A heathen chief said to Rabbi Josiah, “My gods are greater than thy gods.”
“Why?” asked the sage.
“Because,” replied the heathen, “when your God appeared in the thorn bush Moses hid his face, but when he saw the serpent, which is my god, he fled before it.”
And Rabbi Josiah answered:
“When our God appears we cannot flee from Him: He is in the heavens and on earth, on sea and dry land; but if a man flees from thy god, the serpent, a few steps deliver him.”
There is a subtle type of grudge that festers. When we extend forgiveness, the challenge isn’t necessarily in the moment of reconciliation. It’s extending that moment and letting it permeate the interactions that follow.
In 2 Corinthians, Paul doesn’t just ask the Corinthians to forgive. He asks them for much more: “So then, you should rather forgive and comfort him lest somehow this person should be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. Therefore I urge you to confirm your love for him. Because for this reason, also I wrote, in order that I could know your proven character, whether you are obedient in everything” (2 Corinthians 2:7–9).
Patronizing superiority suits our selfish desires, but grudging forgiveness doesn’t heal a community. Paul calls the Corinthian church to much more. He wants them to live sacrificially. That’s why, when Paul calls for the offender in Corinth to be reprimanded, he specifically turns to address those who were affected by the sin. The solution was intentional, ongoing forgiveness and an outpouring of love. He then reminded the Corinthians of Christ’s sacrifice, which they didn’t deserve (see Colossians 3:13). Forgiveness is undeserved—a reminder we all need.
Scripture References: Psalm 8
From last lesson: God comes to us, cares for us, and crowns us. And we are crowned, not through any human merit of our own, but we are crowned when we are possessed by the Lord and He makes out of our lives what we could never make of ourselves.
Then, as stated in the beginning of this teaching, the psalm ends with the Lord’s position.
He repeats the same phrase that captured us at the beginning. “O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth!” The skeptic protests, “Prove it. Prove it. How’s God’s name excellent in all the earth?” In this psalm the singer has given us two reasons. Let me summarize them. First, he has presented us with the reason of/for God’s greatness. When I contemplate the heavens—the sun, the moon, the stars—and consider that You created them with only Your finger, the power and greatness of God proclaims the excellency of His name.
But, more than that, the psalmist asserts that we prove it by considering God’s grace. God’s grandeur is obvious to anyone who has the eyes to see it. God’s grace. How amazing that grace is. How marvelous. How wonderful. The God who can orbit the Milky Way and then take a hundred million galaxies in the palm of His hand and toss them into space like a handful of stardust, that is the God Who loves us, cares for us, has grace to give us! I know His name is excellent because of His grace.
But if you still want to argue, the psalmist says, “O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth!” That is the beginning and the end of this psalm. The psalm begins where it ends; it ends where it begins, and it moves through a cycle endlessly, eternally. “O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Your name . . .” Living for His glory, possessed by His Spirit, we’re on our way to glory. The Captain of our salvation who was made “perfect through sufferings” is “bringing many sons to glory.”
Someday we shall indeed be kings and queens and shall rule with Him forever. This was all in His plan. All we were intended to be and all that we shall be is in Jesus Christ. That is why we obey Him, why we publicly profess Him, why we are baptized as believers, why we band together in churches to worship Him, why we pool our strength and resources to reach the ends of the earth with His message of salvation.
We live to honor Him. From our hearts we cry, “O Lord, our Lord, . . .” It is marvelous. “He’s our Lord, our Friend,” is a magnificent expression.
But is He YOUR Lord? Whether or not you claim Him as Lord doesn’t make Him Lord or keep Him from being Lord. He is Lord, regardless, but the key to your realizing your potential is when, with an open heart, you can testify, “O Lord, our Lord [MY LORD] how excellent is Your name in all the earth!”
Lord, hear our prayer:
Heavenly Father, our Lord, fill us with such an overwhelming sense of joy, and of the value you place on our lives and of the knowledge that in Christ you will be with us for ever, that our lives will never be quite the same again. We bring our praise in the name of Jesus, who taught us to love you with all our heart and mind and strength and our neighbor as ourselves.
Amen.
Thinking, praying, reading, studying the Bible – when we do these things, we are reflecting on the Word of God. To reflect is to contemplate and/or consider, and God wants us to deeply reflect on His Word so that we can better understand Him.
Monday Reflecting
“Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” – Matthew 6:34.
You remember how Leonidas, the Spartan, kept back the Persian hosts. He stood in the narrow pass of Thermopylæ, and as the foe came up, one by one, each man was able to push back his enemy, and they might have kept Greece thus for many a day. But suppose Leonidas and his handful of men had gone out into the wide open plain, and attacked the Persians—why, they must have died at once, though they should have fought like lions. Christian, stand you in the narrow pass of to-day, and as your troubles come, one by one, by faith you shall find out that your strength is sufficient for you; but if you go out into the vast plain of time, and think to meet all the troubles that shall ever come at once, it must be too much for you. Will you please not to borrow misery, for you will have enough of your own.
~ SPURGEON
Monday August 7, 2023
1 Corinthians 12:11
But one and the same Spirit works all these things,
distributing to each one individually as He wills.
God is Spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth. Only the Holy Spirit can enable a fallen man to worship God acceptably. As far as that’s concerned, only the Holy Spirit can pray acceptably; only the Holy Spirit can do anything acceptably. My brethren, I don’t know your position about the gifts of the Spirit, but I believe that all the gifts of the Spirit not only ought to be but have been present in His Church all down the centuries. The Spirit’s gifts to the Church are the organs through which the Holy Spirit works, and He cannot work through His Church without the organs being present. . . .
I believe that the Holy Spirit distributes His gifts severally as He will to the Church and that they are in the Church and have been in the Church all along. Otherwise the Church would have died the day that everybody who had been in the upper chamber died. The Church has been propagated by the Holy Spirit, so we can only worship in the Spirit, we can only pray in the Spirit, and we can only preach effectively in the Spirit, and what we do must be done by the power of the Spirit. I believe that the gifts are in the Body of Christ and they that worship God must worship Him in the Spirit.
Augustine was once accosted by a heathen who showed him his idol and said, “Here is my god; where is thine?” Augustine replied, “I cannot show you my God; not because there is no God to show but because you have no eyes to see Him.”
“Did I leave the burner on?” “Did I lock the door?” “I feel like I’m forgetting something.”
Forgetfulness is a syndrome we all experience at one time or another. Many of our forgetful moments end up being minor inconveniences. But there is one thing we should never forget: God and His instructions.
As the Israelites prepared to enter the promised land, Moses offered them a string of commandments, including this: “Take care for yourself and watch your inner self closely, so that you do not forget the things that your eyes have seen, so that they do not slip from your mind all the days of your life” (Deuteronomy 4:9).
In watching ourselves closely, we remember what we’re meant to do and who we’re meant to be. And this isn’t just a value added to our lives and our relationship with God. Moses went on: “And you shall make [the commandments] known to your children and to your grandchildren” (Deuteronomy 4:9).
Moses knew that God had chosen the Israelites to carry out His work in the world. He also knew that forgetting God’s commandments could jeopardize that work and even their very lives. He tells them to be certain about who they are—to keep themselves in line with God.
It’s precisely this point that Paul emphasizes about God’s plan in 2 Corinthians 1:17–24: God is about the resounding “yes.” Yes, God has affirmed us. Yes, God has chosen us. Yes, we are the receivers of His salvation. We are called—not some of us, but all of us.
And in this we should rejoice, for we can claim, as the psalmist does, “I will confess concerning my transgressions to Yahweh, and you [Yahweh] took away the guilt of my sin” (Psalm 32:5).
The best way to make your “yes” be a yes and your “no” be a no is to align yourself with God’s great calling upon your life. Commandments only get us so far; identity in Christ and the Spirit’s work in us will take us where we need to go.
Scripture References: Psalm 8
From last lesson: You and I are not what we were meant to be. How, then, do we realize our potential? How do we fill the longing in our hearts? How do we deal with the inadequacies of our spirits? How do we realize the tremendous possibilities that lie within us? Only in and through Jesus Christ. That is the impact of Hebrews 2 and the intent of the Holy Spirit’s inspiration.
After writing about what God intended and how God created us, also how we do not yet see all things put under him, the psalmist turned to human failure. In spite of what mankind is, in spite of his abject failure, in spite of the fact man has not realized his full potential, and that man is not where God intended for him to be, “We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone.” – Hebrews 2:9. It is not necessary for us to be separated from God, to spend eternity apart from God, to remain incomplete.
Jesus tasted death for all of us without exception. “For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory.” Hebrews 2:10. That is magnificent. God is in the divine process of doing exactly that. He is bringing many children to glory, from all over the world, “every kindred, every tribe.” That is the whole purpose of the gospel. That is the redemptive nature of the Word of God. Those who come to Jesus Christ, He is now in the process of bringing to glory through His death on that cross. God said, “[I made you] a little lower than the angels” not a little higher than the animals. Perverted, incomplete human science calls us animals, and unregenerate people often live like vicious animals. What a degrading view of man! They claim that man is just an educated animal. God said, “No, you’re not just an efficient animal, but I have created you in My image, in My likeness. I created you for dominion, for authority. I created you to be a king.”
Humans spend their lives grabbing for the illusive dream, stretching toward “just one more high,” one more achievement, one more experience, and then they feel, “I’ll reach that satisfaction my heart longs for.” But that never happens. It reminds us of that old song, “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.” Our goals are illusive and gone, and there is still an emptiness and uncertainty. Many spend their lives like someone throwing an empty bucket into an empty well and grow old drawing nothing up. That was never God’s intention. God intended for us to have dominion and authority, kings “crowned with glory and honor.” God comes to us, cares for us, and crowns us. And we are crowned, not through any human merit of our own, but we are crowned when we are possessed by the Lord and He makes out of our lives what we could never make of ourselves.
Then, as stated in the beginning of this teaching, the psalm ends with the Lord’s position.
Ezekiel Hopkins: Piercing Heaven – Puritan’s Prayers
Lord, here is a heart that I strive to make and keep void of offense. Please fill it with your promised grace and Spirit.
Of course my heart is not a mansion pure enough for the pure and holy God. Even so, will you accept it and dwell here? There are still many hidden corruptions, but search them out. And you, who have kept your servant from obvious sins, would you also cleanse me from secret faults?
Lord, I am blind and ignorant, and I cannot see through to the consequences. Things that I think are for my advantage may prove to be a snare and a curse.
But in your infinite wisdom you know everything, so I resign my choice to you. Choose for me. And however your providence will order my affairs, make me then as thankful for disappointment as I ought to be for success.
Lord, your word has taught me many mysteries which my weak and short-sighted reason cannot comprehend. But I desire to sit at your feet; your word will shape my outlook. And this I understand: you who are very truth can neither deceive nor be deceived. So I find infinitely more reason to believe anything you tell me than to disbelieve it—even if it seems impossible.
Since you have spoken it, I fully assent. And I deliver up all the cheeky impudence of my reason to be chastised and tutored by faith.
Amen.
Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to dwell there, for the famine was severe in the land. – Genesis 12:10.
THERE was a famine in the land of plenty, the land flowing with milk and honey, a famine in the land to which Abram had gone in faith and obedience to God’s own command and word. Certainly this was a severe test of faith. What an adventure in faith it became before Abram was through. In the previous lessons we saw Abram, the father of the faithful, believing God and leaving his country to go with the Lord to a new and a better land. It is the picture of the believer who trusts God and turns his back on the world to only follow after Jesus.
The tie with the flesh is finally broken, and the “old man” is left behind, and now Abram moves on to the promised land of Canaan. Along the way he has a few significant experiences. In Genesis 12:6 we learn that he first passes “through the land to the place of Shechem.” (Sichem is the same as Shechem and means shoulder.) The shoulder signifies strength and power and service, for on it the burdens were borne in ancient times. Obedience to God in separation will, therefore, bring power and service. Is your Christian life powerless, drab, and fruitless, my friend? Then ask yourself the question, What is there in my life which is displeasing to God, and must be surrendered and confessed and forsaken, even as in the life of Abram? God will not bless until we are willing to yield to His will. As we travel along the highway of the adventures of faith, we reach many stopping places. As we grow in grace, as we study His Word, we receive new light concerning things in our lives that are still wrong. Unless we face each one of these individually and confess them, we come to a standstill. The moment we are willing to yield to the new light that God gives us, He moves us on to the next test; and each one makes us stronger in the faith. Do not think that victory and sanctification is a single, isolated experience. It is a growth in grace and in knowledge. New light reveals new demands which must be met as we journey on.
FIRES, Floods. Earthquakes. Famine. So many people seem to suffer from “acts of God” that strike without warning. Like Job, they appear to be relatively innocent of wrongdoing that might explain their pain. People wonder, “Is God fair to let these things happen?”
This was one of the questions with which Job and his friends wrestled. Calamity struck Job and his family for no apparent reason. Why? His friends took the view that God was punishing him, that he must have done something wrong to deserve such evil. Job disagreed, not only because he felt certain of his own integrity, but because the wicked actually seemed to prosper, not suffer (Job 12:6).
Yet that only brought Job back to the original question: Is God fair? If the wicked prosper, where is justice in the world? Job concluded that the seemingly easy life of the wicked is very temporary; sooner or later it will all fall apart (Job 27:13–23). In the end, Job maintained, God will humble the proud, those with integrity will inherit their possessions, and justice will be served.
Ultimately God is indeed fair (Job 36:6; 37:23-24)—a fact for which we can be thankful, because life is not fair. In this life, people do not always get what they deserve. But this life is not the end of the story. God Himself will write the final chapters.
For Saturday August 5, 2023
1 Corinthians 2:14
The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God,
for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them,
because they are spiritually discerned.
All spelunkers (cave explorers) know the true meaning of “I can’t see a thing.” Above ground, there is always a bit of light coming from somewhere to aid us. But in a cave, once you’re far enough in, there is no light. None. None at all. It is the most complete experience of darkness we can have on earth.
Spiritual darkness is like that. The Bible says that before being born again, we are “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). Spiritually dead means no spiritual life. None. None at all. That means we have no love for or understanding of the things of God “because they are spiritually discerned.” We gain understanding only through the mysterious illuminating work of the Spirit. What believer hasn’t had the “Oh, now I see!” experience in the spiritual life? All have, and will, as the Spirit opens our eyes to the truth of God for which the spiritually dead have no appreciation.
As you read God’s Word today, pray with the psalmist, “Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things from Your law” (Psalm 119:18).
All of man’s knowledge is based on God’s illuminating truth to the mind.
W. ANDREW HOFFECKER
Show family affection to one
another with brotherly love. – Romans 12:10
“People listened to me expectantly, waiting in silence for my counsel. After I had spoken, they spoke no more; my words fell gently on their ears. They waited for me as for showers and drank in my words as the spring rain. When I smiled at them, they scarcely believed it; the light of my face was precious to them. I chose the way for them and sat as their chief; I dwelt as a king among his troops; I was like one who comforts mourners.” – Job 29:21-25.
“I have spoken openly to the world,” Jesus replied. “I always taught in synagogues or at the temple, where all the Jews come together. I said nothing in secret.” – John 18:20.
A man in England disappeared the day after being questioned about the rape of an eighty-six-year-old woman. The police never gave up searching for him, making periodic visits to his home. On one of those visits, eight years later, they found him—hiding in a six-by-two-foot hole under the floorboards of his living room. He had taken refuge there the day he disappeared to avoid further questioning and arrest. He never saw daylight for the first two years of his self-imposed imprisonment. Then he felt it was safe to come out occasionally. Constantly terrified at the thought of arrest, he couldn’t leave his wife and children. The children had no idea their father was there, sleeping in that miserable hole every night.
Christians do not hide in fear lest they be exposed. They welcome investigation and questions. Refusing to hide behind a privacy clause, we open all scriptural teaching and our personal life for study. The Christian experience is public domain, not a private preserve.
IT IS often better and safer for us to have few consolations in this life, especially comforts of the body. Yet if we do not have divine consolation or experience it rarely, it is our own fault because we seek no sorrow of heart and do not forsake vain outward satisfaction.
Consider yourself unworthy of divine solace and deserving rather of much tribulation. When a man is perfectly contrite, the whole world is bitter and wearisome to him.
A good man always finds enough over which to mourn and weep; whether he thinks of himself or of his neighbor he knows that no one lives here without suffering, and the closer he examines himself the more he grieves.
The sins and vices in which we are so entangled that we can rarely apply ourselves to the contemplation of heaven are matters for just sorrow and inner remorse.
I do not doubt that you would correct yourself more earnestly if you would think more of an early death than of a long life. And if you pondered in your heart the future pains of hell or of purgatory, I believe you would willingly endure labor and trouble and would fear no hardship. But since these thoughts never pierce the heart and since we are enamored of flattering pleasure, we remain very cold and indifferent. Our wretched body complains so easily because our soul is altogether too lifeless.
Pray humbly to the Lord, therefore, that He may give you the spirit of contrition and say with the Prophet: “Feed me, Lord, with the bread of mourning and give me to drink of tears in full measure.” – Psalm 80:5.
The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis, is a Christian devotional book first composed in Medieval Latin as De Imitatione Christi (c. 1418–1427). The devotional text is divided into four books of detailed spiritual instructions. The devotional approach of The Imitation of Christ emphasizes the interior life and withdrawal from the mundanities of the world, as opposed to the active imitation of Christ practiced by other friars. The Imitation is perhaps the most widely read Christian devotional work after the Bible, and is regarded as a devotional and religious classic. The book was written anonymously in Latin in the Netherlands c. 1418–1427. Its popularity was immediate, and after the first printed edition in 1471-72, it was printed in 745 editions before 1650. Apart from the Bible, no book had been translated into more languages than the Imitation of Christ at the time.
Scripture References: Psalm 8
What were you intended to be? “Turn your eyes upon Jesus.” He is King of kings and Lord of lords. Revelation exults: He has made us to be “kings and priests [forever with Him]” (Revelation 5:10). So Jesus is the epitome, the description, the example of what we are intended to be.
The word “visit” in verse 4 means to care. What are we that God would care about us? Why would the omnipotent God of the universe care about our hurts, our confusion, our intense pressure? Why should God concern Himself? And then God crowns us. This psalm goes on to indicate that God has made man to be a “little lower than the angels,” slightly less than the angels. God has “crowned us with glory and honor.” God has made us to have “dominion over the works of [His] hands and has put all things under [our] feet.”
How breathtaking! God invested us with the dignity second only to His own, second only to the very nature of Himself. God made us to be rulers over the world that He created. What a high position, what lofty dignity God gives to mankind. It is as though, the psalmist said, God set a regal crown upon man’s head, a scepter in his hand, and a robe of royalty around his shoulders. It is a crown of glory and honor. Nowhere is human dignity more clearly and boldly asserted than in this passage. God intended for us to be regal.
Before the fall in the Garden of Eden, when God created Adam and Eve, that is how He wants us to be. If you want to understand the full impact of this psalm, turn to Hebrews 2. The writer of Hebrews quotes this psalm, from verses 4 and on. Hebrews 2 speaks in detail about this and declares that God has “put all things in subjection under his [man’s] feet.” Nothing was left out, but focus on the last portion of Hebrews 2:8, “But now we do not yet see all things put under him [man].”
Mankind botched it up. Sin entered into human experience, and we have not achieved what God intended for us. The intent of Hebrews 2 is to display before us the high and lofty ideal God had for mankind and to show us that, in Christ, we can indeed reach our full potential. It is all found in our Lord and Savior. We become what God created us to become in Jesus Christ. He restores the dominion, the authority, the dignity that sin snatched away. Jesus Christ makes us to be what God created us to be.
Though we may not seem to be rulers and kings with honor in this life, we discover in Revelation 1:5–6 that God has “loved us and washed us [redeemed] from our sins in His own blood, and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever.” Our fullest potential and our utmost fulfillment is found through Jesus Christ.
People were meant to have dominion, but by no means do they have dominion. We are creatures frustrated by our circumstances, defeated by our temptations, conscious of our weaknesses. We stagger with an burden around our necks. We should be free, but we are bound. We should be kings, but we are slaves. Now whatever else is true and whatever else may not be true, one crushing reality is certain, people are not what they were meant to be. You and I are not what we were meant to be. How, then, do we realize our potential? How do we fill the longing in our hearts? How do we deal with the inadequacies of our spirits? How do we realize the tremendous possibilities that lie within us? Only in and through Jesus Christ. That is the impact of Hebrews 2 and the intent of the Holy Spirit’s inspiration.
Lord, hear our prayer:
Almighty God, sovereign and holy, we praise you for the teaching of Jesus that makes your love real; for all he said and did and taught during his earthly ministry that enabled us to know you, the source of all goodness, truth and love. We praise you that in him the kingdom came near and that still, for us today, he remains the way in which we enter it. Through Christ Jesus, our Savior.
Amen.
Thinking, praying, reading, studying the Bible – when we do these things, we are reflecting on the Word of God. To reflect is to contemplate and/or consider, and God wants us to deeply reflect on His Word so that we can better understand Him.
Friday Reflecting
“Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” – Matthew 6:34.
Sometimes I compare the troubles we have to undergo in the course of a year to a great bundle of fagots, far too large for us to lift. But God does not require us to carry the whole at once: He mercifully unties the bundle, and gives us, first one stick, which we are to carry to-day; and then another, which we are to carry to-morrow; and so on. This we might easily manage if we would only take the burden appointed for each day; but we choose to increase our trouble by carrying yesterday’s stick over again to-day, and adding to-morrow’s burden to our load before we are required to bear it.
~ JOHN NEWTON
Friday August 4, 2023
Matthew 28:20
“Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
This Word is to you who, by the grace of God, are His child.
You have an unseen friend near you wherever you go. He loves you so much that He gave His life for you. He has all power; He is never helpless. No one can frustrate His plans. He never grows weary.
He lives with you, feels with you, rejoices with you, grieves with you, and suffers with you. He shares your struggles, both when you pray and when you are tempted.
He says to us today: “Lo, I am with you!”
Do you see Him in your daily life? In the realm of the Spirit we cannot see with our physical eyes. But the Scriptures tell us that God’s children received spiritual eyes, eyes of the heart, with which to perceive the spiritual realities all around them. A servant of one of the prophets was also permitted for a moment to behold the spiritual realities which surrounded him. He saw horses and chariots of fire. It calmed his spirit and made his heart glad.
You, too, should pray that you might see this as you go about your tasks from day to day feeling lonesome, restless, anxious, and unhappy.
“Lo, I am with you always.”
Some days are unusually hard. So many things can darken our lives. The hardest of all is to feel that we are far away from our heavenly Friend.
At such a time remember the word of Jesus: “Always.”
He is never closer to you than when you feel lonely and heavy of heart. Tell Him how you feel. And pray that the eyes of your heart may be opened so that you see Him.
“The world may seek and love its own;
I love my Jesus, Him alone.”
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FOR THE LOVE OF GOD 