Feb.28

8 He who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who is my adversary? Let him come near to me. 

9 Behold, the Lord GOD helps me; who will declare me guilty? Behold, all of them will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up. 

10 Who among you fears the LORD and obeys the voice of his servant? Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the LORD and rely on his God.  - Isaiah 50:8-10

10 And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, "Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.

11 And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.

12 Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!" - Revelation 12:10-12

10 Say among the nations, "The LORD reigns! Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity." 

11 Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; 

12 let the field exult, and everything in it! Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy 

13 before the LORD, for he comes, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness, and the peoples in his faithfulness.  - Psalm 96:10-13

Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. - John 12:25

God Wants Your Burdens

BIBLE MEDITATION:

“Yet man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward”... (Job 5:7)

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

It starts almost the day we’re born. We come in crying, and from there it just goes on. We have burdens. If you don’t have burdens, you’re probably not a thinking person. But I want to tell you today what to do with your burdens.

David wrote, “Cast your burden on the Lord, and He shall sustain you. He shall never permit the righteous to be moved” (Psalm 55:22).

David was a king. He was wealthy and powerful. What do we learn from this? That burdens come to the high as well as to the low. They come to saints as well as sinners. They come to the old as well as the young. What do we do with our burdens? We have to cast them upon the Lord.

ACTION POINT:

Do you have a broken heart? Has one of your children ripped your heart out? Is there a husband who has forsaken you? A physical malady gnawing away at your body? Is there a problem perplexing you? Cast your burden on the Lord. He will sustain you.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Radical Effects of the Resurrection

If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. (1 Corinthians 15:19)

Paul concludes from his hourly danger, and his daily dying, and his fighting with wild beasts, that the life he has chosen in following Jesus is foolish and pitiable if he will not be raised from the dead.

If death were the end of the matter, he says, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (1 Corinthians 15:32). This doesn’t mean: Let’s all become gluttons and drunkards if there is no resurrection. Drunkards are pitiable too — with or without the resurrection. He means: If there is no resurrection, what makes sense is middle-class moderation to maximize earthly pleasures.

But that is not what Paul chooses. He chooses suffering, because he chooses obedience. Ananias came to Paul after his encounter with Christ on the Damascus road, with the words from the Lord Jesus, “I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:16). Paul accepted this suffering as part of his calling.

How could Paul do it? What was the source of this radical and painful obedience? The answer is given in 1 Corinthians 15:20: “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” In other words, Christ was raised, and I will be raised with him. Therefore, nothing suffered for Jesus is in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58).

The hope of the resurrection radically changed the way Paul lived. It freed him from materialism and consumerism. It gave him the power to go without comforts and pleasures that many people feel they must have in this life. For example, though he had the right to marry (1 Corinthians 9:5), he renounced that pleasure because he was called to bear so much suffering.

This is the way Jesus said the hope of the resurrection is supposed to change our behavior. For example, he told us to invite to our homes people who cannot pay us back in this life. How are we to be motivated to do this? “You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just” (Luke 14:14).

This is a radical call for us to look hard at our present lives to see if they are shaped by the hope of the resurrection. Do we make decisions on the basis of gain in this world, or gain in the next? Do we take risks for love’s sake that can only be explained as wise if there is a resurrection?

May God help us to rededicate ourselves for a lifetime of letting the resurrection have its radical effects.

John Piper 

Feb.27

1 "Man who is born of a woman is few of days and full of trouble. 

2 He comes out like a flower and withers; he flees like a shadow and continues not. 

3 And do you open your eyes on such a one and bring me into judgment with you? 

4 Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? There is not one. 

5 Since his days are determined, and the number of his months is with you, and you have appointed his limits that he cannot pass, 

6 look away from him and leave him alone, that he may enjoy, like a hired hand, his day.  - Job 14:1-6

4 "O LORD, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am! 

5 Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath! Selah  - Psalm 39:4-5

47 Remember how short my time is! For what vanity you have created all the children of man! 

48 What man can live and never see death? Who can deliver his soul from the power of Sheol? Selah  - Psalm 89:47-48

For when a few years have come I shall go the way from which I shall not return.  - Job 16:22

What Are You Running To?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

“Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted”... 

(Galatians 6:1)

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

I read that each morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up and says to himself, “If I cannot outrun the fastest lion on these plains today, I will be devoured.” And somewhere that same morning, a lion wakes up and says, “If I cannot outrun the slowest gazelle today, I will starve.” So they run.

Every morning you and I need to wake up running because we are running from sin, and Satan is running after us.

You know the difference between my life before I was saved and after? Before I got saved, I was running to sin, but now I’m running from sin. But sometimes we are overtaken by sin, and the Bible tells us to “restore one other.”

ACTION POINT:

Do you know a brother or sister in Christ who’s been running toward sin—and walked away from the faith? Ask the Lord how He might use you and other believers to “restore such a one.” We who are Christians are to be in the restoration and reclamation business!

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

When God Becomes 100% for Us

. . . among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Ephesians 2:3)

All of God’s wrath, all of the condemnation we deserve, was poured out on Jesus. All of God’s demands for perfect righteousness were fulfilled by Christ. The moment we see (by grace!) this Treasure, and receive him in this way, his death counts as our death and his condemnation as our condemnation and his righteousness as our righteousness, and God becomes 100% irrevocably for us forever in that instant.

The question this leaves unanswered is, “Doesn’t the Bible teach that in eternity God set his favor on us in election?”

In other words, thoughtful people ask, “Did God only become 100% for us in the moment of faith and union with Christ and justification? Did he not become 100% for us in the act of election before the foundation of the world?” Paul says in Ephesians 1:4–5, “[God] chose us in [Jesus] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ.”

Is God then not 100% for the elect from eternity? The answer hangs on the meaning of “100%.”

With the term “100%” I am trying to preserve a biblical truth found in several passages of Scripture. For example, in Ephesians 2:3, Paul says that Christians were “children of wrath” before they were made alive in Christ Jesus: “We all once lived [among the sons of disobedience] in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”

Paul is saying that, before our new birth — before we were made alive together with Christ — God’s wrath was on us. The elect were under wrath. This changed when God made us alive in Christ Jesus and awakened us to see the truth and beauty of Christ so that we received him as the one who died for us and as the one whose righteousness is counted as ours because of our union with Jesus. Before this happened to us, we were under God’s wrath. Then, because of faith in Christ and union with him, all God’s wrath was removed and he then became, in that sense, 100% for us.

Therefore, exult in the truth that God will keep you. He will get you to the end because in Christ he is 100% for you. And therefore, getting to the end does not make God to be 100% for you. It is the effect of the fact that he is already 100% for you.

John Piper 

Holy Lamb Of God

These few verses are about God's provision.

The OT verses speak of the coming of God's ordained prophetic provision "The Lamb of God" who is Christ the Lord.

There was no worthy substitute available to satisfy God's wrath!

Christ took away the sin of the world!

7 And Isaac said to his father Abraham, "My father!" And he said, "Here I am, my son." He said, "Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?"

8 Abraham said, "God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." So they went both of them together. - Genesis 22:7-8

12 He said, "Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me."

13 And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.

14 So Abraham called the name of that place, "The LORD will provide"; as it is said to this day, "On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided." - Genesis 22:12-14

18 knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold,

19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

20 He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you

21 who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. - 1 Peter 1:18-21

The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! - John 1:29

and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God!" - John 1:36

12 saying with a loud voice, "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!" 

13 And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, "To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!" 

14 And the four living creatures said, "Amen!" and the elders fell down and worshiped. - Revelation 5:12-14