Today’s Podcast
Today’s Bible reading plan:
Read it in a year – Esther 1-5
see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)
Today’s Devotional
Luke 20:34-38
Jesus: The children of this era marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain the resurrection of the dead in the coming era do not marry and are not given in marriage. They are beyond mortality; they are on the level of heavenly messengers; they are children of God and children of the resurrection. Since you brought up the issue of resurrection, even Moses made clear in the passage about the burning bush that the dead are, in fact, raised. After all, he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. By Moses’ time, they were all dead, but God isn’t God of the dead, but of the living. So all live to God.
What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?
April 8, 1966, Time Magazine reported on a movement that swept college campuses across the nation. Emblazoned across the cover of their magazine on that day in large red letters they posed the question, “Is God dead?” In 1884, Friedrich Nietzsche is said to have first used the phrase “God is Dead” and claimed his generation killed Him with their utter disregard for Him even in the churches around him. He declared we no longer had a need for God so we killed Him and so started the debate about God’s very existence. Then Time Magazine even entered the debate in 1966.
Today, the debate continues but not as vocally as it did in the ’60s. Perhaps it’s because more people either believe He doesn’t exist or just don’t act like He doesn’t exist so there are few who are willing to debate. Too many of us no longer have the tools to launch a decent argument against those who would raise their evidence that there is no God, so we sit quietly on the sidelines and just let them tell their tales and fail to defend our God.
Our excuse? God is God and needs no defense. He is big enough to prove Himself without help. The problem with that personal philosophy is we don’t stop to think clearly enough for ourselves to know that God lives. I know He lives and is the creator of all things, not just because of a warm feeling I get when I see the sun rise and set each day. I know He lives not because of the feeling I get when He warms my heart in prayer. I know He exists because I’ve done enough thought and study to know that every other philosophy that says there is no God leads to a dead end.
My knowledge of God isn’t based on what other people say, but on the instruction in God’s word. It’s based on the proof He gives and the failure of others to disprove what God says about Himself. Everything He promises comes true. Everything He says He will do, He does. Every time someone tries to show something in His word could not have happened, archeologists seem to find evidence that it did.
Is God dead? No. He is very much alive and taking care of things every day. I expect those around Jesus were wondering the same thing in their day as the Romans invaded their land and took anything they wanted from them. I expect as they saw the crucifixions dotting the countryside and cruelty of their oppressors they sometimes wondered if God died somewhere along the way. He certainly wasn’t doing much to free them from the tyrannical leaders that held rule over them since the exile, it seemed.
Jesus saw, as He walked with us that many around Him said the words they believed in God, but acted as if He didn’t exist. Today we do the same. We ignore Him when He calls. We ignore His word. We fail to worship Him. We go about our business assuming we don’t need Him anymore. Satan has convinced us we can do everything ourselves and don’t need to depend on the creator for anything. But we are wrong.
Imagine a world without God. A world without His moral guidance. A world without His laws of physics and gravity and science. A world without love. A world without hope. That’s what we would face if God did not exist. We cannot manufacture those things. Those come from God and if He is dead, so are those. Yet they still exist, which means He does too. We can’t create a blade of grass, or a calf, or a fish. We can’t create a bird from an egg or make water spring from the earth to make creeks and rivers and lakes and oceans.
We think we can do lots of things, and think we are really important. We act like we are the most important thing in the world, but we’re only a distant second. God is still alive and well. He demonstrates His presence daily if we will just look around and see His handiwork. Is God dead? Absolutely not. Take some time to prove it for yourself. It’s not hard to figure it out.
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