April 5th readings

~ Click on this link for today's readings ~
Deuteronomy 28:1-68 ~ Luke 11:14-36
Psalm 77:1-20 ~ Proverbs 12:18

Old Testament - I love the blessings for obedience that open up our Deuteronomy chapter 28 readings today!  I actually first heard these read at a wedding several years back.  The best man in the wedding read these verses as a blessing to the bride & groom.  Somehow I missed the "obedience" to God's commands part of the blessing...  - maybe the best man was editing as he read!  :)

Obedience is quite a word I think for Christians to consider.  I'm not sure that it is a popular word for us sometimes.  I do believe that we are called to obedience as followers of Jesus.  Even Jesus himself was obedient - obedient even to death on a cross.  Is there an area of your life where you feel God might be calling you to obedience?  Will you obey?

Here's a little obedience humor for you... :)

New Testament - Jesus' teaching in Luke chapter 11 verse 23 is so important for us to understand - "Anyone who isn't helping me opposes me, and anyone who isn't working with me is actually working against me."   How does this verse speak to you?  For me it convicts me.  Yeah, maybe for some of my time I am helping Jesus and the Kingdom of God, but I think there is a lot of time where I am not working with Jesus.  I am maybe indulging in some seemingly harmless trivial pursuits or material pleasures - but they aren't really working with Jesus.  And am I then, at those times, actually working against Jesus?  I don't know.  I want to pray on this more.  I do know that we are called to rest & relaxation in our lives.  We don't have to be frantically seeking to serve Jesus 24 x 7.  But, I do think it's possible that we can live our lives more "intentionally" - meaning, examine the intent of why we do what we do.  And ultimately, is what we are doing with our time helping and working with Jesus?  Or is it not?  I think being intentional with our time and how we are spending our lives is so important...  because time flies as we all know.

Jesus' teaching in Luke chapter 11 verse 36 is powerful for each of us to consider - "If you are filled with light, with no dark corners, then your whole life will be radiant, as though a floodlight is shining on you."  That second little clause there I think is key - with no dark corners.  I'll admit that I have traveled through life with some dark corners.  And it is no way to go.  The dark corners do affect the Light really shining in you and through you - and the dark corners I believe can affect your relationship with God.  I pray that if you know you have a dark corner in your life, confess it to God and Jesus.  Pray for forgiveness and repent.  God will fill you with light - a light that will penetrate and remove those dark corners in your life.  But, you've gotta confess them & repent of them with God...   You know it's worth it.  To live a radiant life, as though a floodlight is shining on you is the only way to live!

Bible.org's commentary on Luke chapter 11's readings today titled "Evidence that Produced Various Verdicts" is at this link.

Psalms - Today in Psalm 77 verses 11 and 12 we read – “I will remember the deeds of the LORD; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago. I will meditate on all your works and consider all your mighty deeds.” I think these verses get at one of the amazing things about each of us reading the One Year Bible this year – both the Old & New Testaments. We are reading perhaps for the first time – or maybe the 16^th time – about God’s miracles of long ago. We are “remembering” God’s miracles for ourselves and for those around us in our lives whom we will teach about God’s saving love. As you are reading through the One Year Bible this year, are you remembering God’s miracles of long ago? Are you meditating on all of his mighty works and considering his mighty deeds? Are you being transformed by this process? And will you now go forth and help others in your life remember and meditate on God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit’s miracles of long ago?

Speaking of miracles, has anyone read C.S. Lewis's book Miracles?  I have not yet, but hope to soon.  Please post up a quick review in the Comments section below if you've read it?  Thanks.

Proverbs - Proverbs chapter 12 verse 18 is such a strong reminder that the words that come out of our mouths can either build people up - and even heal them - or tear people down - "Some people make cutting remarks, but the words of the wise bring healing."  Are the words coming out of your mouth these days cutting people or are they healing people?

What verses or insights jumped out for you in today's readings?  Please post up in the Comments section below!

Grace,
Mike

Comments

[Vance Brown]

Deuteronomy 28 (NKJV)
12
The LORD will open to you His good treasure, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season, and to bless all the work of your hand. You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow.
13
And the LORD will make you the head and not the tail; you shall be above only, and not be beneath, if you heed the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you today, and are careful to observe them.

~~~

Obedience is VERY important. OBEDIENCE to God's commands cannot save us for we cannot save ourselves through our good works.

And if we obey with mere human effort without depending on the Spirit, we probably are not TRULY obeying God. Why? Because God looks not only at the PHYSICAL ACT of obedience (though that is extremely important), but also the motive. Are living to honor, love, and worship God?... or are we living only to build up ourselves?

~~~

God's blessings in THE BLESSINGS OF ABRAHAM cover EVERY AREA OF LIFE, and God does want us to FULLY experience the FULLNESS of our salvation.

Romans 5 (NKJV)
17
For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.)

Sin and the curse came into the world, and all men are under the curse, because Adam opened the door for the curse by his disobedience, laziness, and stepping outside proper bounds.

Through the ABUNDANT PROVISION of GRACE and RIGHTEOUSNESS in the Lord Jesus -- we ARE ABLE TO REIGN IN LIFE.

Jesus comes to bring the BLESSINGS OF ABRAHAM to us as we yield to, and daily trust in Him.

Galatians 3 (NKJV)
13
Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”),
14
that THE BLESSING OF ABRAHAM
might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

26
For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.
27
For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
29
And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

~~~

THANK GOD we are made righteous ONLY through faith in Christ. THANK GOD that no matter what illness, persecution, or problem is against us... WE ARE MORE THAN CONQUERORS THROUGH CHRIST WHO LOVED US!

It all comes down to BEGINNING a personal relationship with God WHEN WE REPENT AND RECEIVE CHRIST AS SAVIOR AND LORD...

and when we MAINTAIN a STRONG, PERSONAL, AND VITAL relationship with God through Jesus through PRAYER AND OBEDIENCE.

Matthew 4
4
"Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out from the mouth of God."

Obedience does NOT save us. HOWEVER, it will enable us to enter into the FULLNESS of God's blessing for us as we love and worship Him.

Otherwise, even Christians will suffer for disobedience.

Romans 8 (Amplified)
13
For if you live according to [the dictates of] the flesh, you will surely die. But if through the power of the [Holy] Spirit you are [habitually] putting to death (making extinct, deadening) the [evil] deeds prompted by the body, you shall [really and genuinely] live forever.

Vance

[Vance Brown]

GRACE IN DEUTERONOMY 28

Deuteronomy 28 (NKJV)
9
“The LORD will establish you as a holy people to Himself, just as He has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the LORD your God and walk in His ways.

As I re-read this, it occurred to me that this verse was saying, in effect, that IN OUR ACT OF OBEDIENCE TO GOD, we are to GIVE OURSELVES TO HIM.

Obedience is to be AN ACT OF WORSHIP AND SURRENDER to the Lord.

“The LORD will establish you as a holy people to Himself, just as He has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments..."

or

"... AS you keep the commandments..."

This seems corroborated by this verse in Deuteronomy 28 (NKJV):
14
So you shall not turn aside from any of the words which I command you this day, to the right or the left, TO GO AFTER OTHER GODS TO SERVE THEM.

~~~
If obeying the Father is an act of worship and surrender, then DIS-obeying the Father is an act of worship and surrender to false gods.

~~~

THIS RELATES WELL TO what the Lord Jesus said:

Luke 11 (NKJV)
23
He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters.
24
“When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ 25
And when he comes, he finds it swept and put in order. 26
Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first.”

~~~
JUST OBEYING BECAUSE IT IS THE "MORAL" OR "RIGHT" THING to do without being FILLED with the Spirit of Jesus and His Word will leave humans open to demonic, lie-based control.

WE NEED THAT PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT!

Am I practicing the Presence of God? Am I continually living dependent upon and in the Presence of Jesus?

1.
All to Jesus I surrender;
all to Him I freely give;

I will ever love and trust him, in His presence daily live.

Refrain:
I surrender all,
I surrender all,
all to Thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender all.

2.
All to Jesus I surrender;
humbly at His feet I bow,

worldly pleasures all forsaken; take me, Jesus, take me now.

(Refrain)

3.
All to Jesus I surrender;
make me, Savior, wholly Thine;

fill me with Thy love and power; truly know that Thou art mine.

(Refrain)

Vance

[Kristie Kercheval]

I haven't read Miracles.

But I enjoyed the reading today.

Just to let anyone know, I did miss yesterdays' reading. So I haven't been completely on track. But I press on in God's grace!!!

The Psalm was helpful to me. To remember the way God lead his people through the Red Sea...it says "yet your footprints were unseen." Everyone saw his mighty works, but no one saw Him as they were lead by their leaders Moses and Aaron. God was there in control of nature and His leaders and their enemies. It reminded me that I can take the same confidence the He is with me now through stormy times, leading me.

[Ramona]

Deuteronomy 28:1-68

The blessings that follow obedience is a “draw” to the nations, a means by which Israel proclaims the power and glory of God by no other means then following carefully after God. “You will be blessed …If you obey the commands of the Lord your God and walk in his ways…” Obedience is a means of beautification that draw men and women to the light that is Christ,

And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. (John 12:32 KJV)

Yet, even though our obedience attracts a crown, a community, a nation and nations, we must be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. If the New Testament reading (Luke 11:33-36), is juxtaposed against the part of Deuteronomy 28 dealing with the blessings, specifically verses nine and ten ("If you obey the commands of the LORD your God and walk in his ways, the LORD will establish you as his holy people as he solemnly promised to do. Then all the nations of the world will see that you are a people claimed by the LORD, and they will stand in awe of you.), can obedience be seen as the light that lights the lamp?

"No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a hidden place or under a basket, but on a lampstand, so that those who come in can see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is diseased, your body is full of darkness. Therefore see to it that the light in you is not darkness. (Luke 11:33-35 NET.)

Could the light that is really darkness be us when we change the commands of God and put forth commands of man as though they were from God?

There is another passage in this chapter of Deuteronomy that really caught my attention for the first time and that was verses fifty-three through fifty-seven, the consequence of disobedience:

You will then eat your own offspring, the flesh of the sons and daughters the LORD your God has given you, because of the severity of the siege by which your enemies will constrict you. The man among you who is by nature tender and sensitive will turn against his brother, his beloved wife, and his remaining children. He will withhold from all of them his children's flesh that he is eating (since there is nothing else left), because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages. Likewise, the most tender and delicate of your women, who would never think of putting even the sole of her foot on the ground because of her daintiness, will turn against her beloved husband, her sons and daughters, and will secretly eat her afterbirth and her newborn children (since she has nothing else), because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages. (Deuteronomy 28:53-57 NET.)

Though I believe this foretelling literally happened (Recorded in Kings/Chronicles), I also wonder what this really looks like figuratively. When parents make choices that have an effect on the children they give birth too, choices they make in an attempt to avert the consequences of their disobedience, the children are consumed. Are we sacrificing our children on the alters of our bad decisions. Abortion is the sacrificing of children on the alter of our “pleasure,” and is an attempt to avoid responsibility and accountability. Just some “stuff” for me to think about.

Grace and peace,
Ramona

[John]

Sign of Jonah and the Lamp

"Two things strike me about our Lord’s use of the Ninevites and the Queen of the South. The first is that both are Gentiles, and they, because of their belief, will condemn the unbelief of this generation of Israelites. The second is that both parties believed with much less evidence than that which this generation had seen."

http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=1107

They heard correctly. Now Jesus addresses "sight".

"...Jesus is saying that everyone who failed to interpret the evidence of this miracle as they should has done so because of a defect in their ability to “see” the truth, not because of any deficiency in the evidence." - ibid.

In the lamp illustration those that have good eyes your whole body is full of light.

Depending on the translation of "good" - functioning, open or perhaps "good" in the sense that you are "turned to the Lord".

When eyes are bad the translations can be closed, blind, or "evil" as in "turned away from the Lord". Thus you would be full of darkness (sin).

v. 35 struck me

Make sure what you are filled with is lightness not darkness. Don't be mistaken. Don't be turned away from the Lord and think you have the illumination, when you really are in darkness. You can not truly receive the light unless you are "turned to the Lord".

[John]

Deut 28 - this is about Israel

I forgot Deut. had prophecies in it.

We can look at the blessings and say, 'how nice', and then we look at the curses and say 'aw come on'. The curses have to be symbolic, metaphor, some kind of lesson - God must be using Hyperbole here in Deut. 28.

Maybe, but lets look at some facts:

Israelites traveled forty years thru the Desert and grew to around 2,000,000 people.

Israel could not obey the Law. Often reverted back to worshiping idols, perverted the law with hypocrisy, and did not recognize the Messiah.

Today, after about 3,000+ years the total world Population of the Jews is around 13,000,000. What happened?
http://www.jafi.org.il/education/100/concepts/demography/demtables.html#1

There were three conquerings by Assyria, Babylon and Rome. With diasporas (dispersals) in the cases of Assyria and Rome. Assyria conquered Israel and dispersed the ten tribes where only remnants remain today. Babylon captured Judah, but took the people back to Babylon from which they eventually returned. Rome totally destroyed the country and the Jewish people were dispersed world-wide.

Some will call it a result of disobeying the Law and coming under the "curse" of God. Others will say it is "bad luck".

So what is outlined in Deut. 28? Most commentators believe Deut 28:32-37 refers to the Babylonian captivity. Deut 28:48-57 refers to Rome conquering/destroying the Jewish nation.

I am a little more familiar with Rome. Rome came from far away, their language and their mercenaries' languages would be hard to understand, their army standards bore the symbol of an eagle, their strategy was to lay siege to each city in turn. Josephus, War of the Jews 6.3.4, describes a scene where Jerusalem fell into cannabilism during Titus' siege. (Deut. mentions this over 1,3oo years before it happened.)
http://www.ccel.org/j/josephus/works/war-6.htm

After that more curses and the world-wide dispersal - surely something no one would deny.So what about all the little details of horrible things that were to happen? I don't know. Perhaps they are metaphors, perhaps they happened but nobody recorded them, or were lost wrtings.

What I do know:
The people existed, by the Old Testament and other Hebrew writings they turned from God periodically and violated the Law, and they were conquered three times and dispersed twice.

Anti-semitism exists. Not so bad in America, but bad in other parts of the World. People don't so much come back to Israel, but some "flee" back for refuge.

Their population because of dispersal and some inter-marriage has not increased by as much as one would think.

I leave it up to the individual to decide was all this a result of God's Curse from Deut 28, or just "bad luck".

[Anka]

Disobedience:It made Lucifer turn from the most beautiful creature to the world's ugliest(pictures of satan are often really hideous).I always wondered what it was about Jews that made people hate them,now I know it's the consequence of disobedience.The cannibalism,the madness,the blindness and confusion of the mind...all results of disobedience."Men will become lovers of themselves",eating someone up just to make sure you don't starve to death is the ugliest expression of an attempted self preservation(self love)I can think of.Yet we see it daily,people kill for money,position,pleasure.
I think I should really meditate on the curses of disobedience so when I want to disobey God,I can really know what consequences will follow.
"Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall"Many times I think of this verse in the light of christians..we disagree on so much and make a sermon out of it:we make an issue of paying tithes or not,drinking wine or not,gifts of the Spirit....and some times we get so ugly with each other it makes us wonder if we're on the same team.I saw a team of young Americans yesterday who are in Romania to help in orphanages and they had this written on their sweat shirts:ONE GOD,ONE TEAM,ONE MISSION.I think we should all think about who we're truly serving/worshipping/obeying...our whims or Christ..Lets set aside our differences cos they'll always be there and be christians(followers of Christ)...
God bless you all

[Anka]

John,
thanks for saving me the trouble to ask about the sign of Jonah and the lamp:) your post really clarified my questions.

[Ramona]

Anka,

A very interesting and observant statement, >> I always wondered what it was about Jews that made people hate them, now I know it's the consequence of disobedience. >>. Yet there is another side to what you have observed, despite Israel’s disobedience this “curse” remains in effect for all those who come against Abraham and his descendents,
And I will bless those who bless you [who confer prosperity or happiness upon you] and curse him who curses or uses insolent language toward you; in you will all the families and kindred of the earth be blessed [and by you they will bless themselves]. [Gal. 3:8.] (Genesis 12:3 AMP),

Then reiterated to Jacob/Israel again,

Let peoples serve you and nations bow down to you; be master over your brothers, and let your mother's sons bow down to you. Let everyone be cursed who curses you and favored with blessings who blesses you. (Genesis 27:29 AMP)

And then to the Nation of Israel, though Moses,

But if you will indeed listen to and obey His voice and all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. (Exodus 23:22 AMP)

All blessings to you,
Ramona

[Anka]

Thanks Ramona,God bless you too:)