Whose clothes are you wearing?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels. Isaiah 61:10

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Some people reading this will be absolutely speechless when they stand before the King of Heaven. They are church members, but they’re not saved. Instead, they’re dressed in the rags of self-righteousness rather than the wedding garment of His righteousness. Can you say this? “He hath clothed me with the garment of salvation. He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness.”

In 1834 Edward Mote wrote this timeless hymn, “When He shall come with trumpet sound, Oh may I then in Him be found. Dressed in His righteousness alone, Faultless to stand before the throne.”

ACTION POINT:

It would be tragic indeed for those who acted in every conceivable religious way to think they can come to the wedding without being clothed by the righteousness of Christ. I’m not trying to get you to doubt your salvation, but I want to ask you, are you saved? How do you know?

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

The Marvel of Creation

Someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each of the seeds its own body. (1 Corinthians 15:35–38)

I have been picking up little things in Scripture that show God’s intimate involvement in creation.

For example, here in 1 Corinthians 15:38, Paul is comparing how a seed is planted in one form and comes forth in another form with a “body” different from all other bodies. He says, “God gives it a body just as he wished, and to each of the seeds a body of its own” (my translation — the original does not say he gives to each “kind” of seed a body, but to each and every seed its own body!).

This is a remarkable statement of God’s intimate involvement in the way God designs each seed to bring forth its own unique plant (not just species but each individual seed!).

Paul is not teaching about evolution here, but he is showing how he takes God’s intimate involvement with creation for granted. Evidently, Paul cannot imagine that any natural process should be conceived of without God’s doing it.

Again in Psalm 94:9, it says, “He who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see?” The psalmist assumes that God was the designer of the eye and that he designed the way the ear is planted in the head to do its hearing work.

So, when we marvel at the wonders of the human eye and the remarkable structure of the ear, we are not to marvel at the processes of chance, but at the mind and the creativity and the power of God.

Similarly in Psalm 95:5, “The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.” The involvement of God in making land and sea is such that the present sea is his.

It is not as though in some impersonal way he set it all in motion a billion years ago. Rather, he is the one who owns it because he made it. It is today his handiwork and bears the marks of his Creator claim on it, like a piece of artwork belongs to the one who painted it until he sells it or gives it away.

I point out these things not to solve all the problems surrounding the issues of origins, but to call you to be utterly God-conscious and God-exalting and God-saturated in all your observation and admiration of the wonders of the world.

John Piper 

What is the secret key to the Bible?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law. Psalm 119:18

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Have you ever thought you could just go to the Bible and pull some truth out of it for your life? Let me tell you, you cannot. I don't care who you are, you could know Hebrew and Greek, but not know God. Unless you lay your intellectual pride in the dust and ask God to open your eyes to understand His Word, you’ll not know the God who wrote it. Do you believe that?

Most of us don't believe it. If we really believed it, we would be praying, asking the Lord to open our eyes. The human mind, will, and emotions cannot understand “the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual discerns all things” (1 Corinthians 2:14-15a).

ACTION POINT:

God will give you wisdom to understand if you ask Him. The secret to understanding the Bible is to ask God to open your understanding! It took a supernatural miracle to write the Word of God. It takes a supernatural miracle for you to understand it. When God begins to write His Word upon your heart, you are going to lead a supernatural life!

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

In His Hand

In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind.  - Job 12:10

And they fell on their faces and said, "O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one man sin, and will you be angry with all the congregation?" - Numbers 16:22

And you his son, Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, though you knew all this, - Daniel 5:22

for "'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, "'For we are indeed his offspring.'  - Acts 17:28

23 For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: 'To the unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.

24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man,

25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place,

27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, - Acts 17:23-27

What Jesus Did for you!

And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. - Hebrews 10:10

For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. - Hebrews 10:14

15 And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying,

16 "This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds," 

17 then he adds, "I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more." 

18 Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin. - Hebrews 10:15-18

Do Not Harden Your Heart

To whom did [God] swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief. (Hebrews 3:18–19)

Even though the people of Israel saw the waters of the Red Sea divide and walked through the Sea on dry ground, the moment they got thirsty, their hearts were hard against God and they did not trust him to take care of them. They cried out against him and said that life in Egypt was better.

That is what the book of Hebrews was written to prevent. Oh, how many professing Christians make a start with God. They hear that their sins can be forgiven and that they can escape hell and go to heaven. And they say: “What have I got to lose? I’ll believe.”

But then in a week or a month or a year or ten years, the test comes — a season of no water in the wilderness. A weariness with manna. And subtly a growing craving for the fleeting pleasures of Egypt, as Numbers 11:5–6 says, “We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.”

This is a terrifying condition to be in — to find yourself no longer interested in Christ and his word and prayer and worship and missions and living for the glory of God. And to find all the fleeting pleasures of this world more attractive than the things of the Spirit.

If that is your situation, I plead with you to listen to the Holy Spirit speaking in this text. “They were unable to enter because of unbelief!” Give heed to the word of God. Do not harden your heart. Wake up to the deceitfulness of sin. Consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our great confession, and hold fast to your confidence and hope in him.

And if you have never even made a start with God, then put your hope in him. Turn from sin and from self-reliance and put your confidence in a great Savior. These things are written that you might believe and endure, and live.

John Piper 

Are you asking, “Why?”

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labor of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds' feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places. Habakkuk 3:17-19

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Habakkuk expressed his frustration and dismay at the way things were going in his beloved nation. Truly, it was God’s nation, for He had called the Hebrews to Himself centuries ago.

Yet here is the conclusion Habakkuk comes to: “I will joy in the God of my salvation. God the Lord is my strength.” Here’s where we must arrive: “The Lord is my strength. He will make my feet like hinds’ feet. He will make me to walk upon my high places.”

Habakkuk began by asking, “Why? Why, Lord, why?” God never did answer why. He just said, “I’m going reveal Who: It is Me. I am your strength. I will make you like a sure-footed gazelle, and you can live on your high places.”

ACTION POINT:

If you’re saved, if you know the Lord, it doesn’t matter if gasoline goes to $5 a gallon or if Wall Street hits bottom. If you know the Lord Jesus Christ, it doesn’t matter if they take away your fine house. The Bible says: “You can rejoice in the Lord your God!” Remember God’s greatness. Rejoice in God’s goodness. Rely on God’s grace.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

How Satan Serves God

Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful. (James 5:11)

Behind all disease and disability is the ultimate will of God. Not that Satan is not involved — he is probably always involved in one way or another with destructive purposes (Acts 10:38). But his power is not decisive. He cannot act without God’s permission.

That is one of the points of Job’s sickness. The text makes it plain that when disease came upon Job, “Satan . . . struck Job with loathsome sores” (Job 2:7). His wife urged him to curse God. But Job said, “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” (Job 2:10). And again the inspired author of the book (just as he did in 1:22) commends Job by saying, “In all this Job did not sin with his lips.”

In other words: This is a right view of God’s sovereignty over Satan. Satan is real and may have a hand in our calamities, but not the final hand, and not the decisive hand.

James makes clear that God had a good purpose in all Job’s afflictions: “You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful” (James 5:11).

So even though Satan was involved, the ultimate purpose was God’s, and it was “compassionate and merciful.”

This is the same lesson we learn from 2 Corinthians 12:7, where Paul says that his thorn in the flesh was a “messenger of Satan” and yet was given for the purpose of his own holiness — to keep him from becoming conceited. “Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited!”

Now, humility is not Satan’s purpose in this affliction. Therefore, the purpose is God’s. Which means that here Satan is being used by God to accomplish his good purposes in Paul’s life. In fact, for God’s elect children, Satan cannot destroy us, and God turns all his attacks finally against him and for us.

John Piper