Day 4 - Wednesday | Daily Devotions | Morning and Evening; Daily Reading | Connect the Testaments | My Ultimate for His Highest | Thoughts for Today |

 Go To Morning Reading Evening, September 25

“Who of God is made unto us wisdom.”

—1 Corinthians 1:30

Man’s intellect seeks after rest and, by nature, seeks it apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. Even when converted, men of education are apt to look upon the simplicities of the cross of Christ with an eye too little reverent and loving. They are snared in the old net where the Grecians were taken and hankered to mix philosophy with revelation. The temptation with a man of refined thought and high education is to depart from the simple truth of Christ crucified and invent a more intellectual doctrine, as the term is. This led the early Christian churches into Gnosticism and bewitched them with many heresies. This is the root of Neology and the other fine things that were so fashionable in Germany and are now so ensnaring to certain classes of divines. Whoever you are, a good reader, and whatever your education may be if you are the Lord’s, you will find no rest in philosophizing divinity. You may receive this dogma of one great thinker or that dream of another profound reasoner, but what the chaff is to the wheat, will these be to the pure word of God. All that reason, when best guided, can find out is but the A B C of truth, and even that lacks certainty, while in Christ Jesus there is treasured up all the fulness of wisdom and knowledge. All attempts on the part of Christians to be content with systems such as Unitarian and Broad-church thinkers would approve of must fail; true heirs of heaven must come back to the grandly simple reality which makes the plowboy’s eye flash with joy and gladens the pious pauper’s heart—“Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.” Jesus satisfies the most elevated intellect when he is believingly received, but apart from him, the mind of the regenerate discovers no rest. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” “A good understanding have all they that do his commandments.”

Morning, September 26 Go To Evening Reading

“The myrtle trees that were in the bottom.”

—Zechariah 1:8

The vision in this chapter describes the condition of Israel in Zechariah’s day, but being interpreted in its aspect towards us, it describes the Church of God as we find it now in the world. The Church is compared to a myrtle grove flourishing in a valley. It is hidden, unobserved, secreted, courting no honor and attracting no observation from the careless gazer. Like her head, the Church has a glory, but it is concealed from carnal eyes, for the time of her breaking forth in all her splendor has not yet come. The idea of tranquil security is also suggested to us, for the myrtle grove in the valley is still and calm while the storm sweeps over the mountain summits. Tempests spend their force upon the craggy peaks of the Alps, but down yonder where flows the stream which maketh glad the city of our God, the myrtles flourish by the still waters, all unshaken by the impetuous wind. How great is the inward tranquility of God’s Church! Even when opposed and persecuted, she has peace that the world does not give and which, therefore, cannot take away: the peace of God, which passes all understanding and keeps the hearts and minds of God’s people. Does not the metaphor forcibly picture the peaceful, perpetual growth of the saints? The myrtle sheds not her leaves, she is always green; and the Church in her worst time still hath a blessed verdure of grace about her; nay, she has sometimes exhibited most verdure when her winter has been sharpest. She has prospered most when her adversities have been most severe. Hence, the text hints at victory. The myrtle is the emblem of peace and a significant token of triumph. The brows of conquerors were bound with myrtle and laurel; is not the Church ever victorious? Is not every Christian more than a conqueror through him that loved him? Living in peace, do not the saints fall asleep in the arms of victory?

 C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening: Daily Readings (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1896).

September 25: Visions, Revelations, and Questions

Zechariah 6:1–7:14; Acts 22:22–23:22; Job 29:13–25

The prophets of old had visions and dreamed dreams. They experienced apocalyptic nightmares and witnessed breathtaking scenes of beauty. Perhaps most fascinating, though, is how they reacted. Zechariah provides us with an example of the revelation and the proper response.

“I looked up again, and I saw, and look!—four chariots came out from between two mountains, and the mountains were mountains of bronze.… And I answered and said to the angel talking to me, ‘What are these, my lord?’ And the angel answered and said, ‘These are the four winds of the heavens going out after presenting themselves before the Lord of all the earth’ ” (Zech 6:1–5).

Zechariah could not have understood what he was seeing, but he paid attention and asked questions. Although we may not experience visions as confounding as Zechariah’s, we certainly have the opportunity to be perplexed by God. Our response should be modeled after Zechariah’s: Ask questions and act. Zechariah’s life was marked by asking and responding, and it made a difference for his generation. People came to God because Zechariah was willing to be God’s instrument.

How many people experience incredible revelations from God and then fail to respond? How many people come near enough to glimpse God’s plan but never pay close enough attention to receive it from Him? How much are we losing as individuals and people because we don’t care enough to ask God for the answers?

What confusion or uncertainty can you overcome by asking questions?

John D. Barry

 John D. Barry and Rebecca Kruyswijk, Connect the Testaments: A One-Year Daily Devotional with Bible Reading Plan (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012).

September 25

The “go” of relationship

And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Matthew 5:41.

The summing up of Our Lord’s teaching is that the relationship He demands is impossible unless He has done supernatural work in us. Jesus Christ demands that there be not the slightest trace of resentment even suppressed in the head of a disciple when he meets with tyranny and injustice. No enthusiasm will ever stand the strain that Jesus Christ will put upon His worker; only one thing will, and that is a personal relationship to Himself, which has gone through the mill of His spring-cleaning until there is only one purpose left—‘I am here for God to send me where He will.’ Everything may get fogged, but this relationship with Jesus Christ must never be.

The Sermon on the Mount is not an ideal; it is a statement of what will happen to me when Jesus Christ alters my disposition and puts it in a disposition like His own. Jesus Christ is the only One who can fulfill the Sermon on the Mount.

If we are to be disciples of Jesus, we must be made supernaturally; as long as we have the dead-set purpose of being disciples, we may be sure we are not. “I have chosen you.” That is the way the grace of God begins. It is a constraint we cannot get away from; we can disobey it but not generate it. The drawing is done by the supernatural grace of God, and we can never trace where His work begins. Our Lord’s making of a disciple is supernatural. He does not build on any natural capacity at all. God does not ask us to do the things that are easy for us naturally; He only asks us to do the things we are perfectly fitted to do by His grace, and the cross will always come along that line.

 Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest: Selections for the Year (Grand Rapids, MI: Oswald Chambers Publications; Marshall Pickering, 1986).

September 25

The life that I now live in the flesh

Gal. 2:20

I expect to pass through this world but once—therefore, if there be any kindness I can show or any good thing I can do to any fellow human being, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

Marcus Aurelius

 Samuel G. Hardman and Dwight Lyman Moody, Thoughts for the Quiet Hour (Willow Grove, PA: Woodlawn Electronic Publishing, 1997).