Daily Devotional 2-26-2022
1Co 10:11 CSB These things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our instruction, on whom the ends of the ages have come. God’s dealings with Israel were more than a matter of historical curiosity for Paul. They were examples and warnings for the Corinthians or people like us, the modern days’ Christians, that the God with whom they had to deal, who was bringing His interaction with people to a close in this fulfilment of the ages, was the same God who disciplined the Israelites with death and would do so again.
Daily Devotional 11-27-2021
Isa 54:5-6 Indeed, your husband is your Maker—his name is the LORD of Armies—and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of the whole earth. (6) For the LORD has called you, like a wife deserted and wounded in spirit, a wife of one’s youth when she is rejected,” says your God. The Lord will regather Israel the way a man would take back his wife. The nation need have no fear of disgrace, for she will no longer be desolate and helpless like a widow. God, like a husband, will take back Israel, His wife. He is the Lord Almighty… the Holy One of Israel, her Redeemer, and in His uniqueness He is the God of all the earth, that is, its Creator and Sustainer. The Lord had deserted His people for a brief moment. Though not stated here, Isaiah had given the…
Daily Devotional 11-7-2021
Heb 2:1 For this reason, we must pay attention all the more to what we have heard, so that we will not drift away. Paul pauses to inject the first of several solemn warnings that are found in the Epistle. This is a warning against drifting away from the message of the gospel. Because of the greatness of the Giver and because of the greatness of His gift, those who hear the gospel must give more serious attention to it. There is always the danger of drifting away from the Person and slipping back into a religion of pictures. This means drifting into apostasy—the sin for which there is no repentance.
Daily Devotional 10-28-21
Rom 6:12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. The attitude of mind that a believer has died to sin must be translated into action in his experience. Paul commanded, Therefore do not let sin reign as it did before salvation. The present imperative negative can also be translated, “Stop letting sin reign.” When sin reigns in people’s lives and bodies, they obey its evil desires. Sin enslaves, making a person subject to his own desires. Here, in the case of sin, the desires are evil. In your mortal body means that sin manifests itself through one’s physical actions in this body. The Greek here stresses that the body is mortal or dying. Perhaps this suggests the foolishness of giving in to the desires of a body that is transitory and decaying. To give in to a dying master is…
Daily Devotional 10-22-2021
2Co 3:18 We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit. The glory evident in Moses’ face was a diminishing radiance. By contrast, in the faces of Christians is God’s ever-increasing glory. Christians’ glory, like that of Moses, is a reflection of the Lord’s glory. But unlike Moses’ transitory glory a believer’s glory is eternal. This is because of God’s abiding presence through the Holy Spirit. This glory is the experience of salvation available in the New Covenant and mediated by the Spirit who leads Christians from justification through sanctification to glorification. As believers manifest the fruit of the Spirit, they are progressively being transformed (metamorphosis) into His likeness. Christlikeness is the goal of the Christian walk. No wonder Paul said…
Eph 1:4 For he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in love before him. This is what is commonly known as election. Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. Notice first the positive fact of election in the words, He chose us. Then there is the positional aspect of the truth, in Him: it is in the Person and work of the Lord Jesus that all God’s purposes for His people are brought to pass. The time of God’s election is indicated by the expression, before the foundation of the world. And the purpose is that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. This purpose will not be completely realized until we are with Him in heaven, but the…
Daily Devotional 10-13-2021
Col 1:21-22 Once you were alienated and hostile in your minds expressed in your evil actions. (22) But now he has reconciled you by his physical body through his death, to present you holy, faultless, and blameless before him— Reconciliation is necessary because people are alienated (“cut off, estranged”) from life and God. Before conversion the Colossian believers also were enemies or hostile to God in their minds as well as in their behavior, internally and externally. Sin begins in the heart and manifests itself in overt deeds. It pleased the Father by Him (Christ) to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross. In other words, it was not only the Godhead’s good pleasure that all fullness should dwell in Christ, but also that Christ should reconcile all things to Himself. From this, we can see that the expression of God’s Glory in…
Daily Devotional 10-3-2021
Isa 64:4 From ancient times no one has heard, no one has listened to, no eye has seen any God except you who acts on behalf of the one who waits for him. The remnant implores God to rend the heavens and come down in fury on His adversaries. They recall previous interventions of God, unique manifestations of the only true God who acts for the one who waits for Him. They remember that God shows favor to those who delight in practical righteousness, but they have incurred His anger by their long-continued sins, and wonder if there is any hope for people like them to be saved.
Daily Devotional 9-13-2021
Deu 7:6 For you are a holy people belonging to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be his own possession out of all the peoples on the face of the earth. The basis for the command to destroy the Canaanites lay in God’s election of Israel. The word translated chosen means “to be chosen for a task or a vocation.” God had selected Israel as His means of sanctifying the earth. Thus, they were holy (set apart for God’s special use) and were His treasured possession. Since the Canaanites were polluting the earth, and since they might endanger Israel’s complete subordination to the will of the Lord, they either had to repent or be eliminated. And as stated, for 400 years they had refused to repent.
Daily Devotional 9-2-2021
Rom 13:13-14 Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy. (14) But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts. Let us behave decently, as in the daytime. Crime, violence, and wickedness are associated with darkness and the night. Perhaps this contrast was suggested to Paul by his phrase “deeds of darkness”. At any rate the activities and attitudes he listed – orgies and drunkenness… sexual immorality and debauchery… dissension and jealousy are certainly “deeds of darkness.” It is interesting that Paul linked jealousy with immorality. Such actions and attitudes have no place in a Christian’s life. He belongs to “the light”; these deeds and thoughts belong to the darkness. A Christian’s lifestyle must be pure and holy, especially in view of Christ’s approaching…