Thanks for joining me today for “A Little Walk with God.” I’m your host Richard Agee.
Topic Introduction with headline.
Scripture
Malachi 1:6
Eternal One: (to the priests who despise the name of the Eternal, Commander of heavenly armies) A son respects his father, and a servant fears[b] his master. If I am your Father, then where is My respect from you? And if I am your glorious Master, then where is your fear of Me? From your self-centered oblivion you ask, “How have we despised Your name?”
Devotional
Most often in the NIV, CEV, King James and other versions, Adonai is translated as “LORD”. The Voice translates it as “glorious Master”. Adonai was spoken when the tetragrammaton YHWH was written.
We don’t understand the concept of Lord the way the people of England did when King James authorized the translation of the Vulgate into a language the common man could understand
Watch TV shows with lords and ladies
Hear about the titles when we hear about Great Britain’s royalty
Still don’t realize the power lords held over their subjects
The title is believed to have come from an old English word meaning “bread keeper”.
Lord refers to someone who has authority, control, or power over others acting like a master, a chief, or a ruler.
In feudal system, the landowners that provided protection, work and food for tenant families
Adonai is one of the seven names the Hebrews used for God that once written could not be erased.
Sacred name of God, Lord of lords,
owner of all things
creator of all things
Everything is His
He has authority, control, power over everyone and everything
Creation turns at His bidding
May not understand the term Lord the way those who translated YHWH did
May not feel the weight of lordship the way those in the middle ages did
May not understand the power the lord held over His subjects
We can understand God has authority, control, power over all things
He wants us to recognize who He is as Lord, Adonai
If you want to learn more about my church, you can find us at SAF.church. If you like the devotional, share it with someone. If you don’t, tell me. I hope you’ll join me again tomorrow for “A Little Walk with God.”
see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)
Today’s Devotional
Luke 19:40-44 Jesus: Listen—if they were silent, the very rocks would start to shout!
When Jerusalem came into view, He looked intently at the city and began to weep. Jesus: How I wish you knew today what would bring peace! But you can’t see. Days will come when your enemies will build up a siege ramp, and you will be surrounded and contained on every side. Your enemies will smash you into rubble and not leave one stone standing on another, and they will cut your children down too, because you did not recognize the day when God’s Anointed One visited you.
What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?
Fitting words from Jesus for a podcast prepared for Christmas Day. “How I wish you knew today what would bring peace!” That’s why Jesus came, to bring love and joy and peace to each individual heart, but He also knew His name would cause division and hatred and war. Jesus looked forty years into the future and saw the Roman seige against Jerusalem. He saw the soldiers marching through the city streets killing and mutilating the men, women, and children they saw trying to escape them. He saw the temple being torn apart stone by stone and every house being burned to the ground. And part of that destruction was because He came to earth to bring peace. His presence caused an uproar in the streets the Romans felt they needed to quell in a way the whole empire would never forget.
“How I wish you knew today what would bring peace!” It wasn’t the presence of the Roman guard keeping order. That didn’t work in Jesus’ day. It only served to stir the people and cause the more violent to rise up against the empire.
“How I wish you knew today what would bring peace!” It wasn’t wealth. Herod had that. Many of the Pharisees were wealthy as they collected the offerings and the temple taxes from those who came to the temple to worship. But the Pharisees certainly didn’t seem to be at peace with themselves or the people around them. The crowds were continually burdened by their rules and rose up against their 612 traditions. Factions grew up railing against their rules. And when the rich young man encountered Jesus, he went away sad, unable to find the peace that Jesus offered.
“How I wish you knew today what would bring peace!” It wasn’t health. Jesus touched a lot of people. He healed the blind and the lame and the deaf, but I expect many of those succumbed to the pressures of every day life like the seeds sown on the path or among the thorns and never found peace, only the physical healing they sought.
“How I wish you knew today what would bring peace!” It wasn’t membership in the right church or temple or synagogue. The Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, Essenes, and others thought they had that wrapped up. There were dozens of preachers and teachers like John who baptized disciples into their form of worship and following after God. But none could give the kind of long-lasting peace that Jesus promised. That wasn’t the answer.
“How I wish you knew today what would bring peace!” It wasn’t even doing good things for others. The disciples went out and did that when Jesus sent them out into the towns and villages. They drove out demons and healed the sick and proclaimed the message Jesus told them to proclaim. They had good results, too. But the good deeds they performed didn’t bring them peace. They still felt the confusion, fear, and despair the day Jesus died on the cross.
“How I wish you knew today what would bring peace!” There is only one thing that brings peace to each individual heart of humankind. We must each understand we are sinners, far from the holy state in which God wants us to live and our sins hurt both our fellowman and God. Then we must be truly sorry for our sins. Not just sorry we got caught, but sorry for the commission of those sins. Sorry we brought pain and suffering to God and others. Sorry we failed to obey God’s commands to live the way He instructed. Sorry we failed to please God.
Then we must humble ourselves and ask forgiveness in true repentance. True repentance means asking with the full intent of living differently. Working diligently with God’s help to avoid the sins we committed in the past and stay obedient to His commands and His spirit’s promptings, we intend to follow His footsteps wherever they might lead.
Finally, we let Him be the Lord of our life. It’s easy to say those words and we think we understand that word, Lord. But we borrow it from medieval days to describe the relationship God wants with us. The Lord is owner of everything, we are just managers. The Lord directs and guides our actions, we obediently carry them out. The Lord teaches and corrects us, we listen and learn from that instruction and correction. The Lord sometimes gives us projects to complete expecting us to use the assets He entrusted to us, we invest all our energy to do the best we can to carry out those projects to completion. The Lord expects complete and total loyalty from all His subjects, we give it because He has the power of life and death in His hands.
On this Christmas Day, Jesus still cries out, “How I wish you knew today what would bring peace!” Do you have His peace? You can. He gives it to all who ask.
see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)
Today’s Devotional
Matthew 7:21-23 Jesus: Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven. Simply calling Me “Lord” will not be enough. Only those who do the will of My Father who is in heaven will join Me in heaven. At the end of time, on that day of judgment, many will say to Me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name? Did we not drive demons out of the possessed in Your name? Did we not perform miracles in Your name?” But I will say to them, “I never knew you. And now, you must get away from Me, you evildoers!”
What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?
These words of Jesus must have been tough for those who heard it that day. They are probably tough for us if we really stop to think about them a little. Jesus is saying all our good deeds don’t mean anything to God if they haven’t come from an obedient heart. Look at the list of things He mentions as the works of those who He turns away at the day of judgment. Prophesy, driving out demons, performing miracles. Aren’t these the very works He did? Aren’t these the things Jesus said we would do for Him when He departed?
How can He tell us that those who do these very things will not be allowed to live with Him? These people are doing great things in Jesus’ name! They show every evidence on the outside that they are His followers, so how can He now reject them from heaven?
The answer is simple. They haven’t been obedient to Him. Remember Moses? Do you remember why God didn’t let him cross over the Jordan River into the land promised to the Israelites? The event was such a simple thing. God told Moses to speak to the rock and tell water to come out of it to give the Israelites water to quench their thirst. Instead, Moses struck the rock with his rod. Years earlier in the journey God had told Moses to get water by striking the rock and water came out of the rock. So why would God ban Moses from the promised land for such a simple thing, striking the rock instead of speaking to the rock? Disobedience.
But the answer is deeper than that. Look through the rest of the story of Numbers and Deuteronomy. You’ll never see Moses take responsibility for his disobedience. In every cases where the event is told, Moses blames his failure to go into the promised land on his brothers and sisters. He blames their hard-heartedness, not his own. He never confesses that God told him to speak to the rock to get water and in his arrogance and anger at the Israelites, he disobeyed God’s command. Moses never repented of his sin before the people.
Is it this failure to confess that prohibited Moses’ entrance into the promised land? The older I get and the more I read of God’s grace and mercy, the more I think it was Moses’ stubborn failure to take responsibility for his disobedience, more than his act of disobedience that led to his rejection at the Jordan River. The same will be true for these characters Jesus speaks of in His discourse. God demands obedience, not show. He demands true repentance, not sacrifices and offerings and things for others to see.
God wants us to come humbly to Him and listen to His voice and love Him enough to do what He asks us to do, fully, without fanfare. He wants us to just go about our lives with the simple thought of saying yes to whatever He tells us to do. Maybe He’ll tell us to prophesy for Him. But He might just ask us to give kind words to those around us that are hurting. Maybe He’ll ask us to drive demons out of the possessed. But He might just want us to hold the hand of a grieving mother for a lost child. Maybe He’ll want us to perform miracles in His name. But He might just want us to go about our daily business with a smile on our face and joy in our heart so others know He lives in us.
The question He has for me and you today is whether He is Lord of your life. When He is Lord, He can ask you to do anything and you will say yes. Anything means the most important, earth-shaking responsibility in the world that will put your name in the limelight and everyone will see and know you. And it means the lowliest, nastiest task you can think of that no one in the world wants to do and everyone would look down on you because of you did it. It also means doing things that will cause people to completely ignore you and never know you’ve done anything at all, but God knows. It means obedience. That’s what Jesus being Lord means. Saying yes to His command every time, in every circumstance, at every opportunity.
If He truly is Lord, you don’t need to worry about what He will say to you at the day of judgment. His words to you will be, “Enter into the joys of heaven, you good and faithful servant.” Is He your Lord today? He can be. Just ask Him to be, then say yes to Him, always.
see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)
Today’s Devotional
Matthew 6:24 Jesus: No one can serve two masters. If you try, you will wind up loving the first master and hating the second, or vice versa. People try to serve both God and money—but you can’t. You must choose one or the other.
What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?
Commitment:1. the state or quality of being dedicated to a cause, activity, etc. 2. an engagement or obligation that restricts freedom of action. Commitment, a word that disappeared from our vocabulary somewhere along the line except when it comes to commitment to ourselves. We want what we want and that’s it. But seldom will we use the word to dedicate or obligate ourselves to anything else. But that’s exactly what God demands of us.
People flit from one job to another, from one relationship to another, from one spouse to another, and think nothing of it. Loyalty and commitment are just meaningless words in our society, today. But God doesn’t work that way. He gave us His all and that’s the only thing He accepts in return. When we come to Him, it’s all or nothing. He knows we cannot serve two masters, just as Jesus articulated to the crowd on the hillside that day in Galilee.
No one can ride the fence in spiritual matters. God is either on the throne of your life or He is not. I either let Him have control of my decisions and actions or I don’t. It’s that simple. If I let Christ have control of my decisions and I consistently, say “yes” to His commands and demands on my time, talents, and treasures, He is Lord of my life and I others can call me a Christian, His follower. If I don’t say “yes” to His commands, if I say “no” to Him, He is not Lord. I might call myself a Christian, but I am not. It’s just a meaningless title.
It’s like calling myself a neurosurgeon. I used to recruit them for a time when I was in the Army. I know what they do. I know what it takes to become one. I know how long they go to school and the courses they take. I know the training they endure and the surgeries they must perform to certify as a neurosugeon. I know even know which residency programs are highly rated by the medical community and which the rest of the neurosurgeons look down on. But just because I know that much about neurosurgery doesn’t mean you want me to open your skull and take out a brain tumor.
There are a lot of people in the world today, I would even dare to say in your church, that call themselves Christian, that are as much Christian as I am a neurosurgeon. Like my illustration, they know a lot about what it means to hold the title. They know what being a Christian is about. They know it’s about believing in Jesus as the Son of God, that He was born of a virgin, He lived, and died for our sins. He rose from the grave and intercedes for us. They know He will return to take us to live with Him. They know there will be a final judgment at which Christ will separate the wicked from the redeemed and the redeemed will live with Him throughout eternity.
But just because they know all those things and believe all those things are true, Satan knows all those things are true as well. Jesus tells us even the demons believe in Him. That’s not enough to be called a Christian. To carry the authenticity of the title means to say “yes” to His commands. Always. Not letting “no” enter your vocabulary in response to His will. Carrying the name Christian means commitment, real commitment, putting that word back into your vacabulary and living it each day with Jesus as the center of your life. God as your master, Lord, director, leader, guide, your everything! Commitment, bring the word back to life in you.
