Real change is an inside job

Image: Pixabay

TODAY’S SPECIAL: Nehemiah 12-13; Psalm 52

TO CHEW ON: “Also that day they offered great sacrifices, and rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy; the women and the children also rejoiced, so that the joy of Jerusalem was heard afar off.” Nehemiah 12:43

Nehemiah completed the task he got leave from his job to do. Nehemiah 12 describes the dedication of the finished wall. It was a great celebration with  music, instruments, choirs and  sacrifices. Then Nehemiah went back to Babylon to work for Artaxerxes.

Sometime later, when Nehemiah returned to visit Jerusalem, he found, to his great dismay, that a lot of people had slipped back into their old ways.

• Some of Israel’s enemies and critics had infiltrated the temple and leadership (Nehemiah 13:7,8; 28).

• Since offerings were no longer being collected and stored for the Levites, they had to go back to farming to make a living (Nehemiah 13:10).

• People were working on the Sabbath day (Nehemiah 13:15).

• Gentile merchants were allowed into the city to set up markets on the Sabbath (Nehemiah 13:16).

• The people were again intermarrying with their idol-worshiping neighbours and forgetting or not even learning the language of Israel (Israel 13:23,24).

And so Nehemiah had to clean up again (Nehemiah 13:30,31). His zeal for obedience and holiness is a testimony of how much he feared and respected God and cared for the well-being of the people.

This passage leaves us with some thoughts to apply to our lives.
1. The rebuilt wall that was meant to set Jerusalem apart from its pagan neighbours was ineffective because the people’s hearts, from the religious and political leaders down, had not changed. Real change is effective only when it starts from inside.

2. Nehemiah’s zeal in building the wall in the first place and then his coming back and putting things right shows a respect and fear of God that we seem to have lost in our after-the-cross church era. Though we don’t fear God’s judgment as Old Testament people of faith did, God hasn’t changed. I sometimes wonder whether our casual attitude toward sin might be putting us on a more dangerous path than we realize.


PRAYER: Dear Father, change me from the inside so that my heart is to do Your will, because I love You and regard You with a realistic respect and fear. Amen.
PSALM TO PRAY: Psalm 52

MORE:  Change Me on the Inside




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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Thanks for reading! This year we are using The Bible Project "Timeless Reading Plan" to read through the Bible in 2018. If you'd like to read along in your own Bible, you can download a pdf of the reading plan HERE.

Sabbath / Sunday: is it a big deal?

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Matthew 12:1-21

TO CHEW ON: " ' For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.' " Matthew 12:8 NIV


We don't make much of Sabbath-keeping (or Sunday-keeping) in our church culture, let alone in society at large. How much that has changed even in the last several hundred years was brought home to me when I read the Puritan Jonathan Edwards' 73 Resolutions and came across #38:

"Resolved never to speak anything that is ridiculous, sportive or matter of laughter on the Lords Day" - from "The Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards in Categories."

In our reading today the Pharisees twice confront Jesus about his non-keeping of their Sabbath rules. First they butt heads over whether it is okay to do the work of harvesting heads of grain to feed themselves (Matthew 12:1-8). Then later, in the synagogue when Jesus heals the man with a withered hand, that act steels the Pharisees' determination to destroy Him (Matthew 12:9-14).

So what is appropriate Lord's Day-keeping behaviour? Should we as 21st century Christians be concerned at all with Sabbath/Sunday/Lord's Day-keeping? Here are some principles we find as we look at Scripture:

• God set aside one day in seven as a day of rest as early as creation (Genesis 2:2).

• God told the Israelites the Sabbath was to be a day they kept holy or separate from work (Exodus 31:15) and to Him (Deuteronomy 5:12).'

• A heart-felt keeping of the Sabbath came with the promise of a rich reward (Isaiah 58:13,14).

• Jesus and Paul observed the Sabbath by attending places of worship (Luke 4:16; Acts 17:2).

• Some of the activities that happened at "church" on the Sabbath were:

- Prayer (Acts 16:13).
- Getting acquainted with fellow believers (Acts 16:13).
- Reading Scripture (Luke 4:16).
- Teaching (Matthew 6:2).
- Apologetic reasoning from the Scripture with the goal of persuading people to put their faith in Christ (Acts 17:2; 18:4).

•  Doing good on the Sabbath is allowed. Jesus lived His statement, "Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath" (Matthew 12:12 NIV). when He:

- healed a man with a withered hand.
- healed a man with a 38-year sickness (John 5:1-9).
- healed a man of blindness (John 9:6,16).

Jesus' statement here: " ' For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath' " makes me aware of ways Jesus' observance of Sabbath differed from the Pharisees' observance. While theirs was limited to keeping a minutiae of laws and interpretations of laws about what work on the Sabbath meant, Jesus' observance was more directed by the two great commandments, to love God with all that we have and are, and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:37-39).

So we too can look at Sabbath/Sunday/Lord's Day-keeping not as a burdensome, rule-generated obligation but as a privilege and benefit to do something that pleases God and shows love to our neighbor.

- It is permission to relax from work. God did.
- It is a day to nourish relationships with people.
- It gives us an entire day to focus on God—the highest and best.
- It is an opportunity to demonstrate, by our lifestyle, our devotion and loyalty to God.

PRAYER: Dear God, I have not been strict with myself about observing one day in seven as holy to You. Help me to view doing this as a privilege and benefit. Amen.

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

More than just words

Detail of "Moses and the Tables of the Law" (1481-1482) 

by Cosimo Rosselli.

View entire painting and information at Art and the Bible.

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Exodus 34:19-35

TO CHEW ON: "Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Write these words, for according to the tenor of these words, I have made a covenant with you and with Israel." Exodus 34:27


In the first part of Exodus 34, God warns the people about compromising with and adopting the religious practices of the idol-worshiping tribes of Canaan. In today's reading God gives specific things His people can do to guard against such syncretism and assimilation.

1. Keep the feasts and in this way remember what God has done for them in the past - Exodus 34:19,20.

2. Give God a portion of their possessions and in this way acknowledge that their stuff is really all His - Exodus 34:19,20.

3. Take off one day in seven from work as a day of rest to give life a healthy balance and remind them of their ultimate dependence on God - Exodus 34:21.

4. Obey God's instructions down to the detail. God's instructions about not offering a blood sacrifice with leaven had to do with the spiritual symbolism of blood (life) and leaven (sin). Whether they understood the connection or not, they were to follow these details that illustrated spiritual truths - Exodus 34:25

Though we don't observe the same rituals today, I would submit that doing some of these things could also be faith-building practices that might serve as preventative medicine against backsliding for us.  We too could:

• Remember our history with God, commemorating not only the Bible events (like Christmas and Easter) but remembering and retelling the stories of God at work in our lives.

• Give regularly to kingdom projects—our church, missions, the poor. Where we put our money is, after all, a good indication of what we truly value - Matthew 6:21.

• Rest one day in seven from our work. Besides giving us the needed physical break, this practice reminds us that our ultimate trust is in God for the success of our work.

• Obey God's instructions about how to live and conduct ourselves. No, we don't struggle with whether there is leaven in the house or how to handle the blood of a sacrifice.  But every day we do make choices that have spiritual implications. One area  we do this is in our family relationships, where our lifestyle is a testimony to the spiritual realm - Ephesians 5:22-6:12.

As it was for the Israelites so it is for us. Belief isn't just assent and words. We need to affirm, solidify, and protect what we say we believe with our actions.

PRAYER: Dear God, help me to give You not only lip service but demonstrate my loyalty to You with my life. Amen.

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Day of rest

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Exodus 16:17-36


TO CHEW ON: "And the Lord said to Moses .... 'See! For the Lord has given you the Sabbath; therefore He gives you on the sixth day bread for two days. Let every man remain in his place; let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.' So the people rested on the seventh day." Exodus 16:28-30

When God told the people to set aside one day in seven as a rest day He wasn't just making a suggestion. He meant it. Our story today shows that.

God supplied manna, the mysterious sweet wafer-like substance that covered the ground each morning, as food and a test of obedience (yesterday's devo). One rule was to gather the manna each morning and not save any of it overnight. Another was to gather double the usual amount on the morning of the sixth day.

An interesting part of today's story is the rulers coming to Moses on that sixth day morning  to accuse people of doing what they were supposed to. It's as if they hadn't heard that part of Moses' command, or thought that the rule of no-overnight-storage trumped the double-on-the-sixth day one.

This time the people-gatherers were right. For on the morning of the seventh day—surprise! No manna. And the food they had gathered the day before smelled fine and was maggot-free.

And so one day in seven became a rest day for the Hebrews. It is the reason we, in our society with its roots in Judeo-Christian thought, now treat Sundays differently than other weekdays—although more and more we don't. Where I live, stores, restaurants and even some banks are open for business on Sunday. And the temptation is to take advantage of these opportunities to squeeze a little more business into the week.

But a day of rest is one of God's founding principles of life. We keep it, not because we're under the law, but because the One who designed us knows that's what we need to function best. He Himself modeled it when He rested after six days of creation. How can we think we won't do ourselves harm by ignoring this principle in our lives?

PRAYER: Dear God, please help me to take seriously Your principle of Sabbath — not only as a day of rest but as a day to focus on You. Amen.

MORE: Another reason for sabbath besides rest

Isaiah 58:13-14:
"If you turn away your foot from [traveling unduly on] the Sabbath, from doing your own pleasure on My holy day, and call the Sabbath a [spiritual] delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable, and honor Him and it, not going your own way or seeking or finding your own pleasure or speaking with your own [idle] words,
   
Then will you delight yourself in the Lord, and I will make you to ride on the high places of the earth, and I will feed you with the heritage [promised for you] of Jacob your father; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it" (Amplified).

Luke 4:16 (talking about Jesus):
"So He came to Nazareth, [that Nazareth] where He had been brought up, and He entered the synagogue, as was His custom on the Sabbath day. And He stood up to read" (Amplified).

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

It's Saturday, but Sunday's coming!

Stained glass window from St.
George's Anglican Church,
Fort Langley, B.C.

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Psalm 122: 1-9

TO CHEW ON: "I was glad when they said to me

'Let us go into the house of the Lord.'" Psalm 122:1

Today is Saturday. Do your thoughts flit ahead toward tomorrow with anticipation because then you can again "go into the house of the Lord"?

For David going into the house of the Lord meant gathering together with fellow Israelites in Jerusalem. It was celebrating the feast days and festivals — and they were celebrations! It meant going up to the tabernacle (the temple had not yet been built) where resided the "Testimony" — the ark with the tablets containing the ten commandments. It meant witnessing the various sacrifices, performed only by the priests, but heavy with the symbolism of God's plan of atonement, redemption and salvation for all.

What we mean when we say we go into the house of the Lord is, of course, different from David's meaning for him. But it has similarities in its regularity, the way its celebrations provide the bones of our year (Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas), and the way each visit again directs our attention God-ward.

Would you miss it if it were gone — if Sunday were just another workday? If you never had to make an appearance at church again? Sometimes the way to realize how much we appreciate a thing is to imagine it gone — indeed put ourselves through actual withdrawal for a whlie.

I don't advise doing that with church attendance (stopping to see how much you miss it). But I do think it's a valuable exercise to, once in a while, think about what it would be like if church weren't there to attend.

Today, make a list of things you would miss if your church disappeared off the face of your town and you never met with your brothers and sisters in a corporate, church-gathering way. Here is the beginning of my list:

I would miss:
1. Worshiping, loudly and heartily, with others.
2. Pastor's teaching and how it focuses me on eternal things.
3. Hearing the stories of God working in the lives of others.
4. Seeing people baptized.
5. Hearing reports from missionaries about what God is doing in other parts of the world...

Would you be sorry to see it gone? I know I would!

PRAYER: Dear God, please give me a new appreciation for my church and its role in my life. I want to say with David, "I was glad when they said to me, 'Let us go into the house of the Lord.'" Amen.


MORE: Songs of Ascent

Psalm 122 is one of the fifteen Psalms of Ascent (they are Psalms 120-134). Eugene Peterson writes about these psalms in his book A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. In Chapter 1 of the book he explains their origin and use:

"These fifteen psalms were likely sung, possibly in sequence, by Hebrew pilgrims as they went up to Jerusalem to the great worship festivals.

[...] Three times a year faithful Hebrews made that trip (Exodus 23:14-17; 34:22-24). The Hebrews were a people whose salvation had been accomplished in the exodus, whose identity had been defined at Sinai, and whose preservation had been assured in the forty years of wilderness wandering.

As such a people they regularly climbed the road to Jerusalem to worship. They refreshed their memories of God's saving ways at the Feast of Passover in the spring; they renewed their commitments as God's covenanted people at the Feast of Pentecost in the early summer; they responded as a blessed community to the best that God had for them at the Feast of Tabernacles in the autumn. They were a redeemed people, a commanded people, a blessed people."

- Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. pp. 18-19.

Do your 8-12-year-olds have daily devotions? Point them to Bible Drive-Thru.

Day of rest

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Exodus 16:17-36


TO CHEW ON: "And the Lord said to Moses .... 'See! For the Lord has given you the Sabbath; therefore He gives you on the sixth day bread for two days. Let every man remain in his place; let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.' So the people rested on the seventh day." Exodus 16:28-30

When God told the people to set aside one day in seven as a rest day He wasn't just making a suggestion. He meant it. Our story today shows that.

God supplied manna, the mysterious sweet wafer-like rounds that covered the ground each morning, as food and a test of obedience. One rule was to gather the manna each morning and not save any of it overnight. Another was to gather double the usual amount on the morning of the sixth day.

An interesting part of today's story is the rulers coming to Moses on that sixth day morning  to accuse people of doing what they were supposed to. It's as if they hadn't heard that part of Moses' command, or thought that the rule of no-overnight-storage trumped the double-on-the-sixth-day one.

This time the people gatherers were right. For on the morning of the seventh day — surprise! No manna. And the food they had gathered the day before smelled fine and was maggot-free.

And so one day in seven became a rest day for the Jews. It is the reason we, in our society with its foundation in Judeo-Christian thought, now treat Sundays differently than other weekdays — although more and more we don't. Where I live, stores, restaurants and even some banks are open for business on Sunday. And the temptation is to take advantage of these opportunities to squeeze a little more business into the week.

But a day of rest is one of God's founding principles of life. We keep it, not because we're under the law, but because the One who designed us knows that's what we need to function best. He Himself modeled it when He rested after six days of creation. How can we think we won't do ourselves harm by ignoring this principle in our lives?

PRAYER: Dear God, please help me to take seriously Your principle of Sabbath — not only as a day of rest but as a day to focus on You. Amen.

MORE: Another reason for sabbath besides rest

Isaiah 58:13-14:
"If you turn away your foot from [traveling unduly on] the Sabbath, from doing your own pleasure on My holy day, and call the Sabbath a [spiritual] delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable, and honor Him and it, not going your own way or seeking or finding your own pleasure or speaking with your own [idle] words,
   
Then will you delight yourself in the Lord, and I will make you to ride on the high places of the earth, and I will feed you with the heritage [promised for you] of Jacob your father; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it" (Amplified).

Luke 4:16 (talking about Jesus):
"So He came to Nazareth, [that Nazareth] where He had been brought up, and He entered the synagogue, as was His custom on the Sabbath day. And He stood up to read" (Amplified).

(From the archives)

How do we keep the Lord's Day?

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Mark 2:23-3:6

TO CHEW ON: "And He said to them, 'The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Therefore the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath.'" Mark 2:27-28.

We don't make much of Sabbath-keeping (or Sunday-keeping) in our church culture, let alone in society at large. How much that has changed even in the last several hundred years was brought home to me when I recently read the Puritan Jonathan Edwards' 73 Resolutions and came across #38:

"Resolved never to speak anything that is ridiculous, sportive or matter of laughter on the Lords Day" - from "The Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards in Categories."

In our reading today the Pharisees twice confront Jesus about his non-keeping of their Sabbath rules. First they butt heads over whether it is okay to do the work of harvesting heads of grain to feed themselves (Mark 2:23-28). Then later, in the synagogue when Jesus heals the man with a withered hand, that act steels the Pharisees' determination to destroy Him (Mark 3:1-6).

So what is appropriate Lord's Day-keeping behaviour? Should we as 21st century Christians be concerned at all with Sabbath/Sunday/Lord's Day-keeping? Here are some principles we find as we look at Scripture:

• God set aside one day in seven as a day of rest as early as creation (Genesis 2:2).

• God told the Israelites the Sabbath was to be a day they kept holy or separate from work (Exodus 31:15) and to Him (Deuteronomy 5:12).'

• A heart-felt keeping of the Sabbath came with the promise of a rich reward (Isaiah 58:13,14).

• Jesus and Paul observed the Sabbath by attending places of worship (Luke 4:16; Acts 17:2).

• Some of the activities that happened at "church" on the Sabbath were:

- Prayer (Acts 16:13).
- Getting acquainted with fellow believers (Acts 16:13).
- Reading Scripture (Luke 4:16).
- Teaching (Matthew 6:2).
- Apologetic reasoning from the Scripture with the goal of persuading people to put their faith in Christ (Acts 17:2; 18:4).

•  Doing good on the Sabbath is allowed. Jesus lived His statement, "Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath" (Matthew 12:12) when He:

- healed a man with a withered hand.
- healed a man with a 38-year sickness (John 5:1-9).
- healed a man of blindness (John 9:6,16).

Jesus' statement here: "The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath" makes me think. Perhaps it is saying, don't look at Sabbath/Sunday/Lord's Day-keeping as a burdensome, rule-generated obligation but as a privilege and benefit.

- It is permission to relax from work.
- It is a day to nourish relationships with God and people.
- It gives us an entire day to focus on God—the highest and best.
- It is an opportunity to demonstrate, by our lifestyle, our devotion and loyalty to God.

PRAYER: Dear God, I have not been strict with myself about observing one day in seven as holy to You. Help me to view doing this as a privilege and benefit. Amen.

MORE: A book about Sabbath-keeping

Canadian author Mark Buchanan has written a book about keeping the Sabbath: The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath. I have not read the book but it seems like a worthwhile read, judging from this excerpt from Tim Challies' (4-star Amazon.com) review of it:

"Sabbath-keeping is grounded in a stark refusal we make to ourselves. We stand ourselves down. We resist that which six days of coming and going, pushing and pulling, dodging and weaving, fighting and defending have bred into us. What we deny ourselves is our well-trained impulses to get and to spend and to make and to master. This day, we go in a direction we're unaccustomed to, unfamiliar with, that the other six days have made seem unnatural to us." If the grass needs to be cut because you did not have a chance to do it on Saturday and you have a busy week approaching, leave the grass. But if the grass needs to be cut and this is one of your favorite, most relaxing chores, than by all means, cut the grass on the Sabbath."