April 7: An Irrational Life
Deuteronomy 11:1–12:28; 2 Corinthians 3:9–18; Psalm 35:12–28
Love is irrational. It requires doing things that compromise every survival instinct.
Moses tells God’s people to have a memory of what God has done among them and to love Him as a result: “And you shall love Yahweh your God, and you shall keep his obligations and his statutes and his regulations and his commandments always. And you shall realize today that it is not with your children who have not known and who have not seen the discipline of Yahweh your God, his greatness, his strong hand, and his outstretched arm” (Deut 11:1–2).
The Bible doesn’t say, “Keep Yahweh’s commandments when you feel like you love Him,” or “Keep Yahweh’s commandments when things are going your way.” It says, “You shall keep [Yahweh’s] … commandments always.” God’s greatest commandments are about loving Him and others (Mark 12:28–31; compare John 15:12).
We love God and keep His commandments because He first loved us; we remember what He has done whenever things get difficult. And we teach it to the next generation. That’s what God has called us to.
When we sacrifice ourselves for others, we are doing what God was willing to do for us when He came as a man to die on a cross. Similarly, when we love Yahweh by doing His will, we often make decisions that seem irrational. But in actuality, they are the most rational of all decisions.
The Spirit’s work within us prompts us to love, and it also opens the Scriptures for us. As Paul says, “But until today, whenever Moses is read aloud, a veil lies upon their heart, but whenever one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.… And we all, with unveiled face, reflecting the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image … glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:15–18).
Yahweh has lifted the veil from Scripture and reveals His glory in the love He manifests among us through His Spirit. Living sacrificially, out of love, richly displays His love.
Which of God’s commands are you breaking? What can you do to change that behavior and show more love?
John D. Barry
Barry, John D., and Rebecca Kruyswijk. Connect the Testaments: A One-Year Daily Devotional with Bible Reading Plan. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012. Print.
Morning, April 7 Go To Evening Reading
“O ye sons of men, how long will ye turn my glory into shame?”
—Psalm 4:2
An instructive writer has made a mournful list of the [honors] which the blinded people of Israel awarded to their [long-expected] King.
1. They gave him a procession of [honor], in which Roman legionaries, Jewish priests, men, and women, took a part, he himself bearing his cross. This is the triumph [that] the world awards to him who comes to overthrow man’s direst foes. Derisive shouts are [His] only acclamations, and cruel taunts his only paeans of praise.
2. They presented him with the wine of [honor]. Instead of a golden cup of generous wine, they offered him the criminal’s stupefying death-draught, which he refused because he would preserve an uninjured taste wherewith to taste of death; and [afterward] when he cried, “I thirst,” they gave him vinegar mixed with gall, thrust to his mouth upon a sponge. Oh! wretched, detestable inhospitality to the King’s Son.
3. He was provided with a guard of [honor], who showed their esteem of him by gambling over his garments, which they had seized as their booty. Such was the body-guard of the adored of heaven; a quaternion of brutal gamblers.
4. A throne of [honor] was found for him upon the bloody tree; no easier place of rest would rebel men yield to their liege lord. The cross was, in fact, the full expression of the world’s feeling towards him; “There,” they seemed to say, “thou Son of God, this is the manner in which God himself should be treated, could we reach him.”
5. The title of [honor] was nominally “King of the Jews,” but that the blinded nation distinctly repudiated, and really called him “King of thieves,” by preferring Barabbas, and by placing Jesus in the place of highest shame between two thieves. His glory was thus in all things turned into shame by the sons of men, but it shall yet gladden the eyes of saints and angels, world without end.
Go To Morning Reading Evening, April 7
“Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation; and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.”
—Psalm 51:14
In this solemn confession, it is pleasing to observe that David plainly names his sin. He does not call it manslaughter, nor speak of it as an imprudence by which an unfortunate accident occurred to a worthy man, but he calls it by its true name, bloodguiltiness. He did not actually kill the husband of Bathsheba, but still, it was planned in David’s heart that Uriah should be slain, and he was before the Lord his murderer. Learn in confession, to be honest with God. Do not give fair names to foul sins; call them what you will, they will smell no sweeter. What God sees them, that do you [labor] to feel them, and with all openness of heart acknowledge their real character. Observe, that David was evidently oppressed with the heinousness of his sin. It is easy to use words, but it is difficult to feel their meaning. The fifty-first Psalm is the photograph of a contrite spirit. Let us seek after the like brokenness of heart; for however excellent our words [maybe], if our heart is not conscious of the hell-deservingness of sin, we cannot expect to find forgiveness.
Our text has in it an earnest prayer—it is addressed to the God of salvation. It is his prerogative to forgive; it is his very name and office to save those who seek his face. Better still, the text calls him the God of my salvation. Yes, blessed be his name, while I am yet going to him through Jesus’ blood, I can rejoice in the God of my salvation.
The psalmist ends with a commendable vow: if God will deliver him he will sing—nay, more, he will “sing aloud.” Who can sing in any other style of such a mercy as this! But note the subject of the song—“Thy righteousness.” We must sing of the finished work of a precious Saviour, and he who knows most of [the] forgiving love will sing the loudest.
Spurgeon, C. H. Morning and Evening: Daily Readings. London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1896. Print.
April 7th
Why are we not told plainly?
He charged them that they should tell no man what things they had seen, till the Son of man were risen from the dead. Mark 9:9.
Say nothing until the Son of man is risen in you—until the life of the risen Christ so dominates you that you understand what the historic Christ taught. When you get to the right state on the inside, the word which Jesus has spoken is so plain that you are amazed you did not see it before. You could not understand it before, you were not in the place in disposition where it could be borne.
Our Lord does not hide these things; they are unbearable until we get into a fit condition of spiritual life. “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.” There must be communion with His risen life before a particular word can be borne by us. Do we know anything about the impartation of the risen life of Jesus? The evidence that we do is that His word is becoming interpretable to us. God cannot reveal anything to us if we have not His Spirit. An obstinate outlook will effectually hinder God from revealing anything to us. If we have made up our minds about a doctrine, the light of God will come no more to us on that line, we cannot get it. This obtuse stage will end immediately His resurrection life has its way with us.
“Tell no man …”—so many do tell what they saw on the mount of transfiguration. They have had the vision and they testify to it, but life does not tally with it, the Son of man is not yet risen in them. I wonder when He is going to be formed in you and in me?
Chambers, Oswald. My Utmost for His Highest: Selections for the Year. Grand Rapids, MI: Oswald Chambers Publications; Marshall Pickering, 1986. Print.
April 7
We came unto the land whither thou sentest us … we saw the children of Anak there
Num. 13:27, 28
It is when we are in the way of duty that we find giants. It was when Israel was going forward that the giants appeared. When they turned back into the wilderness they found none.
Selected
Hardman, Samuel G., and Dwight Lyman Moody. Thoughts for the Quiet Hour. Willow Grove, PA: Woodlawn Electronic Publishing, 1997. Print.
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