Max Lucado Daily: WHAT WILL YOU BE EATING? - November 22, 2023
Jesus said the way you give to others is the way God will give to you. It’s as if God sends you to purchase your neighbor’s groceries. “Whatever you get your neighbor, get also for yourself.” I’m crazy about double-chocolate ice cream, so I buy my neighbor double-chocolate ice cream.
But suppose your neighbor’s trash blows into your yard. He’s in no rush. He says, “Oh I’ll get to it next week.” And you’re just about to have a talk when God reminds you, “Time to go to the market and buy your neighbor’s groceries.” You march right past the double-chocolate ice cream toward the okra and rice. You drive back and drop the sack in the lap of your lazy, good-for-nothing neighbor. “Have a good dinner.”
And then the next time you go to your pantry, guess what you find? So what’ll you be eating? Chocolate ice cream or okra? It’s up to you.
Isaiah 14
Now You Are Nothing
1–2 14 But not so with Jacob. God will have compassion on Jacob. Once again he’ll choose Israel. He’ll establish them in their own country. Outsiders will be attracted and throw their lot in with Jacob. The nations among whom they lived will actually escort them back home, and then Israel will pay them back by making slaves of them, men and women alike, possessing them as slaves in God’s country, capturing those who had captured them, ruling over those who had abused them.
3–4 When God has given you time to recover from the abuse and trouble and harsh servitude that you had to endure, you can amuse yourselves by taking up this satire, a taunt against the king of Babylon:
4–6 Can you believe it? The tyrant is gone!
The tyranny is over!
God has broken the rule of the wicked,
the power of the bully-rulers
That crushed many people.
A relentless rain of cruel outrage
Established a violent rule of anger
rife with torture and persecution.
7–10 And now it’s over, the whole earth quietly at rest.
Burst into song! Make the rafters ring!
Ponderosa pine trees are happy,
giant Lebanon cedars are relieved, saying,
“Since you’ve been cut down,
there’s no one around to cut us down.”
And the underworld dead are all excited,
preparing to welcome you when you come.
Getting ready to greet you are the ghostly dead,
all the famous names of earth.
All the buried kings of the nations
will stand up on their thrones
With well-prepared speeches,
royal invitations to death:
“Now you are as nothing as we are!
Make yourselves at home with us dead folks!”
11 This is where your pomp and fine music led you, Babylon,
to your underworld private chambers,
A king-size mattress of maggots for repose
and a quilt of crawling worms for warmth.
12 What a comedown this, O Babylon!
Daystar! Son of Dawn!
Flat on your face in the underworld mud,
you, famous for flattening nations!
13–14 You said to yourself,
“I’ll climb to heaven.
I’ll set my throne
over the stars of God.
I’ll run the assembly of angels
that meets on sacred Mount Zaphon.
I’ll climb to the top of the clouds.
I’ll take over as King of the Universe!”
15–17 But you didn’t make it, did you?
Instead of climbing up, you came down—
Down with the underground dead,
down to the abyss of the Pit.
People will stare and muse:
“Can this be the one
Who terrorized earth and its kingdoms,
turned earth to a moonscape,
Wasted its cities,
shut up his prisoners to a living death?”
18–20 Other kings get a decent burial,
honored with eulogies and placed in a tomb.
But you’re dumped in a ditch unburied,
like a stray dog or cat,
Covered with rotting bodies,
murdered and indigent corpses.
Your dead body desecrated, mutilated—
no state funeral for you!
You’ve left your land in ruins,
left a legacy of massacre.
The progeny of your evil life
will never be named. Oblivion!
21 Get a place ready to slaughter the sons of the wicked
and wipe out their father’s line.
Unthinkable that they should own a square foot of land
or desecrate the face of the world with their cities!
22–23 “I will confront them”—Decree of God-of-the-Angel-Armies—“and strip Babylon of name and survivors, children and grandchildren.” God’s Decree. “I’ll make it a worthless swamp and give it as a prize to the hedgehog. And then I’ll bulldoze it out of existence.” Decree of God-of-the-Angel-Armies.
Who Could Ever Cancel Such Plans?
24–27 God-of-the-Angel-Armies speaks:
“Exactly as I planned,
it will happen.
Following my blueprints,
it will take shape.
I will shatter the Assyrian who trespasses my land
and stomp him into the dirt on my mountains.
I will ban his taking and making of slaves
and lift the weight of oppression from all shoulders.”
This is the plan,
planned for the whole earth,
And this is the hand that will do it,
reaching into every nation.
God-of-the-Angel-Armies has planned it.
Who could ever cancel such plans?
His is the hand that’s reached out.
Who could brush it aside?
28–31 In the year King Ahaz died, this Message came:
Hold it, Philistines! It’s too soon to celebrate
the defeat of your cruel oppressor.
From the death throes of that snake a worse snake will come,
and from that, one even worse.
The poor won’t have to worry.
The needy will escape the terror.
But you Philistines will be plunged into famine,
and those who don’t starve, God will kill.
Wail and howl, proud city!
Fall prostrate in fear, Philistia!
On the northern horizon, smoke from burned cities,
the wake of a brutal, disciplined destroyer.
32 What does one say to
outsiders who ask questions?
Tell them, “God has established Zion.
Those in need and in trouble find refuge in her.”
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, November 22, 2023
Today's Scripture
Philippians 2:12–16
Rejoicing Together
12–13 What I’m getting at, friends, is that you should simply keep on doing what you’ve done from the beginning. When I was living among you, you lived in responsive obedience. Now that I’m separated from you, keep it up. Better yet, redouble your efforts. Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and sensitive before God. That energy is God’s energy, an energy deep within you, God himself willing and working at what will give him the most pleasure.
14–16 Do everything readily and cheerfully—no bickering, no second-guessing allowed! Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society. Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God. Carry the light-giving Message into the night so I’ll have good cause to be proud of you on the day that Christ returns. You’ll be living proof that I didn’t go to all this work for nothing.
Insight
As believers in Jesus, we’re to “shine among [nonbelievers] like stars in the sky” (Philippians 2:15) as we obey the Great Commission: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19–20). Christ said, “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (John 9:5). He brought light into the world, yet many people still loved the darkness (evil) (3:19). Knowing He’d be with His followers on earth for only a short time, He called them (and all of us) to spread the good news of the gospel—to be “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14). As “people of the light” (Luke 16:8), we have the Holy Spirit to help us “not run or labor in vain” (Philippians 2:16). By: Alyson Kieda
Shining Stars
You will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life. Philippians 2:15–16
The first thing I noticed about the city was its gambling outlets. Next, its cannabis shops, “adult” stores, and giant billboards for opportunistic lawyers making money off others’ mishaps. While I had visited many shady cities before, this one seemed to reach a new low.
My mood brightened, however, when I spoke to a taxi driver the next morning. “I ask God every day to send me the people He wants me to help,” he said. “Gambling addicts, prostitutes, people from broken homes tell me their problems in tears. I stop the car. I listen. I pray for them. This is my ministry.”
After describing Jesus’ descent into our fallen world (Philippians 2:5–8), the apostle Paul gives believers in Christ a calling. As we pursue God’s will (v. 13) and hold to the “word of life”—the gospel (v. 16)—we’ll be “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation” who “shine . . . like stars in the sky” (v. 15). Like that taxi driver, we’re to bring Jesus’ light into the darkness.
A believer in Christ has only to live faithfully in order to change the world, historian Christopher Dawson said, because in that very act of living “there is contained all the mystery of divine life.” Let’s ask God’s Spirit to empower us to live faithfully as Jesus’ people, shining His light in the world’s darkest places. By: Sheridan Voysey
Reflect & Pray
How can you focus on Christ today, rather than the world’s evil? How can you shine His light today in your neighborhood?
Dear Jesus, thank You for being the Light of the World who brings me out of darkness.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, November 22, 2023
Shallow and Profound
Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. —1 Corinthians 10:31
Beware of allowing yourself to think that the shallow aspects of life are not ordained by God; they are ordained by Him equally as much as the profound. We sometimes refuse to be shallow, not out of our deep devotion to God but because we wish to impress other people with the fact that we are not shallow. This is a sure sign of spiritual pride. We must be careful, for this is how contempt for others is produced in our lives. And it causes us to be a walking rebuke to other people because they are more shallow than we are. Beware of posing as a profound person— God became a baby.
To be shallow is not a sign of being sinful, nor is shallowness an indication that there is no depth to your life at all— the ocean has a shore. Even the shallow things of life, such as eating and drinking, walking and talking, are ordained by God. These are all things our Lord did. He did them as the Son of God, and He said, “A disciple is not above his teacher…” (Matthew 10:24).
We are safeguarded by the shallow things of life. We have to live the surface, commonsense life in a commonsense way. Then when God gives us the deeper things, they are obviously separated from the shallow concerns. Never show the depth of your life to anyone but God. We are so nauseatingly serious, so desperately interested in our own character and reputation, we refuse to behave like Christians in the shallow concerns of life.
Make a determination to take no one seriously except God. You may find that the first person you must be the most critical with, as being the greatest fraud you have ever known, is yourself.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We have no right to judge where we should be put, or to have preconceived notions as to what God is fitting us for. God engineers everything; wherever He puts us, our one great aim is to pour out a whole-hearted devotion to Him in that particular work. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” My Utmost for His Highest, April 23, 773 L
Bible in a Year: Ezekiel 18-19; James 4
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, November 22, 2023
Thanksgiving Goodbyes - #9618
Millions of Americans are on the move right now. It's part of the annual Thanksgiving migration. They'll get to experience turkey on the table today and turkeys in those traffic jams!
My friend Bev said that she's baked ten pumpkin pies. Yeah! Tons of folks will watch Macy's big balloons - and then later feel like one of those balloons after pigging out. And tomorrow, stores will be stormed with people that camped out in parking lots just so they could get that coveted Black Friday bargain.
I'm thinking about the people who aren't here this Thanksgiving. Some friends who have slipped into eternity recently. Their passing reminded me of my own mortality - and, in some cases, how quickly it can all be over.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Thanksgiving Goodbyes."
Doing Thanksgiving against that backdrop has made one word loom very big - cherish. My big dictionary says "cherish" means to "hold dear; treat with tenderness and affection; to keep or guard carefully; to make much of."
So this Thanksgiving weekend, remembering how fragile life is and how close eternity is, I want to cherish my dear ones. I always love them, but I'm thinking more about what it means to "hold them dear," to "treat them with tenderness and affection," to "make much of them."
There was one Thanksgiving that was like all the others, where my wife and I stood and prayed together over our family. By the next Thanksgiving it was just me. I have so many blessings and so many kindnesses to thank my family for, so many strong points that I need to affirm in them. And some things to apologize for. To cherish someone is to say, as God says, to "live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us" (Ephesians 5:2). Cherishing - giving me up for them.
And I'm cherishing my days a little more, too, this mortality-shaped Thanksgiving. Like the Bible says to do in our Word for today from the Word of God, Psalm 90:10-12. "Our days...quickly pass, and we fly away...Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom."
Weeks, months, and even years, just seem to fly off the calendar. Right? I'm pretty sure there are only about, like, a hundred days now between Christmases. There are just zero days to waste. Each new day is a treasure from God to be invested, not just spent. I need to sit with Him before I hear any other voices and find out His desires for this day, "the day the Lord has made" the Bible says.(Psalm 118:24)
One other "cherish" for me this Thanksgiving - my destination. Heaven seems a little closer with each friend or loved one, and especially the love of my life. They are there. It's the place Jesus said He was going Home to prepare for those who belong to Him. All the earth-stuff that we cling to so tightly? It's just so trivial. Because the Bible says "our citizenship is in heaven" (Philippians 3:20) and we're really (it says) "aliens and strangers in the world" (1 Peter 2:11). This isn't home. It's Hotel Earth.
When I've been away, I love to come home. After all is said and done, home isn't so much a place; it's those people I love who wait for you there. Knowing each day I'm one day closer to eternity, I cherish the eternal destination Jesus made possible. It cost Him His life! He made it possible by His awful death but His awesome resurrection. It's really not so much because it's such an amazing place. But because the One who loves me - Jesus - is waiting for me there.
What great peace it is to know beyond any shadow of a doubt you're going to heaven when you die. You can if you know Jesus. And if you're not sure you do, would you tell Him this Thanksgiving, "I'm yours!"
Go to our website. I think it will help you know how to belong to Him. It's ANewStory.com. Home for this Thanksgiving? It's a relationship you were made for and the love you were made to experience. His name is Jesus. This Thanksgiving, come on home.