Tag: daily devos

Devo 23: repost

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“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”  Isaiah 55:9

Have you ever heard verses like the one above used to explain why we can’t understand hard texts in scripture?  Or how about this one?

“The secret things belong to the Lord our God.” Deuteronomy 29:29

What about the statement that we are too much influenced by the Enlightenment and that we need to read scripture with a Jewish mindset which was more accepting of mystery?

We might call it an acceptance of mystery.  Jesus called it spiritual blindness and rejection of what the prophets clearly foretold.

Just look at how that Deuteronomy text continues.  

“BUT the things that are REVEALED belong to us and to our children forever, THAT WE MAY DO ALL THE WORDS OF THIS LAW.”  Moses then reiterates to the Israelites the blessing that would be theirs if they called to mind the commandments and the “statutes that are written in this Book of the Law” and the curse that would be theirs if they did not.  And then he makes this stunning statement in Deuteronomy 30:11-14,

“For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off.  It is NOT IN HEAVEN, that you should say, ‘who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it  to us, that we may hear it and do it?’  NEITHER IS IT BEYOND THE SEA, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hearit and do it?’  But the word is very near you.   It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do It.”  

Is Moses not saying that what the Lord has revealed in His word, He has not made unattainable to the understanding of His people? 

If the first 5 books of the Bible were meant to be understood by God’s people so that they would obey them, why are we so quick to dismiss other portions as too mysterious for human comprehension?

Now just listen to the rest of Isaiah 55:9!  The very next verses read,

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth  and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, SO SHALL MY  WORD BE THAT GOES OUT FROM MY MOUTH;  IT SHALL NOT RETURN TO ME EMPTY,  BUT IT SHALL ACCOMPLISH  THAT WHICH I PURPOSE, AND  SHALL SUCCEED IN THE THING FOR WHICH I SENT IT.“

God has sent us much more than a mystery.  He has sent us a manna-filled, purpose-succeeding Divine REVELATION!  Do you know why?

So that we would recognize in that revelation the life-giving glory of His Son, Jesus Christ.

AND SO THAT WE WOULD RENDER HIM THE WORSHIP HE IS DUE!

Oh, dear brothers and sisters, can’t you see that every time you relegate a “hard text” to the category of “unattainable mystery,” you are robbing God of the exaltation that He so deserves?

Just go back to the last post and read the texts for this week.  All of them proclaim the infinite “high-ness” of God’s thoughts and ways. 

In fact the whole Bible is the particular REVELATION OF HIS THOUGHTS AND HIS WAYS to ALL mankind concerning His son, Jesus Christ, by which WE MIGHT BE SAVED!  And where else was the magnitude of His high-ness and other-ness more on display than on the cross?

When Psalm 37:5,6 proclaims that God’s steadfast love extends to the heavens, His faithfulness to the clouds, His righteousness like the mountains, and His judgements like the deep.  Where else was the extent of His love, faithfulness, righteousness, and judgement more clearly seen than on the cross?

And again in Psalm 103:11,12 the Psalmist proclaims that not only is God’s steadfast love “as high as the heavens are above the earth” but also that “as far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us.”  How was that removal of transgressions accomplished but through the cross?

Read 1 Corinthians 2.  Yep.  The whole chapter.  I know this violates every rule in the blogosphere but it really is THAT important.  

“And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, 4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

6 Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away.7 But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”—

10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.”

Did you catch that?  Yes, there is a secret and hidden wisdom of God which was so misunderstood by those willing to write all the hard stuff off as a mystery that they “crucified the Lord of glory!”  And yes, no-one can comprehend the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God… but we have the Spirit who was from God THAT WE MIGHT UNDERSTAND THESE SPIRITUAL TRUTHS AND INTERPRET THEM!

It is this Spirit that enables Paul in Ephesians to address mystery after mystery with confidence and clarity.  In every instance the mystery itself is accompanied by an assurance that it CAN BE UNDERSTOOD!

God lavished His grace “upon us in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of His will (1:8,9).”  “This mystery was made known to me by revelation…when you read this you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ (3:3,4).”  “It has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs (3:5,6).”  Grace was given to Paul to preach and “bring to light for everyone the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God…so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known (3:9,10).”  About the profound mystery of marriage Paul says confidently that it refers to Christ and the church (5:32).  He closes by asking for prayer that he would proclaim boldly the mystery of the gospel (6:19).  

Now, just listen to Paul’s prayer for the church in the same letter:

“[May] the Father of glory give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you (1:17,18).”  

Please, I urge you, when you come to a text you don’t understand, dig deeper, pray harder for enlightenment. In those depths you will only find more reason to worship the crucified and risen Christ.  The one who has been made spiritually alive need not settle for mystery.  For WE HAVE THE MIND OF CHRIST!  Let us use it to see Him more clearly, know Him more deeply, and render Him more fervently the glory due His Name!

Week 31

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Memory Verse:  Isaiah 65:17

“For behold, I create a new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.”

Reading #1:  Revelation 1:9-27, 6

Questions:  In chapter 1 what, or rather who, does John see Jesus standing in the midst of?  What are the seven stars in Jesus’ right hand?  In chapter 6 what response do the people on the earth have to the what’s going on in the sky?  How would John’s earlier vision of Jesus in chapter 1 be of great comfort to the church during this time?

Reading #2:  Revelation 8, 10

Questions:  How would John’s earlier vision of Jesus in chapter 1 be of great comfort to the church during this time?

Reading #3:  Revelation 12, 14:6-13

Questions:  How would John’s earlier vision of Jesus in chapter 1 be of great comfort to the church during this time?

Reading #4:  Revelation 21-22

Questions: How are the first and last chapters of Revelation of great comfort to you in light of all the judgements revealed in the chapters in between?

Psalms and Hymns

Children of the Heavenly Father “Children of the heavenly Father safely in His bosom gather.  Nestling bird nor star in Heaven, such a refuge ne’er was given.”

Devo 28

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“And I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke; the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day.  And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”  Acts 2:19-21

I knew this post was coming.  This week’s readings have been sitting here for 9 months waiting their turn.  Why should I  dread writing about the wrath of God if I need not dread His wrath?  Perhaps because I know it is real.  And it is coming.  And I am partly to blame.  God’s wrath is a result of my own sin.  Because of my rebellion against His holiness, His wrath was first poured out on His willing and righteous Son, Jesus Christ.  He bore my sin for me on the cross and therefore He bore the wrath of God against me.

But there’s more wrath to come.  And this time Jesus will be the judge, not the condemned.

We did a quick overview of Revelation in a series of devotionals for the ladies up here, looking specifically at who Christ is and how He is worshipped in the vision John is given.  I was so struck by the attributes God was being praised for; some expected and very present in our own worship like His holiness, eternality, sovereignty, sacrifice, salvation, power, and righteousness; and others, not-so-much, like His wrath, judgements, rewards, justice, truth, vengeance and destruction of the ungodly.

The Psalms are brimming with the same kind of worship we see in the book of Revelation, but some where along the line, certain elements of God’s nature seem to have fallen out of our praise vernacular.  So if I’m going to spend an eternity worshipping God for these attributes, I should at least be able to take a few minutes to write about them.

It’s easy to say passages like Ezekiel 32:1-8 and Micah 3:1-8 are too graphic for our modern day sensibilities, but I’m pretty sure such bloody descriptions weren’t exactly standard Saturday Evening Post fare for the ancients either.  That kind of brutality would be shocking to any generation of man.  Any human at any time would quake at the threat of being flung into an open field to be food for the vultures and other beasts and then to have ones flesh strewn upon the mountains along with so many others the ravines are flowing with blood.

Sounds merciless, right?  And yet that’s exactly the kind of horrid consequence my rebellion demands.  That’s how ugly my sin is to the just and holy and righteous God who made me.  But when God turned the full fury of His wrath onto my sin, it was His perfect and holy and righteous Son who voluntarily took the blow.  The wrath of God poured out on Jesus Christ on the cross was merciless.  And all God’s mercy was poured out on me instead.

So can I praise God for His wrath?  Yes!  Because it is a holy wrath and because He was willing to bear it Himself on the cross for me. But how can one escape the wrath that is to come?  For surely, the same Christ who bore my sins in His own body on the tree, who was buried and who rose again and ascended into heaven, this same Christ is coming back as judge over all the earth.

Just as a star announced Christ’s first advent, the heavens will proclaim His second.  But dear friend, you need not dread that coming.  No, you can rejoice and welcome your King!  Peter, one of the eyewitnesses to Jesus’ death and resurrection, proclaimed in Acts 2:21 that “it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved!”  Now, you might have the same question that Peter’s listeners had, “What shall we do?”  His answer was simple.  Repent and you will be born again.  Your sins will be forgiven and God’s loving mercy will be poured out on you.  Then you, too, will have all the reason in the world to praise Him for His wrath for He will have born it for you.  Joel 2:12,13, which Peter was quoting from says,

“Even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;  and rend your hearts and not your garments.”  Return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and He relents from disaster.”