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What do you do when you walk? (Luke 4:43) September 23, 2016

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Today’s Podcast

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Today’s Bible reading plan:

Read it in a year – Obadiah

see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)

Today’s Devotional

Luke 4:43
Jesus: No, I cannot stay. I need to preach the kingdom of God to other cities too. This is the purpose I was sent to fulfill.

What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?

When I was growing up, we had tent revivals, camp meetings, Vacation Bible School, teen camp, childrens camp, all kinds of things that could get you a spiritual high. Remember those? Sometimes those announced two week tent revivals would really get going and suddenly we figure out we didn’t want them to stop, so we go for another week or two. People would run the aisles, pray at the altars, talk about the services during the day at work or at the grocery store. Every night the tent would be full. There would be lots of music and the sermon seldom lasted less than an hour. But no one left.

I’m afraid I haven’t seen one of those kind of revivals in a long time. We get too busy with life and now if we can get people to go to a weekend gathering, it’s like pulling teeth. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen hanky wavers and aisle runners, too. We’re afraid of what someone might think if we let our emotions get out of hand if God really blesses us in a service, I guess. It’s just not done. We’re too formal and we might scare away the visitors if they came to our churches and saw something like that, right?

I’m not sure what started me down that path except thinking about the circuit Jesus made as He taught and preached and healed. He never stayed in one place very long because He had a mission to complete. He also had to make sure His schedule put Him in Jerusalem three times a year for the feasts Moses told the Israelites to observe at the temple – Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles. So Jesus had an agenda from His Father and it wasn’t to stay in one spot. He didn’t expect people to come to Him.

He set off to go to as many people as He could to share the message God gave Him that the kingdom of God was at hand. It was time to get right with God because you didn’t have much time left. It was time to make sure your relationship with Him was right. Judgment day was coming and it wasn’t that far away. He also preached about love, though. In fact, Jesus talked a lot more about love than He did about judgment and punishment., we just don’t remember those words as much because of the way we’re built and the world we live in. But Jesus gave us a message of love.

I read an article the other day by Arthur Blessitt. He did some homework on how far Jesus walked during His life. As you are probably aware, everyone walked everywhere. Not many people had horses or donkeys or carts to ride around in. The only time Jesus is recorded as riding anything, in fact, was when He rode the new colt into Jerusalem. So we can assume that everywhere else He went, He went on foot.

So Arthur Blessitt looked at all the scriptures and all the places Jesus traveled during those three years of His ministry and determined He walked 3,125 miles in those three years. But then he looked at all the other walked He would have done with His family on the way to Egypt and back to Nazareth. The trips to Jerusalem for the feasts three times a year and so forth.

Jesus walked 21, 525 miles according to Blessitt’s calculations. That almost all the way around the circumference of the earth! At an average of 20 miles a day, that means He spent at least 1, 076 days and nights on the road in His life. That’s almost three years of His life just walking.

Jesus traveled to get God’s message to everyone He could. The gospels record His three year ministry from the time He was baptized in the Jordan River, but I wonder how much of the time before that He share His story with anyone who would listen? How many people did He talk to about the scripture and His understanding of what they meant. Remember He confounded the scribes at the young age of twelve. I doubt if His confounding others stopped at that one event. He was about His heavenly Father’s business.

I expect Jesus took Deuteronomy 6:6–9 to heart and spoke about God’s word continuously to anyone who would listen. Remember those words that Moses gave the Israelites before he died? "Make the things I’m commanding you today part of who you are. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you’re sitting together in your home and when you’re walking together down the road. Make them the last thing you talk about before you go to bed and the first thing you talk about the next morning. Do whatever it takes to remember them: tie a reminder on your hand and bind a reminder on your forehead where you’ll see it all the time, such as on the doorpost where you cross the threshold or on the city gate.

I expect during every one of those 21, 525 miles Jesus walked, He was remembering the words of His Father. How do you spend your time walking every day? 

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.

Do you want to be a zombie? (Luke 4:4) September 19, 2016

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Today’s Podcast

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Today’s Bible reading plan:

Read it in a year – Numbers 21-24

see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)

Today’s Devotional

Luke 4:4
Jesus: It is written in the Hebrew Scriptures, “People need more than bread to live.”

What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?

Yesterday, we talked about the importance of scripture in Jesus’ life. He proved it with His temptation experience in the desert after His baptism. Satan tried to get Him to turn stones into bread to satisfy His hunger after forty days of fasting, but Jesus answered Satan’s challenge with the words we read today. Those words come from Deuteronomy 8:3 where the rest of the verse says, “what makes you truly alive is not the bread you eat but following every word that comes from the mouth of the Eternal One.”

A lot of people walk around thinking they are alive, but as we see all these movie trailers and TV show advertisements that flood the airways today, I’m reminded of exactly what we really see moving around us. We really do live in a land of Zombies. We live in a world of the walking dead! They act like they are alive on the outside. They wake up in the morning and go to work. They eat and drink and go about the routine of what many call every day life.

Those zombies out there make money, get married, have children and raise more zombies teaching them to grow up just like them. We have created generations of zombies. I bet you didn’t know that zombies reproduce, but they do. Just look around. They’re everywhere. People who think they have life, but they’re really just biological organisms destined for eternal death because they haven’t taken this verse to heart.

You can’t live by the bread or the food you eat. You can’t live by the job you have or the money you make. You can’t live by the socioeconomic status to which you climb or the number of likes on your Facebook page. Satan tried to get Jesus to let His physical hunger pangs become the most important thing to Him at that moment, but Jesus knew that a few moments of physical pain didn’t constitute life or death. Creature comforts aren’t what real life is about.

Life isn’t about satisfying our desires, it’s about satisfying God’s desires. Life isn’t about us, it’s about Him. It’s about doing His will. Life is about thirsting after God and drinking deeply from the fountain of life He shares with us from His word. Life is about doing what God wants, not what we want.

But that goes against everything the zombies around us believe. The world makes them think they are alive and well. The world makes them think life is about all those material things that go away with the last breath we take. The world says life is about money and beauty and stuff. So the zombies run blindly after all those things and when they get them, they find they still don’t have the life they are looking for. There is still no joy, no comfort, no assurances. Just fear of the unknown and questions about what’s next.

But for those who listen to Jesus’ words and believe them, we don’t walk in the way of the zombies. We know what life is about. Life isn’t limited to the few years we spend in these bodies made of clay. There is something more. We feel it deep inside and know from God’s word and the testimony of His spirit in us that there is something after these few years. We know there is an eternity out there and it only begins with the time we spend in these bodies.

How do we find real life? By doing what God says in His word. You say, “but that’s too much. How can we follow all the rules God gives us in scripture. How can we even know what He said. There is so much there.” I’d beg to differ with you, though. Most Bibles are about 1500 pages and most of those pages are not rules, but stories of God’s redemptive love. Have you ever read the tax code? I think the last version is about 20,000 pages. You’re expect to follow that and it’s just one part of our law. Then there are all the other laws and codes and bills and regulations you obey everyday. We don’t seem to have a problem keeping those and they constitute a whole library full of text.

So why do we think it is so hard to keep God’s laws? There really aren’t that many and Jesus sums them all up in two commands. Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; and love your neighbor as you love yourself. So if we can just keep those two rules in mind and do those two, Jesus says we’ve done all the rest because all the rest are based on those two.

So what will it be as we look toward the beginning of another season of new zombie programs hitting the airways. Are we going to be part of that crowd and go around pretending to live like zombies do but without any real life? Or are we going to follow the words that come out of the mouth of God?

Once again, we get to make the choice. For me, I never did like those zombie shows. I’ll take real life every time. 

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.

The good and bad in a twelve year old (Luke 2:49) September 18, 2016

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Today’s Podcast

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Today’s Bible reading plan:

Read it in a year – Philemon

see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)

Today’s Devotional

Luke 2:49
Jesus: Why did you need to look for Me? Didn’t you know that I must be working for My Father?

What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?

We’ve moved into the gospel of Luke today. The only gospel that has any mention of Jesus’ childhood beyond His birth, the family’s escape to Egypt, and return to Nazareth. All the other gospels pick up His life’s story with His baptism at the Jordan River by His cousin John the Baptist. But Luke, Paul’s physician companion on his missionary journeys gives this brief snippet into Jesus’ childhood just as He is reaching the age of accountability according to Jewish tradition.

Jesus is twelve. He accompanies His family to Jerusalem for the Passover Feast. That was a five day journey for them when the roads weren’t terribly crowded and the weather was pretty good. It’s about 120 miles on foot. And that was how they traveled. On foot. Like most twelve year old boys, He probably ran ahead and played with friends or explored some interesting find on the path while His parents caught up, then ran ahead again throughout the five day journey. With all the pilgrims keeping an eye on all the children at play on the road, parents didn’t worry much about their kids getting lost. They just had them check back every once in a while to make sure they stayed relatively close and safe. He acted like a twelve year old on a five day trek.

But then He saw the temple during the Passover. It probably wasn’t His first time, but for some reason we don’t know, Jesus was invited into the circle of scribes on this occasion. And as He listened to them, He was allowed to make comments. Now that was really unusual. He was only twelve, not yet of age to be heard. But these scribes listened to His opinions because Jesus had wisdom well beyond His years. They were amazed at this young man’s understanding.

Jesus’ family left for the journey home, but instead of leaving with them, He slipped back into the temple and the circle of scribes. Something about this place drew Him close. The scriptures acted like a magnet to Him and the men who surrounded Him welcomed Him because of the things He said. They listened to His thoughts as if He were a seasoned rabbi. Soon, Jesus forgot His family was leaving town and He missed their departure.

Surprising to us, it was three days before Mary and Joseph discovered Jesus’ absence. But remember that almost all of Nazareth would have traveled to Jerusalem for Passover. As many as could, went to Jerusalem for the three great feasts God told Moses to present to the Israelites in the desert – Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles. Mary and Joseph would have made as many of these feasts in Jerusalem as possible. The city burst at the seams with people. It was a time for family reunions and reuniting with old friends. With that many people coming together, Mary and Joseph would easily assume Jesus was with His cousins and aunts and uncles as they traveled.

Finally, Mary and Joseph figured out Jesus was not in the entourage and headed back to Jerusalem frantically searching for their missing son. But as they made inquiries and their search led them back to the temple, there He was confounding the teachers of the law with His amazing understanding of the scriptures at such a young age.

No doubt Jesus was in trouble for the worry He caused. No doubt He didn’t get to run ahead or play with His friends on the rest of the journey home. I expect if they could have done so without raising too many eyebrows, they would have put a lasso around Him and kept Him tied to one of them. So the lesson in these scriptures is not to run away from your parents. That’s not a good thing. Even for Jesus, that was not a good thing. He probably got some fairly hefty punishment for the scare He caused and His failure to leave with the family, even though He was doing something very good at the time. He really needed to tell His parents what He was doing before He scared them to death.

But the other thing we learn from today’s words is that scripture was important to Jesus from a very early age. Remember we closed the book of Mark talking about just how important scripture was to Jesus. We talked about the fact that many of His last words on the cross came from Old Testament Psalms. How was He able to recite those verses under such extreme duress? Because from the age of twelve, whenever you couldn’t find Jesus, just look in the temple or the synagogue or with a group of rabbis or scribes. You’d find Him learning scripture. You find Him reading the ancient texts, learning the prayers of David and Isaiah and Daniel and Moses.

Jesus was a student of His Father’s words as handed down through the writers of our Old Testament. He used them often in His preaching and teaching, in His confrontations with Satan and his minions, in His times of greatest joy and deepest sorrow, and even on the cross. If scripture was so important to Jesus, the perfect Son of God, don’t you think it should be important to those of us who are so imperfect? Pick it and read it today and every day. It will do you good. 

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.

The best source of strength (Mark 15:34) September 16, 2016

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Today’s Podcast

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Today’s Bible reading plan:

Read it in a year – Amos 5-9

see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)

Today’s Devotional

Mark 15:34
Jesus: Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?

What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?

“My God, My God, why have you turned your back on Me?” Jesus’ question to His father from the cross. We often read the words of Jesus from the cross and forget that many of them are prayers recited from the Psalms. This one comes from Psalms 22. It’s interesting to go back to those hymns that Jesus used as His prayers on the cross recorded for us by the gospel writers and put them back into their context. I often wonder if Jesus prayed the whole Psalm while on the cross, or just the verses recorded for us.

If you go back to Psalm 22, you’ll find the words Jesus spoke in the first verse. “My God, My God, why have you turned your back on me? Your ears are deaf to my groans. O my God, I cry all day and you are silent; my tears in the night bring no relief.”

Most of the rest of that psalm describe exactly what Jesus was experiencing.

I’m surrounded by many tormentors; like strong bulls of Bashan, they circle around me with their taunts. They open their mouths wide at me like ravenous, roaring lions. My life is poured out like water, and all my bones have slipped out of joint. My heart melts like wax inside me. My strength is gone, dried up like shards of pottery; my dry tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; You lay me in the dust of death. A throng of evil ones has surrounded me like a pack of wild dogs; They pierced my hands and ripped a hole in my feet. I count all my bones; people gawk and stare at me. They make a game out of dividing my clothes among themselves; they cast lots for the clothes on my back.

Perhaps we sometimes draw the wrong conclusion about this particular phrase. I usually think about God turning His back on Jesus because He carries the sins of the world on His shoulders and the Father cannot stand the sight of sin. He abhors sin and so Jesus carries the weight of all humanity’s sins alone.

But what if, instead, Jesus draws strength from reciting this psalm from the cross. The hymn begins these stark words from the depth of David’s misery. It describes the suffering Jesus will endure. But there are some other words in that same song from which He can draw great comfort.

Still, You are holy; You make Your home on the praises of Israel. Our mothers and fathers trusted in You; they trusted, and You rescued them. They cried out to You for help and were spared; they trusted in You and were vindicated.

and

But You, O Eternal, stay close; O You, my help, hurry to my side. Save my life from violence, my sweet life from the teeth of the wild dog. Rescue me from the mouth of the lion. From the horns of the wild oxen, You responded to my plea. I will speak Your Name to my brothers and sisters when I praise You in the midst of the community. You who revere the Eternal, praise Him— descendants of Jacob, worship Him; be struck with wonder before Him, all you children of Israel. He’s not put off by the suffering of the suffering one; He doesn’t pretend He hasn’t seen him; when he pleaded for help, He listened. You stir my praise in the great assembly; I will fulfill my vows before those who humble their hearts before Him. Those who are suffering will eat and be nourished; those who seek Him will praise the Eternal. May your hearts beat strong forever! Those from the farthest reaches of the earth will remember and turn back to look for the Eternal; All the families of the nations will worship You. The Eternal owns the world; He exercises His gentle rule over all the nations. All the wealthy of the world will eat and worship; all those who fall in the dust will bow before Him, even the life that is headed to the grave. Our children will serve Him; future generations will hear the story of how the Lord rescued us. They will tell the generations to come of the righteousness of the Lord, of what He has done.

Could Jesus’ words on the cross be a reminder to us of the importance of scripture and prayer in the face of life’s greatest challenges? Certainly, these few hours were Jesus’ most the stressful and challenging of His short life. And throughout those hours, the majority of His words can be traced back to the scriptures He knew so well. Is this, too, the beginning of a song, only the beginning of which was recorded by the gospel writers, but within Jesus’ heart and soul, soared to His father as a song of praise and worship even in those dark hours? Could it be that He was teaching us even in these last hours of His life that God’s word remains our best source of strength in times of trouble? Jesus used it; shouldn’t we? 

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.

How will you read scripture? (Acts 14/8-20), Feb 7, 2015

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Today’s Podcast


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Today’s Scriptures

Today’s Bible reading plans include:

Ready – Acts 14:8-20
Set – Leviticus 6; Acts 14
Go! – Leviticus 4-6; Acts 14

Gen
8 In Lystra they met a man who had been crippled since birth; his feet were completely useless. 9 He listened to Paul speak, and Paul could see in this man’s face that he had faith to be healed.

Paul (shouting): 10 Stand up on your own two feet, man!

The man jumped up and walked! 11 When the crowds saw this, they started shouting in Lycaonian.

Crowd: The gods have come down to us! They’ve come in human form!

12 They decided that Barnabas was Zeus and Paul was Hermes (since he was the main speaker). 13 Before they knew it, the priest of Zeus, whose temple was prominent in that city, came to the city gates with oxen and garlands of flowers so the Lycaonians could offer sacrifices in worship to Paul and Barnabas! 14 When they heard of this, Paul and Barnabas were beside themselves with frustration—they ripped their tunics as an expression of disapproval and rushed out into the crowd.

Paul and Barnabas (shouting): 15 Friends! No! No! Don’t do this! We’re just humans like all of you! We’re not here to be worshiped! We’re here to bring you good news—good news that you should turn from these worthless forms of worship and instead serve the living God, the God who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that they contain. 16 Through all previous generations, God has allowed all the nations to follow their own customs and religions, 17 but even then God revealed Himself by doing good to you—giving you rain for your crops and fruitful harvests season after season, filling your stomachs with food and your hearts with joy.

18 In spite of these words, they were barely able to keep the crowds from making sacrifices to them.

19 Then unbelieving Jews came from Antioch and Iconium and incited the crowds against the Lord’s emissaries. The crowds turned on Paul, stoned him, dragged him out of the city, and left him there, thinking he was dead. 20 As the disciples gathered around him, he suddenly rose to his feet and returned to the city. The next day he and Barnabas left for Derbe.

Today’s Devotional

From today’s background scripture God might say:

You might think I would be enamored by the story of the lame man walking again. I’m not. I made his feet, after all. It’s not so hard for Me to fix them to demonstrate My power. But that’s not what I’m all about in this world. Fixing sick bodies isn’t My purpose as God. I do it sometimes, but that’s not what I want to do for you. Your bodies are just dust that will one day decay back into the dust from which I created you. That’s not the part of this story that I want you to remember today.

I don’t even want you to focus on Paul and Barnabas being treated like gods and so many turning toward them because of the miraculous things they did on My behalf that day. They had a tremendous opportunity to exploit the scene for their gain but didn’t because they knew the source of their power. Paul and Barnabas gave the credit for the healing to Me because they understood their mission and the healing brought an opportunity to share the news about My sacrifice and My power and the hope I give people.

I don’t even want you to remember the way I sustained Paul during and after his stoning. He suffered because of Me, but I rescued him from death. His mission wasn’t finished yet and I wasn’t ready for him to die. The crowd thought him dead as they dragged his torn, bloody body out of the city, when they stoned him. They tossed his broken heap of flesh in the city dump as if he were a discarded piece of trash. I restored him and his disciples walked with him back to Lystra before he and Barnabas left for Derbe the next day.

What I want you to focus on today is the story of the Jews that came from Antioch and Iconium to stir up trouble. These “religious” men took it upon themselves to incite men and women they knew believed in pagan gods to stone a man they knew believed in Me. Paul used the same scriptures these pious men used, but refused to really read and study. These men loved their position, power, and prestige more than they loved the truth, more than they loved me. So they closed their eyes to My Word.

Paul hadn’t written his letters yet. He used the Law I had given Moses to explain the good news about My Son. He used the Songs, the Wisdom Books, and the Prophets to share My plan of salvation through the perfect sacrifice of the God-Man, My Son, Jesus. He used the same scriptures My Son used. He used the same scriptures the rabbis used. He used the same scriptures these trouble-makers used.

Here’s the problem the “religious” can get into that I want you to hear clearly. Even Satan can use the same scriptures Jesus used to try and prove a point. Remember the temptations Luke takes about with My Son in the wilderness? Satan tried to use My words to trap Him, but he only used part of My scriptures without using the whole context, nature, and plan contained in it.

You see, you can prove or disprove anything if you use only pieces of My Word. If you close your mind and refuse to My Spirit talking to you through My Word, you will become just like those trouble-makers that tried to kill My servant, Paul. But when you read My Word with open hearts and let My Spirit speak to you, you will find hope and grace and mercy and forgiveness in those words I’ve given you.

But like the unbelieving who came from Antioch and Iconium and like Paul and Barnabas. You have a choice to make. You can choose to believe My Son is the Messiah, God Incarnate. Me in the flesh, come to redeem you. Or you can refuse to believe and become the trouble-maker like you read about in My Word. It’s still your choice. I want you to make the right one, but I won’t make it for you.

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.