Life and Death at Christmas

 Life and Death at Christmas

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)

As I was about to begin this devotional, I received word that Marion Newstrum had just died. Marion and her husband Elmer had been part of our church longer than most of our members had been alive at the time. She was 87. They had been married 64 years.

When I spoke to Elmer and told him I wanted him to be strong in the Lord and not give up on life, he said, “He has been a true friend.” I pray that all Christians will be able to say at the end of life, “Christ has been a true friend.” 

Each Advent I mark the anniversary of my mother’s death. She was cut off in her 56th year in a bus accident in Israel. It was December 16, 1974. Those events are incredibly real to me even today. If I allow myself, I can easily come to tears — for example, thinking that my sons never knew her. We buried her the day after Christmas. What a precious Christmas it was!

Many of you will feel your loss this Christmas more pointedly than before. Don’t block it out. Let it come. Feel it. What is love for, if not to intensify our affections — both in life and death? But oh, do not be bitter. It is tragically self-destructive to be bitter.

Jesus came at Christmas that we might have eternal life. “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). Elmer and Marion had discussed where they would spend their final years. Elmer said, “Marion and I agreed that our final home would be with the Lord.”

Do you feel restless for home? I have family coming home for the holidays. It feels good. I think the bottom-line reason for why it feels good is that they and I are destined in the depths of our being for an ultimate Homecoming. All other homecomings are foretastes. And foretastes are good.

Unless they become substitutes. Oh, don’t let all the sweet things of this season become substitutes of the final, great, all-satisfying Sweetness. Let every loss and every delight send your hearts a-homing after heaven.

Christmas. What is it but this: I came that they may have life? Marion Newstrum, Ruth Piper, and you and I — that we might have Life, now and forever.

Make your Now the richer and deeper this Christmas by drinking at the fountain of Forever. It is so near.

WHEN THE RIGHTEOUS SUFFER!

 EVERYDAY IN THE WORD!

SUNDAY DECEMBER 15, 2024.

SUBJECT : WHEN THE RIGHTEOUS SUFFER!

Memory verse: “Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and an upright man, one who fears God, and shuns evil?” (Job 1 vs 8.)

READ: Job 1 vs 13 - 19:

1:13: Now there was a day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house;

1:14: and a messenger came to Job and said, “The oxen were plowing, and the asses feeding beside them,

1:15: when the Sabeans raided them and took them away—indeed they have killed the servants with the edge of the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you!”

1:16: While he was still speaking, another also came and said, “The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants, and consumed them; and I alone have escaped to tell you!”

1:17: While he was still speaking, another also came and said, “The Chaldeans formed three bands, raided the camels, and took them away, yes, and killed the servants with the edge of the sword; and I alone have escaped to tell you!”

1:18: While he was still speaking, another also came and said, “Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house,

1:19: and suddenly a great wind came from across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people, and they are dead, and I alone have escaped to tell you!”

INTIMATION:

The world view of life is that misfortune comes as a direct result of sin. Suffering can be, but is not always, a penalty of sin. When the righteous suffer, it is obvious that it is not sin related. Though, some people try to say that if you suffer, it’s because you have sinned and angered God. But this outlook is incorrect. For instance, Job did nothing to deserve what happened to him. The Scripture says that Job was “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.” (Job 1 vs 1.) It is noteworthy that those who love God are not exempt from trouble. Simply because one is a child of God does not mean that he will escape hardship in this life. 

Job was a righteous man in the Bible who went through many trials, but his faith in God was staunch even through all of them. According to the book of Job, the reason the righteous suffer is to test their faith in God, to make them more like Him, and to bring Him glory. Throughout all the drama that took place in Job’s life, he did not sin with his lips (Job 2 vs 10). As a reward for his faithfulness throughout the calamity in his life, God gave him an additional 140 years of life, plus restitution in double of his possessions that he had lost, with more sons and daughters.

The suffering that God allowed Satan to unleash on Job was to prove the point that the righteous can remain faithful in the presence of great personal suffering. Job was a model of trust and obedience to God, yet God permitted Satan to attack him in an especially harsh manner. Although God loves us, believing and obeying him do not shelter us from life’s calamities. Setbacks, tragedies, and sorrows strike Christians and non-Christians alike. But in our tests and trials, God expects us to express our faith to the world. How do you respond to your troubles? Do you ask God, “Why me?” or do you say, “Use me?”

Through no fault of his own, Job lost his wealth, children, and health. For Job, the greatest trial was not the pain or the loss; it was not being able to understand why God allowed him to suffer amidst all his righteousness. God alone knew the purpose behind Job’s suffering, and yet He never explained it to Job. In spite of this, Job never gave up on God, even in the midst of suffering. He never placed his hope in his experience, his wisdom, his friends, or his wealth. Job focused on God.

Job showed the kind of trust we are to have. When everything is stripped away, we are to recognize that God is all we ever really had. We should not demand that God should explain everything. God gives us Himself, but not all the details of His plans. We must remember that this life, with all its pain, is not our final destiny. Although we may not be able to understand fully the pain the righteous experience, it can lead us to rediscover God. However, knowing that God will not allow His children to be tempted beyond what they are able to endure encourages the faithful to remain true to their faith.

God does not punish us through our trials. He sends us those trials to test and deepen our relationship and faith in Him. Job says, “Put him to test every moment” (Job 7 vs 18). The apostle James says, “Knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” (James 1 vs 3 - 4). God wants us to run the race with endurance, and testing our faith is one reason He sends us trials. In sharing in Christ’s sufferings, we also become more mature in the faith, and we begin to imitate His character.

God sends us trial to make us more like Himself. So then you should, “…rejoice as you share in the sufferings of the Messiah,” (First Peter 4 vs 13) because our character matures through trials. If you ask anyone who has recently had a hard time, they will never say that it hurt them or they have bad character because of it. Those people will say it has made them stronger and more mature by refining their character. In the end, we’ll be refined and purified by the fire of trials. We’ll come out as sparkling gold. Job said, “When He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold” (Job 23 vs 10).

Everything we do as Christians should glorify God. But you might be asking, “How could suffering bring God glory?” When the righteous endure until the end, praising God amidst tribulation, and trusting in His control, He gets glory. He even gets glory at the end when we witness to others and we testify of how faithful He has been through it all. The apostle Paul says, “..that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or death.” (Philippians 1 vs 20). 

You may ask, Why should God be glorified? Because God deserves all our glory and praise, even when we can’t see what He is doing. Suffering affects all of humanity. But we as Christians have hope through Christ. We learn from Job that we shouldn’t fear the outcome, because God is in control of our trials, and He is right there with us through it all.

 

Prayer: Abba Father, You are the Lord that controls all circumstances, and by You all things consist. I know nothing can separate me from the love of Christ! Yes, neither tribulation, nor distress,nor persecution, nor famine, nor nakedness, nor peril, nor sword. In all these things I am more than a conqueror through You who loves me. I am an overcomer, in Jesus’ Name I have prayed. Amen.

PRAISE THE LORD!

Making It Real for His People

 Making It Real for His People

Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. (Hebrews 8:6)

Christ is the Mediator of a new covenant, according to Hebrews 8:6. What does that mean? It means that his blood — the blood of the covenant (Luke 22:20; Hebrews 13:20) — finally and decisively purchased and secured the fulfillment of God’s promises for us.

It means that God, according to the new covenant promises, brings about our inner transformation by the Spirit of Christ.

And it means that God works this transformation in us through faith — faith in all that God is for us in Christ.

The new covenant is purchased by the blood of Christ, effected by the Spirit of Christ, and appropriated by faith in Christ.

The best place to see Christ working as the Mediator of the new covenant is in Hebrews 13:20–21:

Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

The words “working in us that which is pleasing in his sight” describe what happens when God writes the law on our hearts in accord with the new covenant. And the words “through Jesus Christ” describe Jesus as the Mediator of this glorious work of sovereign grace.

So, the meaning of Christmas is not only that God replaces shadows with Reality, but also that he takes the Reality and makes it real to his people. He writes it on our hearts. He does not lay his Christmas gift of salvation and transformation under the tree, so to speak, for you to pick up in your own strength. He picks it up and puts it in your heart and in your mind and gives you the seal of assurance that you are a child of God.

YOU HAVE NO EXCUSES NOT TO SERVE!

 EVERYDAY IN THE WORD!

SATURDAY DECEMBER 14, 2024.

SUBJECT: YOU HAVE NO EXCUSES NOT TO SERVE!

Memory verse: "For I wish that all men were even as I myself. But each one has his own gift from God, one in this manner and another in that." (First Corinthians 7 vs 7.)

READ: Romans 12 vs 4 - 8:

12:4: For as we have many members in one body, but all members do not have the same function, 

12:5: so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. 

12:6: Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith; 

12:7: or ministry, let us use it in our ministering; he who teaches, in teaching; 

12:8: he who exhorts, in exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.

INTIMATION:

All God’s works are marvelous, and all His creations are wonderful and are useful to Him for His predetermined purposes. Nothing that He created is useless to Him. All natural positions are gifts from God. And none is morally better than the other, and all are valuable to accomplishing HIs purposes. It is important to us to accept our present situation, knowing that your present situation is a tool in God’s hands to achieve His purposes. Our limitations does not limit God, therefore, cannot be an excuse in your ministry or service.

If you're not involved in any service or ministry, what excuse have you been using? No excuse is admissible in ministry. All the people used by God in the Bible had their limitations which never excused them in ministry or service. Abraham was old, Jacob was insecure, Leah was unattractive, Joseph was abused, Moses stuttered, Gideon was poor, Samson was codependent, Rahab was immoral, David had an affair and all kinds of family problems, Elijah was suicidal, Jeremiah was depressed, Jonah was reluctant, Naomi was a widow, John the Baptist was eccentric to say the least, Peter was impulsive and hot-tempered, Martha worried a lot, the Samaritan woman had several failed marriages, Zacchaeus was unpopular, Thomas had doubts, Paul has poor health, and Timothy was timid. 

Enumerated above are quite a variety of misfits, but God used each of them in His service. He will use you if you stop making excuses. We have our different callings to serve, and each service is significant. God created us for His specific purposes, and it is His desire that we identify our pathway and follow it to achieve His purpose of creating us. But He left us a choice—to choose His pathway or ours. Obviously, your choice is made when you give your life for something. What will it be; a career, a sport, a hobby, fame, wealth? Or God's pathway for you to serve Him, and others. No choice you make, outside God's pathway of service destined for you, will have lasting significance. 

When you identify your own gifts, ask how you can use them to build up God’s family. At the same time, realize that your gifts can’t do the work of the body of Christ all alone. Be thankful for people whose gifts are completely different from yours. Let your strengths balance their weaknesses, and be grateful that their abilities make up for your deficiencies. The apostle Paul uses the concept of human body to teach how Christians should live and work together. As the human body is, so is the Body of Christ. Each human part finds its significance on its vocation, but all function under the direction of the brain. So Christians are to work together under the command and authority of Jesus Christ, using our different gifts. 

Service is the pathway to real significance. It is through ministry that we discover the meaning of our lives. As we serve together in God's family, our lives take on eternal importance. In human body, the eyes cannot do the work of the legs, nor the tongue the work of the stomach. When any part tries to do the work of another, it fails, and loses its significance. The Bible, in First Corinthians 7 vs 7, 20, 24, says, "..But each one has his own gift from God, one in this manner and another in that. Let each one remain in the same calling in which he was called. Brethren, let each one remain with God in that state in which he was called." 

When you are in the state you were called, God remains with you, hence your significance, because It is only in Him your hope of glory lies (See Colossians 1 vs 28). When one is outside of his calling, you hear people complain; "Upon all I am doing nobody notices me," "I am putting in my best, but it seems like nothing is done," "nobody sees my contribution, but when the other person does the same thing, people will be full of praise for him."

God wants to use you to make a difference in His world. He wants to work through you. What matters is not the duration of your life, but the donation of it. Not how long you lived, but how right you lived. What you might look at as a disadvantage may turn out to be an advantage in your ministry. 

In acknowledging God's uniqueness and goodness, the psalmist in Psalm 139 vs 14 says, "I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well."

God is perfect, and His works also are perfect. He never makes mistake, and is forever the same. Find your God's ordained path and follow it, and you will find real significance.

Prayer: Abba Father, thank You, most precious God, for Your marvelous works in me, and how You fearfully and wonderfully made me for Your predetermined purposes. Give me the grace and divine wisdom to identify my ordained pathway that I may walk in it, and be relevance in service to You and others, in Jesus’ Name I have prayed, Amen.

PRAISE THE LORD!

The Final Reality Is Here

 The Final Reality Is Here

Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. . . . They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, “See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.” (Hebrews 8:1–2, 5) 

We’ve seen it before. But there’s more. Christmas is the replacement of shadows with the real thing.

Hebrews 8:1–2, 5 is a kind of summary statement. The point is that the one priest who goes between us and God, and makes us right with God, and prays for us to God is not an ordinary, weak, sinful, dying priest as in the Old Testament days. He is the Son of God — strong, sinless, with an indestructible life.

Not only that, he is not ministering in an earthly tabernacle with all its limitations of place and size while getting worn out and being moth-eaten and being soaked and burned and torn and stolen. No, Hebrews 8:2 says that Christ is ministering for us in a “true tent that the Lord set up, not man.” This is not the shadow. It’s the real thing in heaven. This is the reality that cast a shadow on Mount Sinai for Moses to copy.

According to Hebrews 8:1, another great thing about the reality which is greater than the shadow is that our High Priest is seated at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. No Old Testament priest could ever say that.

Jesus deals directly with God the Father. He has a place of honor beside God. He is loved and respected infinitely by God. He is constantly with God. This is not shadow-reality like curtains and bowls and tables and candles and robes and tassels and sheep and goats and pigeons. This is final, ultimate reality: God and his Son interacting in love and holiness for our eternal salvation.

Ultimate reality is the persons of the Godhead in relationship, dealing with each other concerning how their majesty and holiness and love and justice and goodness and truth shall be manifest in a redeemed people.

YOU CAN RESIST THE DEVIL!

 EVERYDAY IN THE WORD!

FRIDAY DECEMBER 13, 2024.

SUBJECT : YOU CAN RESIST THE DEVIL!

Memory verse: “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour.” (First Peter 5 vs 8.)

READ: James 4 vs 7 - 10:

4:7: Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

4:8: Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

4:9: Lament and mourn, and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to gloom.

4:10: Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.

INTIMATION:

The Christian must remember that Satan cannot voluntarily consume anyone he so chooses. God has never given Satan the power to voluntarily subject people to his will. The Christian has the responsibility to resist the devil. If one desires to seek God, then Satan has no power to subjectively keep one away from God. The apostate Christian has simply given himself over to Satan because of his own ignorance of the Word of God or willingness to forsake the fellowship of the community of God’s people. For this reason, each person will give account of himself or herself before God. 

Satan has no power over the one who voluntarily keeps himself or herself close to Jesus. However, Satan roams about as a nervous lion looking for his lunch. Those who are ignorant of his warning roars will fall victim to his hunger for the souls of men. Therefore, it is necessary that the Christian learn how the devil seeks to destroy the lives of men. One must be aware of how he stalks his prey. The sober and vigilant Christian is constantly listening for the roar of the hungry Satan. He can identify how Satan works. However, if he or she becomes ignorant of God’s Word, or enticed by the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life, he will be ensnared by Satan and consumed. 

The Christian has the voluntary power to stay away from the consuming hunger of Satan to devour souls. The context in which one is more apt to fall is when he is under trials and persecution. Therefore, it is in such a state that one must be sober and vigilant to resist Satan. Christians can withstand the temptations that are presented by Satan by exercising faith in God through prayer, Bible study, and good works toward others.

Our power to resist Satan is exemplified in the fact that we can make him flee. Since God will not allow the individual Christian to be tempted beyond that which he is able to endure, then we must assume that we have the power to make the devil flee from us. Since we have the power, then we will all stand before God in judgement and be held directly accountable for our deeds. Our power to resist Satan makes us responsible for our actions. 

However, we must keep in mind that no man has this power within himself. God is the source of power to resist the devil. The individual must take the initiative to keep himself or herself in the love of God. It is through the power of the gospel and Christ working in us, that we are able to resist the devil. We must choose to unleash the power in our lives in order to flee all temptations that come to us through the work of the devil.

How can one come close to God and keep oneself in His love? (1) Submit to God; yield to His authority and Will, and commit your life to Him and His control, and be willing to follow Him. Consistent faith is the way to defeat Satan. (2) Resist the devil; don’t allow Satan to entice and tempt you. It is Satan’s strategy to get us to doubt God at exactly our moments of trial and persecution. (3) Cleanse your hands and purify your heart, that is, lead a pure life. Be cleansed from sin, replacing your desire to sin with your desire to experience God’s purity. (4) Lament and mourn and weep. Don’t be afraid to express deep heartfelt sorrow for what you have done (5) Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up in honor. 

Humbling ourselves before the Lord means recognizing that our worth comes from God alone. To be humble involve leaning on His power and His guidance, and not going on our own independent way. Although we cannot deserve God’s favor, He wants to lift us up and give us worth and dignity, despite our human shortcomings. 

You must purify your heart. This is the problem with the materialist. His or her heart is seeking the things of this world. He or she must become pure with the wisdom from above in order to remain in the grace by which he or she is saved. Those who have made their hands dirty by becoming a friend of the world, must repent. One will not come to repentance if one does not recognize one’s sinful condition. One must recognize one’s spiritual poverty in order to seek the riches of God’s grace.

Prayer: Abba Father, endue with the wisdom to withstand the temptations and lies of the devil. And arm me with Your whole armor to resist the wiles of the devil, in Jesus’ Name I have prayed. Amen.

PRAISE THE LORD!

Replacing the Shadows

 Replacing the Shadows

Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. (Hebrews 8:1–2)

The point of the book of Hebrews is that Jesus Christ, God’s Son, has not just come to fit into the earthly system of priestly ministry as the best and final human priest, but he has come to fulfill and put an end to that system, and to orient all our attention on himself, ministering for us first on Calvary as our final Sacrifice and then in heaven as our final Priest.

The Old Testament tabernacle and priests and sacrifices were shadows. Now the reality has come, and the shadows pass away.

Here’s an Advent illustration for kids — and those of us who used to be kids and remember what it was like. Suppose you and your mom get separated in the grocery store, and you start to get scared and panic and don’t know which way to go, and you run to the end of an aisle, and just before you start to cry, you see a shadow on the floor at the end of the aisle that looks just like your mom. It makes you really hopeful. But which is better? The hopefulness of seeing the shadow, or having your mom step around the corner and it’s really her?

That’s the way it is when Jesus comes to be our High Priest. That’s what Christmas is. Christmas is the replacement of shadows with the real thing: Mom stepping around the corner of the aisle, and all the relief and joy that gives to a little child.