Max Lucado Daily: THE DEVASTATION OF SIN - October 20, 2025
Don’t think for a second that lust has no consequences. And don’t think for a second that the consequences won’t lead to scandal. A secret sin never remains secret. Lust will take you further than you wanted to go, keep you longer than you wanted to stay, and cost you more than you ever intended to pay. Envision the worst possible outcome of infidelity and be assured, Satan is plotting to deliver it.
Even after you have turned away from lust, the filth lingers in your system. And long after the sin is forgiven, the soot of the sin lingers. And long after alcoholism is forgiven, the thirst lingers. Long after the embezzlement is forgiven, employment opportunities are rare. Long after the affair is over, the embarrassment hovers. Even the psalmist wrote: “Even my bones are not healthy because of my sin” (Psalm 38:3 NCV).
Tame Your Thoughts: Three Tools to Renew Your Mind and Transform Your Life
Numbers 23
Balaam said, “Build me seven altars here, and then prepare seven bulls and seven rams.”
2 Balak did it. Then Balaam and Balak sacrificed a bull and a ram on each of the altars.
3 Balaam instructed Balak: “Stand watch here beside your Whole-Burnt-Offering while I go off by myself. Maybe God will come and meet with me. Whatever he shows or tells me, I’ll report to you.” Then he went off by himself.
4 God did meet with Balaam. Balaam said, “I’ve set up seven altars and offered a bull and a ram on each altar.”
5 Then God gave Balaam a message: “Return to Balak and give him this message.”
6–10 He went back and found him stationed beside his Whole-Burnt-Offering and with him all the nobles of Moab. Then Balaam spoke his message-oracle:
Balak led me here from Aram,
the king of Moab all the way from the eastern mountains.
“Go, curse Jacob for me;
go, damn Israel.”
How can I curse whom God has not cursed?
How can I damn whom God has not damned?
From rock pinnacles I see them,
from hilltops I survey them:
Look! a people camping off by themselves,
thinking themselves outsiders among nations.
But who could ever count the dust of Jacob
or take a census of cloud-of-dust Israel?
I want to die like these right-living people!
I want an end just like theirs!
11 Balak said to Balaam, “What’s this? I brought you here to curse my enemies, and all you’ve done is bless them.”
12 Balaam answered, “Don’t I have to be careful to say what God gives me to say?”
13 Balak said to him, “Go with me to another place from which you can only see the outskirts of their camp—you won’t be able to see the whole camp. From there, curse them for my sake.”
14 So he took him to Watchmen’s Meadow at the top of Pisgah. He built seven altars there and offered a bull and a ram on each altar.
15 Balaam said to Balak, “Take up your station here beside your Whole-Burnt-Offering while I meet with him over there.”
16 God met with Balaam and gave him a message. He said, “Return to Balak and give him the message.”
17–24 Balaam returned and found him stationed beside his Whole-Burnt-Offering and the nobles of Moab with him. Balak said to him, “What did God say?” Then Balaam spoke his message-oracle:
On your feet, Balak. Listen,
listen carefully son of Zippor:
God is not man, one given to lies,
and not a son of man changing his mind.
Does he speak and not do what he says?
Does he promise and not come through?
I was brought here to bless;
and now he’s blessed—how can I change that?
He has no bone to pick with Jacob,
he sees nothing wrong with Israel.
God is with them,
and they’re with him, shouting praises to their King.
God brought them out of Egypt,
rampaging like a wild ox.
No magic spells can bind Jacob,
no incantations can hold back Israel.
People will look at Jacob and Israel and say,
“What a great thing has God done!”
Look, a people rising to its feet, stretching like a lion,
a king-of-the-beasts, aroused,
Unsleeping, unresting until its hunt is over
and it’s eaten and drunk its fill.
25 Balak said to Balaam, “Well, if you can’t curse them, at least don’t bless them.”
26 Balaam replied to Balak, “Didn’t I tell you earlier: ‘All God speaks, and only what he speaks, I speak’?”
27–28 Balak said to Balaam, “Please, let me take you to another place; maybe we can find the right place in God’s eyes where you’ll be able to curse them for me.” So Balak took Balaam to the top of Peor, with a vista over the Jeshimon (Wasteland).
29 Balaam said to Balak, “Build seven altars for me here and prepare seven bulls and seven rams for sacrifice.”
30 Balak did it and presented an offering of a bull and a ram on each of the altars.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Monday, October 20, 2025
by James Banks
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
Jonah 4:5-11
But Jonah just left. He went out of the city to the east and sat down in a sulk. He put together a makeshift shelter of leafy branches and sat there in the shade to see what would happen to the city.
6 God arranged for a broad-leafed tree to spring up. It grew over Jonah to cool him off and get him out of his angry sulk. Jonah was pleased and enjoyed the shade. Life was looking up.
7–8 But then God sent a worm. By dawn of the next day, the worm had bored into the shade tree and it withered away. The sun came up and God sent a hot, blistering wind from the east. The sun beat down on Jonah’s head and he started to faint. He prayed to die: “I’m better off dead!”
9 Then God said to Jonah, “What right do you have to get angry about this shade tree?”
Jonah said, “Plenty of right. It’s made me angry enough to die!”
10–11 God said, “What’s this? How is it that you can change your feelings from pleasure to anger overnight about a mere shade tree that you did nothing to get? You neither planted nor watered it. It grew up one night and died the next night. So, why can’t I likewise change what I feel about Nineveh from anger to pleasure, this big city of more than 120,000 childlike people who don’t yet know right from wrong, to say nothing of all the innocent animals?”
Today's Insights
Jonah 4 shows just how hardened the prophet’s heart had become. While it’s true that the people of Nineveh were far from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we see that Jonah himself was also very far from God’s heart. Having been God’s instrument to bring about a national revival in Nineveh (3:5-10), Jonah was angry at Him for rescuing his enemies. God’s love for Nineveh could’ve been a learning opportunity for him, but his heart was so filled with hate that all he could feel was his own rage. Still God loved and cared for the prophet (4:6), just as He loves and cares for us in spite of our hardened hearts.
Great Enough to Care
The Lord said, . . . “Should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh?” Jonah 4:10-11
How could God possibly care about all these people? The thought hit me as I stepped off a busy train platform in a crowded city, thousands of miles from home. I was a teenager traveling abroad for the first time, and I was overwhelmed by the size of the world around me. I felt small by comparison and wondered how God could love so many people.
I had yet to understand the broad reach of God’s perfect love. In Scripture, the prophet Jonah couldn’t fathom this either. When Jonah finally obeyed God’s call to preach repentance to the city of Nineveh, the capital of the brutal Assyrian Empire that had oppressed his native Israel, he didn’t want God to forgive them. But the city did repent, and when God didn’t destroy them, Jonah was angry. God provided shelter for Jonah through a fast-growing plant but then took his shade away, which angered him all the more. Jonah complained, but God responded, “You have been concerned about this plant . . . . And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people?” (Jonah 4:10-11).
God’s so great that He’s able to care deeply for those who are far from Him. His love goes to the lengths of the cross and empty tomb of Jesus to meet our ultimate need. His greatness manifests itself in goodness, and He longs to draw us near.
Reflect & Pray
How does it comfort you to know God cares for you? How will you respond to His love?
Loving God, thank You for coming to save me. Please help me to love others like You do.
For further study, read The Pouting Prophet.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, October 20, 2025
Is God’s Will My Will?
It is God’s will that you should be sanctified. — 1 Thessalonians 4:3
My sanctification isn’t a question of whether God is willing to sanctify me. The question is, Am I willing? Am I willing to let God do in me all that has been made possible by the atonement? Am I willing to let the life of Jesus Christ manifest itself in my mortal flesh?
Beware of saying, “I’m longing to be sanctified.” Stop longing and treat it as a transaction, a simple matter of asking and receiving. Ask God for the Holy Spirit on the basis of Luke 11:13: “How much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” Then, in implicit faith, receive Jesus Christ to be made sanctification to you, and the great marvel of the atonement will be made real in you.
All that Jesus Christ made possible is mine because of one thing and one thing only: the free, loving gift of God. My attitude as a saved and sanctified soul must be one of profound, humble holiness. (There’s no such thing as proud holiness.) I recognize what Jesus has done for me with agonizing repentance and a sense of unspeakable shame and degradation. I have the amazing realization that even when I cared nothing for God, his love for me was so great that he completed everything for my salvation and sanctification.
No wonder Paul says that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39). Sanctification makes me one with Jesus Christ, and in him one with God. This is done only through the atonement of Christ, which is the cause of my holiness. Never confuse the cause and the effect. My holiness and obedience and service and prayer are all effects—the outcome of speechless thanks and adoration for the sanctification worked in me by the atonement.
Isaiah 59-61; 2 Thessalonians 3
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
Jesus Christ reveals, not an embarrassed God, not a confused God, not a God who stands apart from the problems, but One who stands in the thick of the whole thing with man.
Disciples Indeed, 388 L
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, October 20, 2025
THE UGLY BENEATH THE BEAUTIFUL - #10116
Our friends John and Marie have a lovely family area in their home that they call the Great Room. And it really is a great room - big fireplace, lots of comfortable couch and chairs, tastefully decorated. It's just one of those rooms that people are drawn into like a magnet, and you don't want to leave. And on the wall near the fireplace, a beautiful painting. That's new. See, it hasn't always been there...until the wall cracked. Now, they tell me it was some kind of water damage, but it has left a really ugly hole in the wall. But who would know? It's covered up with this lovely painting!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Ugly Beneath the Beautiful."
Now, it's true that no one can see the ugly spot. It's successfully covered up by something beautiful. It keeps anyone from knowing about the ugly, but not even a Rembrandt can repair that damage!
Most of us have something ugly that we would just as soon not have anyone see. There's ugly stuff in our past, in our heart, in the closets of our life. The secrets we don't want anyone to know about - the dark side we try to conceal: those weaknesses, those failures, the mistakes that betray the wonderful view that we portray to the world.
See, we cover the ugly with a great personality, or with religious activity, or spirituality, with our image, with good things we do. But no matter how impressive what we hang on the wall is, the damage - the holes inside - they're still there. God says that one day, all the cover-ups are going to come off the wall, and we will be judged on the basis of the ugly on the inside, not the beauty on the outside.
That's our word for today from the Word of God in Romans 2:16. It talks about "the day when God will judge men's secrets through Jesus Christ." That's the junk we've successfully concealed from others, maybe even those closest to us. But it's totally known to God. And until the sin inside is removed - not just covered up - we are in the danger zone with the One who will judge us based on His knowledge of every secret.
In the next chapter in the Bible, God tells us that no one is exempt from the reality of a sinful heart or of the consequences of a self-run life. He says, "All have sinned," even the most religious person among us. It says, "and they fall short of the glory of God." There is no way we can make it into God's heaven with this sin we all carry inside, no matter how much religion we cover it with. It sounds pretty hopeless until you read on.
Yes, we've all missed it with God, but it goes on to say, "we are justified" (that means made right with God) "justified freely by His grace through the redemption" (or the rescue) "that came by Christ Jesus." God presented Him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in His blood. Now, we couldn't do anything to fix our sin problem, but God, who is the One we've sinned against, reached out in love by sending His Son to die our death penalty - to remove the stain of the sin that has haunted us and condemned us for so long.
And today, God's waiting to go deep inside you where all that sin is, and all the guilt and the shame, the secrets, and clean it all up. He wants to forgive it all. He wants to repair what you could never repair. He wants to change what you could never change and cleanse what you could never cleanse. And it happens when you tell Jesus that you are trusting Him to be your rescuer from your sin, because only the One who died for your sin can forgive your sin.
This could be your day to be something better than religious. You could be forgiven. You could be clean. If you want that, go to the One that can do it. Tell Him, "Jesus, you're my only hope of my sin being erased and being in heaven some day. I am yours beginning today."
Our website will help you, so much, to know that you belong to Him and get you started with Him. Please go there today. It's ANewStory.com.
There's nothing like the freedom, the relief, of knowing that the sin of a lifetime is gone - not concealed, but gone.
