THE LORD SPOKE (October 6)

Daily Reflections from Scripture:

Isaiah 49-51

The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught. The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears, and I have not been rebellious; I have not drawn back.... Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the word of his servant? Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God. (Isaiah 50:4-5,10)

Does God ever wake you up in the morning with a message? Better yet, when God wakes you up in the morning, do you seek a message from His Word? Are you listening carefully to hear His voice and pick up on what He’s trying to tell you? When He “wakens your ear” do you resist in any way? When He shows you His way, do you draw back?

Can you start your day without seeking His face? Does it bother you to do so? Or, do you get through the whole day before noticing you left His presence behind?

The other half of listening to the Lord is talking to Him. Both are an essential part of our communion with Him. Isaiah certainly had a good balance in this area of his life and his book is full of both kinds of examples. Here’s something to ponder in the light of all this.


I Didn’t Have Time to Pray
Author unknown

I got up early one morning and rushed right into the day;
I had so much to accomplish I didn’t have time to pray.
Troubles just tumbled about me and heavier came each task.
Why doesn’t God help me, I wondered.
He answered, “You didn’t ask.”

I tried to come into God’s presence, I used all my keys at the lock.
God gently and lovingly chided, “Why, child, you didn’t knock.”
I wanted to see joy and beauty but the day toiled on grey and bleak.
I wondered why God didn’t show me.
He said, “You didn’t seek.”

I woke up early this morning and paused before entering the day.
I had so much to accomplish that I had to take time to pray.


Psalms 39-40

James says the same thing as the psalmist: “You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (Jas. 4:14). In David’s words, “each man is but a breath” (Ps. 39:5,11). Elsewhere he wrote, “Man is like a breath, his days are like a fleeting shadow” (Ps. 144:4). Job and Solomon likewise added their assent (Job 14:2; Eccl. 6:12).

But we knew it anyway - from our own experience. Life itself impresses upon us how fragile and how fleeting it is. A walk through any graveyard will put an exclamation point to that sentence. All those people - gone, and all but forgotten. Maybe an occasional faded plastic flower, baked in the sun. Not one in ten thousand has a biography written about him and not one in a thousand biographies are normally read by anyone. If you exclude the autobiographies, there’s not much at all that gets remembered by someone else. Even the Purple Hearts in a military cemetery are soon little more than a piece of fine congressional metal. Maybe we can remember which war they were in, but not much more.

Like Scrooge in Dickens’ story, we need to glance back from time to time and to peek ahead into the future a little. We need to fit our passing vapor into a larger context. We really need to discover for ourselves the lasting value of our life. We need to find an answer to that 60's question asked by the flower children: “Hey man, why am I here?”

1. I am here because God purposed it (vs. 9 - “for you are the one who has done all this”). The Sovereign Lord knows all things because He has determined all things. It is He who created me so any purpose that my life may have must spring from that.
2. My life has meaning because of Him (vs. 5 - “you have made my days”). Yes, it may be “a mere handbreadth” but it is the Eternal One who gave it to me. It may be “a mere phantom” but he has revealed that there is substance in things hoped for and evidence for things not seen (Heb. 11:1). Death does not end all. There is a life after life - and it’s the real one.
3. I will stake everything on Him (vs. 7 - “my hope is in you”). Nothing else in life provides a satisfactory answer. Finances are fleeting, wealth is wobbly, health the same. All my own foundations are weak and all my shelters leak. But I have learned that God is dependable. He alone can be trusted and never fails.

If Psalm 39 stood alone, we might still be left feeling like the pre-Christmas Scrooge. But Psalm 39 is followed by the glorious message of Psalm 40.

Many, O Lord my God, are the wonders you have done. The things you planned for us no one can recount to you. (Ps. 40:5)

THE LORD SPOKE (October 4)

Daily Reflections from Scripture:

Isaiah 44-45

Proverbs 21:1 - The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases.

Cyrus, a pagan king of Persia (ruled from 559-530 BC), is called the Lord’s “messiah” in Isaiah 45:1. Not “Messiah”, but “messiah” in the sense that he was chosen by God and anointed for a specific purpose. “Anoint” is the meaning of the Hebrew term, Mashach, from which we get our term “messiah”. The biblical descriptions of how God does this, specifically in the case of Cyrus, are of interest:

raised him up - Isaiah 45:13
stirred him up - Isaiah 13:17, 41:2 (see also Jeremiah 50:9,41; 51:1)
moved his heart - Ezra 1:1
changed his attitude - Ezra 6:22
put it into his heart - Ezra 7:27

That king’s heart was definitely in the hand of the Lord! Have times changed? Do you believe that God still works that way today?

In another place (Isaiah 44:28), Cyrus is called “my shepherd”. Imagine that! God is willing to submit His precious flock to a pagan king for shepherding. Under normal circumstances, the only interest in the flock that a mercenary shepherd would have is finding the fastest method to pull off the fleece or the shortest path to the butcher shop. And yet, God placed Cyrus, the pagan king of Persia, in just such a position as shepherd of His people.

Specifically, God says “he will accomplish all that I please” (Isaiah 44:28). Indeed he did. The verse goes on to explain, “he will say of Jerusalem, ‘Let it be rebuilt,’ and of the temple, ‘Let its foundations be laid.’” In the year 539 BC, Cyrus reversed the previous Babylonian political tactics (deportation and oppression of conquered peoples) by allowing foreigners to return to their homelands and, in several cases, to rebuild their religious sanctuaries - so long as they remained loyal to his crown and continued paying taxes. Most did.

The story of Cyrus’ decree is recorded for us two times in Scripture. The shorter version comes at the very end of II Chronicles (36:23) and the longer at the beginning of Ezra (1:2-4). Imagine a pagan king declaring these words:

The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. Anyone of his people among you - may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem in Judah and build the temple of the LORD, the God of Israel, the God who is in Jerusalem. And the people of any place where survivors may now be living are to provide him with silver and gold, with goods and livestock, and with freewill offerings for the temple of God in Jerusalem.

God is still able to accomplish such as this. We need that reminder in America during the next month!


Psalm 35-36

David had it right! Few could say they were ever faced with greater opposition and hardship than he - equal maybe, but not greater. It’s hard to conceive of anyone having greater troubles. He enumerates some of them here in Psalm 35.

After an initial appeal to God to come to his aid (Ps. 35:1-3), David organizes his petition in three parts, each of which ends with a vow of anticipated praise.

I. OPPOSITION IN ACTIONS (Ps. 35:4-10) - “may my enemies be disgraced and put to shame”
They plot; they lay traps for me; they rejoice to see me down.
Let them fall to their own devices.

II. OPPOSITION IN ATTITUDES (Ps. 35:11-18) - “may my enemies cease to repay me evil for good”
They lie; they misrepresent me; they rejoice to see me fall.
Let their mouths be stopped.

III. OPPOSITION IN ACCUSATIONS (Ps. 35:19-28) - “may my enemies not gloat over my distress”
They gloat; they scheme against me; they rejoice in my problems.
Let them be put to shame and confusion.

Remember that the answers to these three petitions had not yet come. Yet David vows to praise God before the fact. Just as petition naturally follows a need, so praise should naturally follow an answer to prayer.

Ps. 35:9 - Then my soul will rejoice in the Lord and delight in his salvation.

Ps. 35:18 - I will give you thanks in the great assembly.

Ps. 35:28 - My tongue will speak of your righteousness and of your praises all day long.

There is a place for imprecatory prayer but you better make sure your own way is right, that you are pleasing God in your own actions, attitudes, and accusations. Can you say like David, they do this “without cause” and “without reason” (Ps. 35:19)? If not, confess your own sin first, and then remember that “the Lord...delights in the well-being of his servant” (Ps. 35:27).

THE LORD SPOKE (August 2)

Daily Reflections from Scripture:

Old Testament: Job 35-38

The sovereignty of God. It make some people shake their fist at the heavens. Others think they can resist it. Or ignore it. Or explain it - even to the point of explaining it away. Many multiply words in a feeble attempt to justify or quantify it. Or figure it out and fit it neatly into their outlined notes.

Job’s friends had been doing all of that for days on end. They had mouths full of theological dust, unproven conclusions, and untried solutions to all of life’s problems. In this passage, Job’s counselors hear a vindication of Job and are “put in their places”. How humiliating to read God’s words from the point of view of one who has been yapping and blabbering quite a lot of nonsense in his advice to Job. God seems to say to each of them, “Who do you think you are?”

Job, on the other hand, hears something else. He hears no words about his suffering, no words about his questioning of divine justice, and no words of vindication before his friends’ accusations (that comes later). He also hears no words of condemnation or humiliation, though he had said rather brazenly in Job 31:35, “Let the Almighty answer me.”

Well, here comes the answer and it’s framed in a series of rhetorical questions to which Job (and all of us) must plead ignorance. After you’ve had to say “I don’t know” dozens of times you begin to feel like you really don’t know.

• How did I make the universe? Were you there to tell me how to do it? (Job 38:4)
• On what does the world hang? Have you checked out the foundations? (Job 38:6)
• Why don’t the oceans flood everything? Who tells them to stay put? (Job 38:8)
• Who makes the sun come up every day? (Job 38:12)
• Who made all the water and dirt and air? (Job 38:16)
• How does light work? Where does it come from? (Job 38:19)
• How can every single snowflake be different? Who does that and why? (Job 38:22)
• Who makes the rain and why does the garden grow? (Job 38:25)
• Why don’t the stars get all in a jumble? Who holds them and everything else in place? (Job 38:31)
• Where do all the animals get their food? And what makes them hungry in the first place? (Job 38:39)

So, are you sure you want to challenge the Almighty? Don’t your words sound very puny? By the way, while you’re down there on your knees, see that dog hair stuck in the carpet? Check out the toenail on the left back leg of that nit crawling up it. He stubbed it on a grain of sand yesterday and I’m making it heal right now. Isn’t it neat how he’s already not limping so much? He loves me too.


New Testament: Hebrews 10

The Law was “only a shadow” but it did very well in that which it was intended to do: it revealed sin, it revealed man’s inability to save or even improve himself, so it revealed the need of atonement, and was a “schoolmaster to bring us to Christ” (Gal. 3:24). But, the Law was never intended to remove sin (Heb. 10:4,11) so when the proper time came in God’s plan, it was “set aside” (Heb. 10:9) and the job was accomplished “through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb. 4:10).

That whole argument in the opening verses of this chapter is followed by a “therefore” (Heb. 10:19) and a passage that has sometimes been called the “Let-us Patch of Scripture”. The remainder of the chapter is a call to persevere:

• let us draw near to God (Heb. 10:22) - This involves our APPROACH to God. It is His purpose and it should be ours. He has done His part, now we need to do ours. For this, four conditions are given for this: (1) a sincere heart, (2) full assurance of faith, (3) cleansing from a guilty conscience, and (4) bodies washed with pure water (a figure for inner cleansing, not baptism).
• let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess (Heb. 10:23) - This is our AFFIRMATION of faith. Decision leads to declaration and it must be followed by deeds (see next point). Our hope in God must be without doubt or hesitation.
• let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds (Heb. 10:24) - This is the ASSISTANCE that we’re called to give. To consider something means to take some time to think about it and come up with a plan. How may we be a catalyst to others in this area?
• let us not give up meeting together (Heb. 10:25a) - This calls for our ASSEMBLY together with other believers. Alone we are likely to fail. Community strengthens commitment. When we are together with others who share our faith in Christ, we are better able to uphold one another. The Greek term here speaks of desertion or abandonment - a common problem among Jewish believers of the first century and not unheard of in our own day. (Take a look at Heb. 10:38-39!)
• let us encourage one another (Heb. 10:25b) - This involves ADVOCACY. Rather than afflict, we applaud. Rather than cast down, we cheer up. Rather than intimidate we inspire. Rather than repress, we refresh. The Lord’s return is the greatest incentive for this.