Day 5 - Thursday | Daily Devotions | Connect the Testaments | Morning and Evening: Daily Reading | My Utmost for His Highest | Thoughts for the Quiet Hour |

 June 4: Faithful Examples

2 Chronicles 9:1–10:19; Titus 2:1–8; Psalm 95:1–11

We cringe when we see other Christians exploiting the gospel, using it to advance their own personal or political agenda. Today, it doesn’t take much effort to do so—it’s as easy as posting a video or link online. In these situations, it’s tempting to respond with anger or frustration, but if we do so, we’re compounding the problem with our own behavior.

We can learn a lot from an ancient Graeco—Roman context that really isn’t so different from ours. Paul had left Titus in Crete to help the Cretans learn what it looked like to live the gospel. Paul gives Titus instructions for each age and gender group to help the Cretan believers reset their old ways of being and avoid bringing the gospel message into disrepute.

Paul realized, though, that the Cretans needed real-life examples to truly change. He set up mentors within the community. The elderly women were to teach younger women so that “the word of God may not be slandered” (Titus 2:5). Titus, a young man, needed to be a model of good works. His teaching needed to show “soundness, dignity, a sound message beyond reproach” (Titus 2:7–8). His works and his teaching were intended to be a model Christian living.

The Cretan believers had to examine their old habits and behaviors, and we’re no different. All of us come from different contexts that have shaped the way we live out our faith—and sometimes we need correction. Although we’re quick to look down on other Christians when they inhibit the gospel message through their faulty applications, we’re often unaware when we do it ourselves.

When we see others misusing the gospel, we need to wisely and lovingly confront them about their motives. Like Titus and influential Cretan believers, though, we also have to be open to the work of Christ in our own lives. We can do this by aligning our motives with the gospel and graciously and humbly accepting correction when it’s needed. Through living out the gospel, we can reflect Christ so that others are drawn to Him.

How are you being a model for other Christians?

Rebecca Van Noord

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

Morning, June 4 Go To Evening Reading

“The kindness and love of God our Saviour.”

—Titus 3:4

How sweet it is to behold the Saviour communing with his own beloved people! There can be nothing more delightful than, by the Divine Spirit, to be led into this fertile field of delight. Let the mind for an instant consider the history of the Redeemer’s love, and a thousand enchanting acts of affection will suggest themselves, all of which have had for their design the weaving of the heart into Christ, and the intertwisting of the thoughts and emotions of the renewed soul with the mind of Jesus. When we meditate upon this amazing love, and behold the all-glorious Kinsman of the Church endowing her with all his ancient wealth, our souls may well faint for joy. Who is he that can endure such a weight of love? That partial sense of it which the Holy Spirit is sometimes pleased to afford, is more than the soul can contain; how transporting must be a complete view of it! When the soul shall have understanding to discern all the Saviour’s gifts, wisdom wherewith to estimate them, and time in which to meditate upon them, such as the world to come will afford us, we shall then commune with Jesus in a nearer manner than at present. But who can imagine the sweetness of such fellowship? It must be one of the things which have not entered into the heart of man, but which God hath prepared for them that love him. Oh, to burst open the door of our Joseph’s granaries, and see the plenty which he hath stored up for us! This will overwhelm us with love. By faith we see, as in a glass darkly, the reflected image of his unbounded treasures, but when we shall actually see the heavenly things themselves, with our own eyes, how deep will be the stream of fellowship in which our soul shall bathe itself! Till then our loudest sonnets shall be reserved for our loving benefactor, Jesus Christ our Lord, whose love to us is wonderful, passing the love of women.

Go To Morning Reading Evening, June 4

“Received up into glory.”

—1 Timothy 3:16

We have seen our well-beloved Lord in the days of his flesh, humiliated and sore vexed; for he was “despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” He whose brightness is as the morning, wore the sackcloth of sorrow as his daily dress: shame was his mantle, and reproach was his vesture. Yet now, inasmuch as he has triumphed over all the powers of darkness upon the bloody tree, our faith beholds our King returning with dyed garments from Edom, robed in the splendour of victory. How glorious must he have been in the eyes of seraphs, when a cloud received him out of mortal sight, and he ascended up to heaven! Now he wears the glory which he had with God or ever the earth was, and yet another glory above all—that which he has well earned in the fight against sin, death, and hell. As victor he wears the illustrious crown. Hark how the song swells high! It is a new and sweeter song: “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, for he hath redeemed us unto God by his blood!” He wears the glory of an Intercessor who can never fail, of a Prince who can never be defeated, of a Conqueror who has vanquished every foe, of a Lord who has the heart’s allegiance of every subject. Jesus wears all the glory which the pomp of heaven can bestow upon him, which ten thousand times ten thousand angels can minister to him. You cannot with your utmost stretch of imagination conceive his exceeding greatness; yet there will be a further revelation of it when he shall descend from heaven in great power, with all the holy angels—“Then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory.” Oh, the splendour of that glory! It will ravish his people’s hearts. Nor is this the close, for eternity shall sound his praise, “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever!” Reader, if you would joy in Christ’s glory hereafter, he must be glorious in your sight now. Is he so?

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

June 4th

The never-failing God

For He hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. Hebrews 13:5.

What line does my thought take? Does it turn to what God says or to what I fear? Am I learning to say not what God says, but to say something after I have heard what He says? “He hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me.”

“I will in no wise fail thee”—not for all my sin and selfishness and stubbornness and waywardness. Have I really let God say to me that He will never fail me? If I have listened to this say-so of God’s, then let me listen again.

“Neither will I in any wise forsake thee.” Sometimes it is not difficulty that makes me think God will forsake me, but drudgery. There is no Hill Difficulty to climb, no vision given, nothing wonderful or beautiful, just the commonplace day in and day out—can I hear God’s say-so in these things?

We have the idea that God is going to do some exceptional thing, that He is preparing and fitting us for some extraordinary thing by and by, but as we go on in grace we find that God is glorifying Himself here and now, in the present minute. If we have God’s say-so behind us, the most amazing strength comes, and we learn to sing in the ordinary days and ways.

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

June 4

David enquired of the Lord

2 Sam. 5:19

Christian, if thou wouldst know the path of duty, take God for thy compass; if thou wouldst steer thy ship through the dark billows, put the tiller into the hand of the Almighty. Many a rock might be escaped if we would let our Father take the helm; many a shoal or quicksand we might well avoid if we would leave it to His sovereign will to choose and to command. The Puritan said, “As sure as ever a Christian carves for himself he’ll cut his own fingers.” “I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go” is God’s promise to His people. Let us, then, take all our perplexities to Him and say, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” Leave not thy chamber this morning without inquiring of the Lord.

Spurgeon

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