What are you worth to God?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed. Isaiah 53:4-6

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

What will let you into God’s presence? What will cover your sins—and mine? Just one thing: Jesus’ death on Calvary’s cross.

The cross was not an accident or an afterthought; it was in the heart of God before the world began. Jesus was born under the shadow of a cross.

But Jesus didn’t die as a martyr. He was no helpless victim. He said, “I lay down my life…. No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself” (John 10:17-18). On the first day of Jesus’ public ministry, John the Baptist announced, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”

The Lamb of God died on the same day—the same hour—as the temple priests were slaughtering Passover lambs on Mount Moriah. Two thousand years before that, Abraham told his son Isaac, “God will provide Himself a lamb, my son.” And sure enough, as Abraham and Isaac began their ascent to the top of Mt. Moriah, a ram, was already there to take Isaac’s place on the altar. Looking back on that scene, Jesus said, “Abraham saw My day, and was glad” (John 8:56).

To the priests sacrificing lambs on Mount Moriah, Jesus could say, “Put away your knives. We need no more lambs. The Lamb has died and paid in full.”

ACTION POINT:

Don’t let this go right past you. Think about the price paid for your salvation. Read Matthew chapters 26 and 27. Hallelujah—God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, thank You for the Lamb!

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

A Future for Failures

Do not be afraid; you have done all this evil. Yet do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart. And do not turn aside after empty things that cannot profit or deliver, for they are empty. For the Lord will not forsake his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself.” (1 Samuel 12:20–22)

When the Israelites have been brought to fear and they repent of their sin of demanding that Samuel give them a king to be like the other nations, then comes the good news: “Do not be afraid; you have done all this evil.” Do you hear how backward that sounds — how wonderfully backward? You might expect him to say, “Fear, for you have done all this evil.” That’s a good reason to fear: you have done the great evil of demanding another king besides God! But that’s not what Samuel says. “Do not be afraid; you have done all this evil.”

He goes on, “Yet do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart. And do not turn aside after empty things that cannot profit or deliver, for they are empty.”

This is the gospel: Even though you have sinned greatly, and terribly dishonored the Lord, even though you now have a king which it was a sin to demand, even though there is no undoing that sin or its painful consequences that are yet to come, nevertheless there is a future and a hope. There is mercy.

Fear not! Fear not!

Then comes the great ground — the basis and foundation — of the gospel in 1 Samuel 12:22. Why don’t you need to fear, even though you have done all this evil? “For the Lord will not forsake his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself.”

The ground of the gospel is God’s commitment to his own name. Did you hear it? Don’t fear, though you have sinned, “The Lord will not forsake his people, for his great name’s sake.” This should have two effects on you: heart-breaking humility and toe-tapping happiness. Humility because your worth is not the foundation of your salvation. Happiness because your salvation is as sure as God’s allegiance to his own name. It can’t get more sure.

John Piper 

Does God really love you?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

And when they were come to the place which is called Calvary, there they crucified Him. Luke 23:33a

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Calvary, the spot where Jesus carried our sins to the cross, had another name, “Golgotha” (“the place of the skull”), because of its skull-like rock formation. This same spot, known also as Mt. Moriah, is where Abraham offered Isaac to God. Did you know that Mt. Moriah, the Temple mount, and Mt. Calvary all share the same limestone ridge? They are all part of the same mountain.

Centuries before Jesus’ birth, God told Abraham, “I want you to take Isaac, your only son, the son you love, the son of promise, to a place I will show you. Not just any place—a certain place. And there you are to offer your son as a sacrifice.” That’s the very same spot where one day, centuries later, Jesus Christ would be crucified.

For Abraham and Isaac, God stepped in and provided a ram caught in a thicket as the substitute for Isaac, and Isaac was spared. On the day Jesus Christ was crucified, no such substitute spared Him—for He IS our Substitute.

ACTION POINT:

Think about what it cost God the Father to sacrifice His only Son on Calvary’s mountain. Think about what it cost the Lord Jesus to be that “ram caught in the thicket” for you. Let what God provided—and what His Son did—sink into the deepest part of your heart.

“Praise the Lamb, for sinners slain. Give Him glory, all ye people, for His blood can wash away each stain.”

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

God, Touch Our Hearts

Saul also went to his home at Gibeah, and with him went men of valor whose hearts God had touched. (1 Samuel 10:26)

Just think of what is being said in this verse. God touched them. Not a wife. Not a child. Not a parent. Not a counselor. But God. God touched them.

The One with infinite power in the universe. The One with infinite authority and infinite wisdom and infinite love and infinite goodness and infinite purity and infinite justice. That One touched their heart.

How does the circumference of Jupiter touch the edge of a molecule? Let alone penetrate to its nucleus?

The touch of God is awesome not just because it is God who touches, but also because it is a touch. It is a real connection. That it involves the heart is awesome. That it involves God is awesome. And that it involves an actual touch is awesome.

The valiant men were not just spoken to. They were not just swayed by a divine influence. They were not just seen and known. God, with infinite condescension, touched their heart. God was that close. And they were not consumed.

I love that touch. I want it more and more. For myself and for all of you. I pray that God would touch me anew with his glory and for this glory. I pray that he would touch us all.

Oh, for the touch of God! If it comes with fire, so be it. If it comes with water, so be it. If it comes with wind, let it come, O God. If it comes with thunder and lightning, let us bow before it.

O Lord, come. Come that close. Burn and soak and blow and crash. Or still and small, come. Come all the way. Touch our hearts.

John Piper 

Do you fear death?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? 1 Corinthians 15:55

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

A pastor who lost his wife in death was left to single-parent their little girl. She couldn’t fully understand all that had happened. But one day while she was in the car with her father, she saw the shadow of a truck passing by. The setting sun made the shadow huge, much bigger than the truck.

The little girl said, “Daddy, look at the big shadow.”

He said, “Sweetheart, would you rather be hit by the shadow of the truck or by the truck?”

“That's easy,” she said, “I'd much rather be hit by the shadow.”

He said, “That's right, darling. And it was only the shadow that hit Mama. The truck hit Jesus two thousand years ago at Calvary.”

That’s why in the Twenty-Third Psalm, David calls it “the valley of the shadow of death.” Jesus has taken the sting out of death and the dread out of the grave! He has become our victor!

Many people fear death—it’s a shadow looming over each of us, representing the unknown. Yet Jesus disarmed death and took away its power. The believer in Christ can have this assurance: beyond that shadow is the sunlight of the eternal morning.

ACTION POINT:

Talk with the Lord right now. Tell Him about something you fear. He already knows about it anyway. Picture yourself giving that fear over to Him. Place it in the nail-scarred Hand.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Embracing Jesus

This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith. (1 John 5:3–4)

Notice: Loving God is not just keeping his commandments. It is having a kind of heart for God that means that commandment-keeping is not burdensome. That’s what John says. But then he puts that truth in terms of new birth and faith, rather than love. He says, without a break, “For” — that is, here’s why God’s commandments are not burdensome: “Everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. So, the new birth is what overcomes the worldly obstacles to keeping God’s commandments without burdensomeness.

And finally he adds, “And this is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith.” So, the new birth overcomes the worldly obstacles to burden-free commandment-keeping, because the new birth gives rise to faith. So, the miracle of new birth creates faith, which embraces all that God is for us in Christ as supremely satisfying, which makes obedience to God more desirable than the temptations of the world. And that is what it means to love God.

The eighteenth-century pastor and theologian Jonathan Edwards wrestled with this text and concluded, “Saving faith implies . . . love. . . . Our love to God enables us to overcome the difficulties that attend keeping God’s commands — which shows that love is the main thing in saving faith, the life and power of it, by which it produces great effects.”

I think Edwards is right and that numerous texts in the Bible support what he says.

Another way to say it is that faith in Christ is not just assenting to what God is for us, but also embracing all that he is for us in Christ. “True faith embraces Christ in whatever ways the Scriptures hold him out to poor sinners” — that’s another quote from Edwards. This “embracing” is one kind of love to Christ — that kind that treasures him above all things.

Therefore, there is no contradiction between 1 John 5:3, on the one hand, which says that our love for God enables us to keep his commandments, and verse 4, on the other hand, which says that our faith overcomes the obstacles of the world that keep us from obeying God’s commandments. Love for God and Christ is implicit in faith.

John then defines the faith that obeys as “the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God” (1 John 5:5). This faith is “embracing” the present Jesus as the glorious divine person that he is: the Son of God. It is not simply assenting to the truth that Jesus is the Son of God, because the demons assent to that. “They cried out, ‘What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?’” (Matthew 8:29). Believing that Jesus is the Son of God means “embracing” the significance of that truth — the value of the reality. It means being satisfied with Christ as the Son of God and all God is for us in him.

“Son of God” means that Jesus is the greatest person in the universe alongside his Father. Therefore, all he taught is true, and all he promised will stand firm, and all his soul-satisfying greatness will never change.

Believing that he is the Son of God, therefore, includes banking on all this, and being satisfied with it.

John Piper 

What was Jesus really like?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

But unto the Son, He [God the Father] saith, “Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever: a scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows.” Hebrews 1:8-9

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

What an amazing life the Lord Jesus lived. Do you realize He never had to correct, withdraw, or amend any statement He ever made? I wish I could say that! He never had to apologize for anything He said or did. He never sought advice from anyone or had to ask forgiveness.

Jesus Christ doesn’t have any strong points. For Him to have strong points, He would have to have weak points. Robert Clark has rightly described His character:

“There was meekness without weakness, tenderness without feebleness, firmness without coarseness, love without sentimentality, holiness without sanctimoniousness, lowliness without lowness, truth without error, enthusiasm without fanaticism, passion without prejudice, heavenly‑mindedness without forgetfulness, carefreeness without carelessness, service without servility, self‑exaltation without egotism, judgment without harshness, seriousness without somberness, mercy without softness.”

What a person was the Lord Jesus Christ!

ACTION POINT:

The greatest question ever asked was the question recorded in Matthew 27:22. When Jesus stood before Pontius Pilate, Pilate asked the crowd, “What shall I do then with Jesus, which is called Christ?” Now I'm going to ask that question of you: What will you do with Jesus?

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers