I’m Not Proud—Not Me!

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Thou hast also given me the shield of Thy salvation: and Thy right hand hath holden me up, and Thy gentleness hath made me great.

Psalm 18:35

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Do you know what our churches could use a little bit more of? Courtesy among the brethren. Love in the little things. Love that says “please” and “thank you.” Love that steps back and gives the other person first place. We could use more of the gentleness of our Lord.

It never ceases to amaze me how people so quickly lose their religion when they leave church on Sunday morning. They go to their cars in the parking lot, then cut people off in traffic. If we set up video cameras in the church parking lot, how would you fare? And don’t commit the crime of taking someone’s regular seat in church. You’ve just “stolen” their place in the worship service!

May God cleanse our churches of self-righteousness and pride! May He purify us from anything that seeks to elevate self over others. May we take on the humility of the Lord Jesus Christ when He took on the form of a servant.

ACTION POINT:

“Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem the other better than themselves” 

Philippians 2:3

Read

Philippians 2:1-11

today. 

Here is the example you are looking for.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers

Welcome! You're Now a Priest!

BIBLE MEDITATION:

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

1 Peter 2:9

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Christians are a kingdom of priests, so in order to understand what that means, let’s look at what someone had to do to become a priest in the Old Testament:

First, a priest had to bathe from head to toe, symbolizing he was saved (see

Titus 3:5

). When we are saved, we are bathed from head to toe in Christ’s cleansing blood.

After his bath, he received a linen garment, symbolic of the righteousness provided by our Lord.

Then he was anointed with oil, symbolic of the Holy Spirit’s anointing.

In the Old Testament priesthood, you see

(a) the atoning blood

(b) being clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ

(c) being anointed with the Holy Spirit.

God’s Word flows in beautiful harmony from the Old Testament in analogy into the New Testament in reality as Jesus Christ becomes the fulfillment of the Law and our atoning sacrifice.

ACTION POINT:

Have you been bathed in the cleansing blood? Are you aware you’re wearing the righteous robe of Christ and the Holy Spirit lives within you? As you go through your day today, be ever mindful: you are a priest. You are chosen, royal, holy, set apart for Him.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

The Goal of Christ’s Love

“Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory.” (John 17:24)

Believers in Jesus are precious to God (we’re his bride!). And he loves us so much that he will not allow our preciousness to become our god.

God does indeed make much of us (he adopts us into his family!), but he does so in a way that draws us out of ourselves to enjoy his greatness.

Test yourself. If Jesus came to spend the day with you, sat down beside you on the couch, and said, “I really love you,” what would you focus on the rest of the day that you spend together with him?

It seems to me that too many songs and sermons leave us with the wrong answer. They leave the impression that the heights of our joy would be in the recurrent feeling of being loved. “He loves me!” “He loves me!” To be sure, this is joy indeed. But not the heights, and not the focus.

What are we saying with the words “I am loved”? What do we mean? What is this “being loved”?

Would not the greatest, most Christ-exalting joy be found in watching Jesus all day and bursting with, “You’re amazing!” “You are amazing!”

He answers the hardest question, and his wisdom is amazing.

He touches a filthy, oozing sore, and his compassion is amazing.

He raises a dead lady at the medical examiner’s office, and his power is amazing.

He predicts the afternoon’s events, and his foreknowledge is amazing.

He sleeps during an earthquake, and his fearlessness is amazing.

He says, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58), and his words are amazing.

We walk around with him all afternoon, utterly amazed at what we are seeing.

Is not his love for us his eagerness to do for us all he must do (including die for us) so that we can marvel at him and not be incinerated by him? Redemption, propitiation, forgiveness, justification, reconciliation — all these have to happen. They are the act of love.

But the goal of love that makes those acts loving is that we be with him, and see his jaw-dropping glory, and be astounded. In those moments we forget ourselves as we see and savor all that God is for us in him.

So I am urging pastors and teachers: Push people through the acts of Christ’s love to the goal of his love. If redemption and propitiation and forgiveness and justification and reconciliation are not taking us to the enjoyment of Jesus himself, they are not love.

Press on this. It’s what Jesus prayed for in John 17:24, “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory.”

John Piper 

What’s New About the New Covenant

“This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” (Jeremiah 31:33)

Jesus shatters any absolute dissociation of commandments and love.

He says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. . . . Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father” (John 14:15, 21). “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love” (John 15:10).

Thinking in terms of commandments and obedience did not stop Jesus from enjoying the love of his Father. And he expects that our thinking of him as one who commands will not jeopardize our love relationship with him either.

This is crucial to realize because the new covenant relationship that we have with God through Jesus Christ is not a covenant without commandments. The basic difference between the old covenant offered by God through the Mosaic law and the new covenant offered by God through Christ is not that one had commandments and the other doesn’t.

The key differences are that (1) the Messiah, Jesus, has come and shed the blood of the new covenant (Matthew 26:28; Hebrews 10:29) so that henceforth he is the Mediator of a new covenant, so that all saving, covenant-keeping faith is conscious faith in him; (2) the old covenant has therefore become “obsolete” (Hebrews 8:13) and does not govern the new-covenant people of God (2 Corinthians 3:7–18; Romans 7:4, 6; Galatians 3:19); and (3) the promised new heart and the enabling power of the Holy Spirit have been given through faith.

In the old covenant, the gracious enabling power to obey God was not poured out as fully as it is since Jesus. “To this day the Lord has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear” (Deuteronomy 29:4). What’s new about the new covenant is not that there are no commandments, but that God’s promise has come true! “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33). “I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes” (Ezekiel 36:27).

John Piper 

Will God be Enough...?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

And ye shall be hated of all men for My name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved. Matthew 10:22

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Have you ever read God’s Hall of Fame in Hebrews chapter 11? These men and women of faith did miraculous things. “Who through faith subdued kingdoms.” Hallelujah! “Wrought righteousness.” Praise the Lord! “Obtained promises.” Amen! “Stopped the mouths of lions.” Glory!

And how did they do it? By faith.

“And others [men and women of faith] had trials of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: They were stoned, they were sawn asunder...And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise” (Hebrews 11:36-37, 39).

What is he saying here? That none of these champions in God’s Faith Hall of Fame, even though they are examples of the best and most faithful, received in this life what was promised to them. God had a better plan.

ACTION POINT:

Some had faith to escape; others had faith to endure. If enduring is God’s will for you, the faith to endure will be the kind of faith God wants you to have. Will God be enough if He lets you walk through the fiery furnace? At a quiet time today, turn to Hebrews chapter 11 and read it.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

The “I Will” of God

“Jerusalem shall be inhabited as villages without walls, because of the multitude of people and livestock in it. And I will be to her a wall of fire all around, declares the Lord, and I will be the glory in her midst.” (Zechariah 2:4–5)

There are mornings when I wake up feeling fragile. Vulnerable. It’s often vague. No single threat. No one weakness. Just an amorphous sense that something is going to go wrong and I will be responsible.

It’s usually after a lot of criticism. Or maybe after a lot of expectations that have deadlines, and that seem too big and too many.

As I look back over about 50 years of such periodic mornings, I am amazed how the Lord Jesus has preserved my life. And my ministry. The temptation to run away from the stress has never won out — not yet anyway. This is amazing. I worship my great God for this.

Instead of letting me sink into a paralysis of fear, or run to a mirage of greener grass, he has awakened a cry for help and then answered with concrete promises.

Here’s an example. This is recent. I woke up feeling emotionally fragile. Weak. Vulnerable. I prayed: “Lord help me. I’m not even sure how to pray.”

An hour later I was reading in Zechariah, seeking the help I had cried out for. It came.

“Jerusalem shall be inhabited as villages without walls, because of the multitude of people and livestock in it. And I will be to her a wall of fire all around, declares the Lord, and I will be the glory in her midst.” (Zechariah 2:4–5)

There will be such prosperity and growth for the people of God that Jerusalem will not be able to be walled in any more. “The multitude of people and livestock” will be so many that Jerusalem will be like many villages spreading out across the land without walls.

Prosperity is nice, but what about protection?

To which God says in verse 5, “I will be to her a wall of fire all around, declares the Lord.” Yes. That’s it. That is the promise. The “I will” of God. That is what I need.

And if it is true for the vulnerable villages of Jerusalem, it is true for me a child of God. That is how I apply the Old Testament promises to God’s people. All the promises are yes to me in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20). There is a “how much more” after every promise for those who are in Christ. God will be a “wall of fire all around” me. Yes. He will. He has been. And he will be.

And it gets better. Inside that fiery wall of protection he says, “And I will be the glory in her midst.” God is never content to give us the protection of his fire; he aims to give us the pleasure of his presence. I love the “I wills” of God!

John Piper 

Are You Standing on the Edge?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but My kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of My peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee. Isaiah 54:10

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Sometimes the grandest revelations come through confrontation. Why did God bring the Israelites to the Red Sea? You might think it was solely to escape Pharaoh’s horsemen, hot on their trail. In a practical sense, yes. But more so, it was for the Israelites to have a confrontation with Him and discover His greatness and deliverance.

Many times the things we think are tragedies and problems are God’s way of drawing us to Himself. God shuts this door; God shuts that door…it seems that there’s no way out.

That’s when we must cling to the fact that God makes Himself known to us in the storm and He plants His footsteps in the sea.

ACTION POINT:

Are you standing at the edge of your “Red Sea”? Have you stopped to consider that this could be your Father drawing you to Himself by the only way He knew He could get your attention? The God who parted the Red Sea and stilled the surface of Galilee is the One Who is your Shepherd.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers