Our Irresistible Future With Our Risen Savior - Day 91 Through the Bible

  

Remembering..."encouraging one another all the more as you see the Day approaching." Heb. 10:25

Remember...You Shall Not Forget ( Deuteronomy 25 and 26) God is reminding the Israelites that He has not forgotten and neither should they.  It has been a long time...it will be longer still before God strikes back at the Amalekites for attacking Israel during the Exodus...from the rear...when they were weary and tired..not fearing God (ref Ex. 17:8)  God's vengeance against these enemies at a later time is recorded in 1 Sam 15:2.  He is encouraging His people.

But for Now... First Things First (Deuteronomy 25 and 26)  First, the Israelites must possess the Promised Land and wait...until God has given them rest from their enemies all around.  The past is left in God's Hands, in His timing, in His Way.  The Israelites have God's commands... now...for dealing with family, with animals, with business practices, with executing righteous judgment, with tithing from their increase and worshipping God, caring for the Levite, the fatherless, the stranger, the widow...to walk in, keep, and obey God's commandments that they may prosper and be blessed in the Promised Land.

My Lesson/ Reflection/Application:  Oswald Chambers said it best, I think: "Our yesterdays present irreparable things to us; it is true that we have lost opportunities which will never return, but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past sleep, but let it sleep on the bosom of Christ. Leave the Irreparable Past in His hands, and step out into the Irresistible Future with Him."  God has promised... about those things in the past over which I have no control.  I must prayerfully commit those to Him to handle in His Way, in His timing and move forward into His new directives for my life.

God and My Sin / The Righteous and the Wicked (Psalm 39:7-11 and Proverbs 13:4-6.  First, with my sin...my only hope is in God...to deliver me from my transgressions...to not make me a reproach...to remove the plague from me - to acknowledge that God has allowed the consequences of my sin to come upon me...to repent.  And with understanding the natural laws...the usual way of the world and man:  laziness = lack; diligence = reward.  "A righteous man hates lying; the wicked man is loathsome and comes to shame.  Righteousness guards a man; wickedness overthrows a man."

My Lesson/Application: Our world is so convoluted that these proverbs do not often seem true from a worldly perspective, certainly not from a moment-in-time consideration.  Over a lifetime or years, in looking back, we can often see this.  I once heard a sermon series on the Proverbs, and that was the gist of the series.  These are the usual consequences of righteous and wicked living..observations...not commands, but we live in a fallen world and because of that, they are not blanket truisms.

Pharisaic Rage / Jesus' Healing Touch - The Lord of the Sabbath is more interested in doing good than evil, in saving life than in destroying it.  The religious leaders are not.  They plot the end of the Lord of the Sabbath in order to maintain their control over the Sabbath.  They plot and consummate the murder of the Lamb of God at Passover, while observing the minutiae of preparing the ritual sacrificial lamb of the Passover.  And they do this with rage - uncontrolled, unreasonable anger - conspiring together as the Jewish priests and leaders of Chosen Israel against God's Chosen Son - the gentle Savior who submits to their evil plots out of obedience to God - for the salvation of our souls. "And the whole multitude sought to touch Him, for power went out from Him and healed them all."

Holiness is not the way to Christ. Christ is the way to holiness. - Adrian Rogers