew where the resources were, I knew where all the roads were. New Jersey, New York-a total unknown.
And then, as we asked the Lord for some reassurance, guess what? He gave us John 10:4. I just read it. I like that because you know, the troopers say that on a CB before they sign off - everything's under control. They go, "10-4 good buddy." Well, this is the "10-4 good buddy" verse. It says, "When He brings out all His sheep, He goes on ahead of them." We learned that the Shepherd always goes where he is about to take his sheep. He gets there before you do.
The Shepherd also makes sure that there's going to be food there, no wolves, no danger of walking off the edge. Kind of like that snow plow I was following, plowing the path in front of me, making it a lot safer.
And when we got there, boy did we find that out! The apartment we needed, the friends we needed, the office we needed, the open arms that we needed. Everywhere we went we found the footsteps of our Shepherd. And so will you. He promised.
Anywhere Jesus takes you; He will always get there ahead of you and get it ready. It may be that fear is holding you back right now from God's next step for you. Fear of the "might's" and the "could's" and the "what if's." Maybe you can't go any farther in Christ without taking some risks; trying some things you've never tried, or leaving some things you've never done without, going into situations that are unfamiliar to you, or reaching some people whose reactions you can't be sure of. Maybe you're in a transition time and you're about to move from one season or one stage to another.
There's a wonderful answer to the fear that spreads that shadow on your future, and it's in this verse, "the Shepherd goes ahead of you." How often I've claimed that verse, the big things and the little things. I've gone into offices and found the Lord had gotten there ahead of me, into meetings, taxi cabs, doctor's offices, ministry situations. You can count on it. He promised!
The Lord will never lead you anywhere that He has not first scouted and prepared for you. The snow plow clears the road ahead of you, and so does the Shepherd. And because He does, my friend, you will never end up stuck.