A Devotional Thought From Daniel

Wherefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable unto thee, and break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by showing mercy to the poor; if it may be a lengthening of thy tranquility.  Daniel 4:27

Daniel had just announced God’s judgment on Nebuchadnezzar. It was a personal judgment. The mightiest ruler in the known world, the richest king in the world, the most feared king in the world, would live like an animal for seven years. He would eat grass, and live out of doors like a wild animal until he knew that the heavens (God) rule all.

Now if a President, Prime Minister, Emperor, or other titled ruler, today heard such a prediction from a preacher what might he/she think?

How wild, how wacky, how impossible, how nutso! It is no wonder nobody pays attention to God’s spokesman anymore. That could never happen.

An interesting thing about this passage (Daniel 4) is that Daniel did not get in trouble for saying this to Nebuchadnezzar. A proud and insensitive king like Nebuchadnezzar could have had Danile cut in pieces for saying such a thing. Nebuchadnezzar had already had experience with Daniel’s prophetic witness from God. He knew not to doubt. If Daniel says it then God has given him the knowledge. It’s going to happen. The comfort that Nebuchadnezzar had was that Daniel said after these times of living like an animal Nebuchadnezzar would be restored to his throne.

So now look carefully at what Daniel counseled the king. Break off thy sins by righteousness, in other words start doing good and turning from evil, and break off thine iniquities by showing mercy to the poor.

The judgment has already been pronounced. So why change these things? What good will it do? Nebuchadnezzar might’ve asked.

Daniel says, “If it may be a lengthening of thy tranquility.”

God might hold the punishment off a little longer if you reform yourself, your actions, and your country. Perhaps, Nebuchadnezzar did, because the judgment did not occur for another year (Daniel 4:29).

Maybe there are leaders in our world who through evil deeds, and failing to recognize the role of heaven, may have set themselves, and their nations, up for serious trouble. That trouble may be coming fast, but if the leaders, and people change their evil ways, and respond to God’s word the time of their trouble might be delayed, because of God’s grace. 

Turning from sin always brings positive results.

A Commencement Address for the Class of 2019

On this beautiful day of graduation, skies are blue, bright with sunshine, big sky, clear for as far as one can see into the future, there is but one little cloud way off, barely seen, just above the far horizon, the size of a man’s hand. It will grow bigger as time flies. The cloud represents death. You graduates will one day die. It is appointed unto humanity to die.

So the advice of this commencement messenger is live well; work hard, be honest, be brave, do right, honor your family, your nation, and God: believe and know that your life is valuable and precious, and meaningful, and can yield one hundred fold of influence upon those around you, around the world, and the generation following, no matter how famous or little-known you may become.

Every life and family is a building block in constructing a great edifice like our nation. Your life will, too, have eternal consequences for you, and, perhaps, others. So seek to make those everlasting things the glorious blessings possible.

But how can you do that? How can you make your life so special?

Once King Solomon of Judah, the wisest man in the world, gave this sentence that is your answer. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man (Ecclesiastes 12:13).

A Devotional Thought From Ezekiel  

As silver is melted in the midst of the furnace, so shall ye be melted in the midst thereof; and ye shall know that I the Lord have poured out my fury upon you. Ezekiel 22:22

The prophet Ezekiel explains God’s judgment against His ancient nation. The capital city, representing the whole country, was full of shed blood (murder); idols (false worship), they actually despised holy things; oppression of immigrants, widows, and fatherless children; lewdness, adultery, incest; usury, and extortion.

Because the rulers in particular, and the people, had made this their lifestyle God thought of them as dross. Dross is the name for the impurities found in metals like silver and gold, and brass and iron. To remove this dross ancient people learned to fire the metal to boiling. Bubbling in the heat the metal melted and the dross rose to the top of the molten mixture. When the dross was skimmed the metal was pure.

So God declares that He will put them through that process. The burning, melting, and removing of dross will be His fury upon that nation.

The burning, melting, furnace would be in the form of invading soldiers crushing and taking captive the land. God did this in response to years and years of a nation’s sins.

The Lord is over every nation, and sin was then, and still is a reproach to any nation.

An Easter Thought Based John 20:19

It was still dark as Mary Magdalene climbed the road to the cemetery on Gethsemane. She had not been able to come to the grave all day Saturday because of Jewish law, but as soon as it was permissible she was on her way. (John 20:1)

She sees something a strange when she arrives. The stone used to close off the Garden tomb has been rolled away from the mouth of the cave. The darkness of the grave stares back at her. Stunned, she turns from the grave and starts running. She runs to Peter and John. (John 20:2)

“They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him.” (John 20:3)

Immediately, Peter and John start running back to the grave to see what Mary was talking about.     (John 20:4)

When they get there, indeed the body of Christ is gone, but the grave clothes that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus had wrapped Jesus were still there. The face covering was folded and placed separately from the grave clothes. (John 20:6,7)

John’s saw and believed (John 20:8). I’m not sure if he believed in Christ’s resurrection as we understand it today from all the other accounts in Scripture, because the next verse (John 20:9) says: “For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.” But John knew something strange and wonderful, beyond human imagining, had happened.

He was later to learn, as did all the disciples and followers of Jesus, and all of us living two thousand years later, that Jesus had come alive from the dead, walked out of that grave and proved that his offer of eternal life is real, and available to all who will receive him.

“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.” (Acts 16:31)

Good Friday

And when they had crucified him, they parted his garments, casting lots upon them, what every man should take. Mark 15:24

In Mark 15:24-37 Mark is like a news reporter giving the details of Christ’s death in a few soundbites of explanation. They crucified him at 9 AM the third hour on the Roman clock. The word crucified includes all they did to get him up on the cross.

They made him carry the cross until his strength gave out and Simon of Cyrene was forced to finish the job.

They stripped him of his clothes.

They pushed his shredded, bleeding back against the wooden cross.

They stretched his arms out on the cross piece, held his hands to the wood, and nailed them down.

They placed his feet together and drove a spike through them into the wood.

They tilted the cross up off the ground, dropped it into the base support with a thud, and a terrible jolt to the Savior’s broken body.

And having done all that, they watched as Jesus suffered there, high and lifted up.

The Roman soldiers ignored his suffering to gamble for his clothing. The sounds of their dice game, ironic considering the terrible tragedy playing out above their bowed heads, bowed to view the results of their casting lots not to the King of glory. They ignored the fact that their eternal destiny hung up on the cross. They bowed their heads to temporary pleasure.

Mark adds another detail in verse 27, he was crucified between thieves, one on his right hand the other one is left. The thieves were crooks, criminals, transgressors, evildoers, malefactors.

“Look,” people could say, “there, right in the middle of the transgressors that’s Jesus. We always thought he was a good man, all the stories and testimonies we heard were about his goodness, but there he is numbered with the crooks.

This too was ironic, UNLESS you knew about the prophecy.

Eight hundred years before Jesus was crucified in the midst of these wicked men, Isaiah had predicted, prophesied, that Messiah the anointed Savior sent by God, would be numbered with the transgressors.

Mark tells us that the cross was the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy.

But there was a little more to the prophecy (Isaiah 53:12) that Mark did not include in his recounting of the story of the cross. Here it is. Isaiah had been moved by God’s Spirit to prophesy that the Messiah - “he bared the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”

Intercede means mediate. And when we hear that Jesus made intercession for the transgressors is easy to think of 1 Timothy 2:5; “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”

He died so that when anyone who believed in him stood before his Father, God the father in heaven, Jesus could say: “Father, accept this one who believes in me. I died for her. I died for him. I carried their sin. I suffered the punishment of your wrath against sin. I am there one mediator.”

That is how a person gets saved, forgiven of their sins, by trusting in Jesus as their own personal Savior.

There are no other ways of salvation. There are no other saviors. There are no other redeemers. There is no co-Redeemer. There are no other doors into heaven. There are no other religions that can save.

He is the one, the one and only, mediator tween God and humanity.

If you believe when he died,he died for you,

if you believe when he died, he saved you from sin,

if you believe when he died, he made you God’s child,

then you are born from above, and you belong to the Lord for all eternity.

While he was dying to accomplish all this Mark tells us (15:29-31) there were others there not throwing dice, but throwing insults of Jesus.

You were going to tear down the temple, and rebuild it in three days. Start by coming down from the cross come on save yourself. Come down from the cross.

The religious leaders who were there mocked him-“He saved others; himself he cannot save.”

One translator translated the word for mock as jested. You could get the sense they were joking from that. They knew he couldn’t come down from the cross so they joked about it.

But they had the wrong idea about why he could not come down from the cross. They thought the nails held him there, and he could not break their hold on him. They thought he could not come down due to physical restraints. They were woefully wrong.

Jesus could not come down from the cross because our sins, YOURS AND MINE, held him there. He could not be our Savior without bearing our sins, our judgment, our punishment, for not being the kind of people we should be: pure, sinless, perfect is God’s eyes. Jesus could not come down from the cross because dying for us was the only way to make us pure and sinless in the eyes of God.

So he loved us enough to give his pure and holy life on the cross  so that we could give him our sinfulness and have his life instead.

The mocking continued (Mark 15:32) “Let Christ the King of Israel  descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe. And they that were crucified with him reviled him.”

They had forsaken him, those on Skull Hill who refused to believe in him as Savior, and the spiritual darkness in their hearts clouded over the execution place.

Then after Jesus had been hanging in agony God sent the physical darkness at noon that covered the whole land, and in the dark Jesus cried out “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (15:34)

For the first time, and the only time, in all eternity, God the Father had not been in full intimate fellowship with God the son. He had turned away when Jesus became sin for us, and Jesus felt alone, abandon. We can never understand what happened, except to know this was the greatest agony Jesus ever experienced, and he took it on himself for us, as our Redeemer, our one mediator with God the Father.

If you have a Bible, or can print out this passage Mark 15:24-37, turn to it, or print it out, then read, and think about it, and see if you can sense the great thing Jesus has done for you. For us!

Then just a few moments later (Mark 15:37) “Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost.”

He died.

He was nailed and crucified-he did not deserve it.

He was placed among the transgressors-he did not deserve it.

He was scorned and mocked-he did not deserve it.

He gave up the ghost and died-he did not deserve it.

But he went to that cross, and suffered it all because he loved us.

Have you ever thought about Jesus, and his death upon the cross in any serious way?

Have you ever realized he died for you personally? For you! For your sins!

Today is a good day to do that. It is a day of salvation to all who will trust Jesus to save them. It is your day of salvation if you will throw yourself upon him believing he paid for your sins. Will you trust him right now.

Come to Jesus.

He will save you,

If you trust Him.

Then start reading the Bible, and start going to a Bible teaching church.

A Thought From The Psalms

O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. Psalm 137:8,9

What a terrible thing to say. Why is the writer of Psalm 137 speaking this way? He is furious and wrathful. His people have been conquered and brutalized by Babylonian soldiers, and he wishes that the Babylonians will be cursed with the same brutality that they have heaped upon God’s people.

This Psalm is what Bible teachers and theologians call an imprecatory Psalm, one that calls down curses on the enemy. It’s an angry, revenge filled, “You’re gonna get yours!” kind of Psalm.

Babylon in its conquering of the world in ancient times was not a nation that waged war according to international laws. They had no rules of engagement intended to protect the civilian population of their enemies. Kill, spoil, and destroy is how they did it.

Imagine what this Psalmist had seen with his own eyes when Babylon conquered Jerusalem and all Israel. Like other nations in battle at that time, they mowed down people in the streets chopping them in pieces with swords. Like other nations in battle at that time, they probably “ripped up the women with child” (Amos 1:13 re: Amalek), and may have pulled some baby (babies) from the mother’s belly and cast it on the ground to die, if it wasn’t dead already. When little toddlers were running in fear from the battle hardened brutes of Babylon, the soldiers, like other soldiers at that time, may have grabbed the child by its ankles, swung it around his head, and battered it against a rock or other object hard enough to crush the little skull. They may have heard cheers and laughter from their fellow soldiers patrolling the streets of the vanquished city.

It is hard for any modern person to imagine how even a battle hardened soldier of any army, who had seen and been a part of the most horrendous war situations, could, for any reason, be that hard, that murderous.

The Psalmist implies he expected that one day Babylon’s children would be treated “as thou has served us.”

Eventually God judged Babylon as He had promised (Jeremiah 25:12) for their iniquity, and the women and children of that wicked city did not fair well.

A Devotional Thought From Isaiah

Now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever: That this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the LORD: Which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits:      Isaiah 30:8-10

God calls out His ancient people in this passage. He says they are rebellious people (rebelling against Him), they are lying people who should be a people of truth. They are His children (chosen and called), but they will not hear His law. They will not listen, and they do not want to obey God. They tell their preachers do not preach right things, tell us smooth, easy things. Things we want to hear. Prophesy deceits, tell us lies that fit what we want to believe.

How could these be the people God called His own?

Today in some Christian denominations there is almost the same cry from many who call themselves God’s children. Don’t tell us the Bible says things we approve are really sin, we don’t want to hear that. Don’t tell us we must follow God’s teaching if we are to call ourselves Christians. The world around us approves certain values that the Bible does not, so prophesy deceits, tell us that sin and God’s word are actually compatible. We will believe it because that is what we want to believe.

How could these be the people God calls His own?