But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
TO PONDER
I can't imagine how many times I have read this verse over the years. However, in reading it for today's devotion, something struck me for the first time. Yes, it is true that we are God's chosen people, that we are set apart as his holy nation and a priesthood of all believers acting as intermediaries between God and those who do not yet know Him. But God has called us and chose us and is forming us and equipping us for a purpose... That we may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.
Being part of a holy nation, a royal priesthood, being God's chosen people is not about simply sitting in a favoured and priveledged position. It is about being free and able to proclaim Gods goodness and declare his praise. This is the purpose of the church (the people, not the building or institution). It's not to build awe inspiriting buildings and cathedrals in which we can gather privately. It's not about employing a large staff of various ministry professionals to run fancy outreach and evangelism programs. It's not about the style of worship music or the liturgical forms you use on a Sunday morning. It is simply about declaring the praises of the God who created and redeemed you out of darkness to live in his wonderful light to anyone who will listen.
PRAYER: Lord Jesus, I pray that you will help me today to see all the ways you are at work in me, through me, and around me so that I may point it out to others and proclaim your goodness and mercy to all who have ears to hear. Amen
Today's devotion written by Mathew von Stanke, LifeWay Newcastle
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common.
TO PONDER
I wonder if any of us have ever come close to experiencing something like the community of the early Christian Church under the leadership of the first apostles. It sounds kind of wonderful don't you think?
No one having to go without, everything being shared among the community, the people devoted to learning whatever they could from the apostles - as the apostles dedicated themselves to the task Jesus had left for them - to make disciples of all nations, baptising and teaching them.
The crazy thing is that the task of the church today is no different than it was back then, but the church today looks very different. We have institutional churches with heirarchies, and policies and various doctrines - some which look like the things that Jesus and the apostles taught, many which have nothing to do with any of that stuff. We don't have everything in common, and instead are often quick to point out when our beliefs or practices are different from others and separate ourselves rather than find ways to work together.
The world today looks different than it did for the early Christians, but the task we have as God's church is no different. Maybe if we looked a bit more like the early church, we might find more people drawn into the community, as the early Christians did.
PRAYER: Jesus, please help me to remember that being part of a church is not about simply attending church services, but about being dedicated to learning from your word, to meeting with and supporting others in our church community and to gathering to worship you. Amen
Today's devotion written by Mathew von Stanke, LifeWay Newcastle
For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.
TO PONDER
If the building or 'temple' metaphor is one of the apostle Paul's favourite ways to talk about the church, then the 'body of Christ' metaphor would have to be the other.
It makes sense doesn't it. We all know how one injury or illness in one part of our body makes us feel unwell generally. A broken leg doesn't just affect the leg in isolation, but the whole rest of the body suffers the pain along with the leg and other parts have to compensate while the leg heals. Just like a bad headache doesn't just effect your head, it influences your concentration, emotional state and the capacity of the rest of your body to attend to regular everyday tasks.
Paul goes on in this passage from Romans to explain that if the whole body were just an eye, there would be no sense of smell. Likewise, is the whole body was a nose then how would we hear? Just as each part of the body has a specific function, so to does every member of the church. Let's put it another way, Paul is essentially saying there is no such thing as an appendix or tonsils in the Body of Christ. There is no part that you can simply take away without having a negative effect on the rest of the body, we all need each other.
Sure, sometimes it's hard to look past the 'glamorous' parts of the body, those who stand up the front and are always seen 'doing' the work, but so much of what happens in a body is unseen and yet often more important to the health and functioning of the body that what is seen on the outside. So today we acknowledge the 'behind closed doors' prayers, the 'while no one is looking' encouragers, the 'I can do that' helpers and servants who don't always get recognised or valued. If you are one of those people doing this devotion today, we love you and we need you in the church. If you are not one of those people and often find yourself out front being the face or voice of the operation, thank God for those who quietly get busy doing the work God has prepared for them to do, which allows you to get out and do what you have been gifted and called to do. We all have a part to play and we are all in this together to the glory of God the Father. Amen
PRAYER: Lord of the Church, I thank you for the gift that you have made us to one another. Please help me to always recognise the gifts that you have given my brothers and sisters in our church community and help us all to celebrate and encourage one another as members of your body, the church. Amen
Today's devotion written by Mathew von Stanke, LifeWay Newcastle
Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.
TO PONDER
I have been retired now for almost 7 years and my wife, Diane, and I have been living off our superannuation, money that we and our employers put into our superannuation fund while we were working. We cannot grow this fund, only use it up to cover our living expenses. Will we have sufficient money to live on until God calls us home? We have no guarantees. It depends on our health and unknown medical expenses, and how safe our money is in the superannuation fund.
The answer to this question about financial security also depends on what we have faith in. On the one hand, we can have faith in the world political and financial systems that our money won’t be dissipated by events beyond our control. Or we can have faith in God’s promise to always look after us, no matter what He allows to happen in our lives. This is not faith that God will protect our superannuation nest egg, but faith that even if it should be badly eroded or even vanish, that God will still be there beside us, guiding us in dealing with whatever happens.
Our faith in our eternal future is not that different. We can have faith in our goodness and how we try to keep God’s commands, and hope we have done enough to be accepted into heaven. Or we can have faith in all that God’s Son, Jesus, has done on our behalf to guarantee that our eternal home with our Heavenly Father is already now. However, this faith in what Jesus has done for us is not like a once-off measles injection, good for the rest of our life, it is more like the regular meals we eat, usually three times, every day. We need that regular quality time with our Heavenly Family to keep our faith healthy, and an important part of that quality time is immersing ourselves in the book containing God’s love story to us. (And, of course, spending quality time too with our brothers and sisters in Christ.)
Prayer: Heavenly Father, thank you that You have given us all we need to know about you, all we need to know about what Jesus has achieved for us and all we need to know about living as your children. Please guide us in using that knowledge to trust where you are leading us in living out your purpose for us. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping
Let the prophet who has a dream recount the dream, but let the one who has my word speak it faithfully. For what has straw to do with grain?” declares the Lord. “Is not my word like fire,” declares the Lord, “and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?"
TO PONDER
Around 722 BC, the ten northern tribes of Israel were deported by the Assyrians and dispersed into other countries that the Assyrians defeated. The Bible describes this as punishment on these people because they had rejected Him as their God and worshiped the gods of the surrounding countries. At the time, God miraculously protected the southern two tribes of Israel, Judah and Benjamin, from the Assyrians. In the following years, these two tribes eventually followed the northern tribes in adopting the horrible practices of the surrounding countries, such as child sacrifice and religious prostitution.
Jeremiah was sent by God to bring warnings to the people that if they didn’t return back to living as He had instructed them, they would suffer the same fate as their northern cousins, but this time at the hands of the Babylonians. But while Jeremiah was speaking the messages that he had specifically received from God himself, there were other people claiming to be prophets and bringing different messages from God, sometimes received via dreams. Generally, the messages provided by these false prophets was that everything was OK and the people could keep living their disgusting lives without any fear of retribution.
The outcome of all this was that in 586 BC, Jerusalem, and the temple, were destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, and the surviving people deported to Babylon.
This raises the challenge for us, where do we get our spiritual truth from. Social media is full of advice on how to lead a full and fulfilling life, whereas the Bible is treated as suspect, especially when science is used as a weapon against its reliability. As Christians, we are followers of Jesus Christ who demonstrated by His life that He was God’s son and truly God. He put His stamp of approval on the Old Testament as fully God’s word while the New Testament contains a record of Jesus’s words to us.
We can therefore trust God’s word to us in the Bible. And to protect ourselves from being led away from God’s truths, we really do need to immerse ourselves in it, not only to gain truth, but to meet the author of this truth, our Loving Heavenly Family.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, thank you for revealing yourself through the life of your Son. Please help us to make the time to spend with You and your Word so that we get to know you personally and receive Your guidance in living our lives. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
TO PONDER
I spent 5 years at university to gain two degrees (Science and Engineering). When I got my first job, the first task given to me was to design a small sub-system of a communications system to be used for interconnecting telephone exchanges. A wonderful opportunity for applying my 5 years of study to a real problem. After a couple of days of effort and not really getting anywhere, one of the more senior engineers came to see how I was going. After reviewing my pathetic efforts, he shared with me the standard design they had been using successfully for many years. Yes, it had to be customised for each specific application, but it gave me a big boost in developing a design. As I progressed in my career, I realised that developing successful solutions always came from using a combination of theoretical knowledge, practical experience and ideas contributed by others.
When looking at my life as a child of our Heavenly Father, I see that there are parallels with my experience as an engineer. The theoretical knowledge I had acquired at university is like learning theology. The Bible is full of theology, or knowledge about God, and I did acquire quite a bit of this while growing up. But I must confess, that the biggest impact on me was a sense of guilt and failure in not living up to what I thought a Christian had to be. In an effort to become a better Christian, I joined a group of Christians street-witnessing in King Cross, the red-light district of Sydney at the time. This came to an abrupt end one night when I was having a discussion with a bikie and I realised I had absolutely nothing to offer him as a Christian.
What I was missing, was the practical experience of living as a Christian. This is the day by day living in a relationship with the Heavenly Family, having the security of knowing my life was safely in God’s hands, and having Holy Spirit guiding me in living out God’s purpose for me.
As with my engineering experience, this is an ongoing process of learning to hear God’s voice and responding to it. Again, the Bible is full of advice on how to hear God speaking to us and how to respond, and we have so many examples in the Bible of how other people went through this learning experiences.
Which brings us to ideas contributed by others. As we read in the Bible of how God worked in the lives of people, it opens our minds to possibilities of how God may want to work in our lives. (It doesn’t mean that God will work in our lives in the same way He has worked in the lives of others, since God treats us all individually according to our specific situations.)
What a treasure we have in our Bibles, with all the resources in it to help us live in the relationship our loving God wants to have with us.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, thank you for revealing yourself to us through Your word, and for also revealing how you want us to live in our relationship with you. We want to grow in the security of our relationship with you so that we joyfully follow where you want to take us. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping.
So is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
TO PONDER
In the creation account in Genesis 1, God speaks all of creation into existence. The power associated with God’s voice and the words that come out of His mouth have the power to bring about a universe so large our human minds struggle to grasp its extent and majesty. And at the other extreme, the word of God created life in all its intricate complexity. In the book of Daniel, we meet a God who can protect three men thrown into a blazing inferno and then come out without any sign or smell of where they have been. We are not talking about a weak, impotent god here.
For most of human history, humans have acknowledged the existence of higher powers who we usually refer to as their gods. So, for the true God to distinguish Himself from the gods made in human likeness, the true God would demonstrate His unique power by impressive displays of that power – think of the plagues in Egypt for example.
Today, in the western world, human beings, and the knowledge they have acquired, have taken the place of God in many people’s lives. Humans can solve all the problems in this world and we don’t need the crutch of a God to solve our problems for us. You may have various views on how well we are doing with that.
So, the way God demonstrates His superiority over today’s man-made gods, especially in our western society, is to use broken, humble people to achieve His purposes. He takes people like us with our insecurities, hurts, fears and failures and changes and heals us by the power of that same very powerful word of His, and then takes our hand to lead us in doing some generally very ordinary things with Him, but achieving powerful results in the lives of others.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, please take away my fear of allowing you free range in my life, to let you release your awesome power in me to change me so you can use me to share the joy of knowing you with those who don’t yet know you. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping
For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
TO PONDER
Not only do our pastors and religious teachers encourage us to actively engage with the words written in our Bibles, the Bible itself encourages us to delve into its contents. The psalm our devotion was based on last Sunday has the psalmist waxing lyrical (through all 176 verses) on the benefits and blessings of being immersed in God’s word to us.
Today, I would just like to pick up on the part of our text for today where God’s word to us “divides soul and spirit”. Although our souls and spirits are not distinct entities within us, our soul generally refers to that part of us which expresses thoughts, reasoning and emotions, while our spirits are that part of us which connects us to Holy Spirit.
The things we read and hear, the input of information into our beings, has an impact on our souls – our emotions and our thought patterns. These can easily direct us to be thinking about ourselves and what we “need” to do to improve the quality and enjoyment of our lives. When we engage with God’s word to us, we get a different focus. Just as Jesus lived His life trusting His Father to care for Him while He lived selflessly for the healing of humanity, we are instructed by God’s word to let go of all of our securities and let Him become our security, and then we can let ourselves live the lives God wants us to live.
In a sense, the sword of the word of God cuts through the link between our souls and spirits – this link that allows the negativeness in our souls (from God’s point of view) to drag our spirits away from our union with Holy Spirit. Of course, this wonderful sword does not cut the link which goes in the other direction, allowing the healing of Holy Spirit to refresh and redirect our souls in living the vibrant life God wants us to have.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, thank you again for your word and the way it draws us closer to You and the enjoyment of the life you have planned for us. Please help us not to forget to consistently immerse ourselves in your word so that we are drawn closer into our relationship with you. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping
You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
TO PONDER
I detect some level of frustration in Jesus’s words to the religious leaders in our verses for today. Chapter 5 of the gospel of John begins with Jesus performing a healing on the Sabbath, the Jewish Holy Day. This initiates a long discussion with the Jewish religious leaders about who Jesus is and his authority to do the things He does, like not keeping all the religious rules. And this discussion takes up the rest of the chapter in John’s gospel.
Understanding the back story may help us understand better what is happening here. During the history of the Israelites from the exodus from Egypt to the time of Jesus, the people had regularly ignored the relationship God had wanted to have with them. And they suffered as a consequence – through the 70-year Babylonian exile and the subsequent Greek and Roman oppression. The religious leaders wanted the people to remain faithful to God so that He would free them from their oppression. But as with all good intentions, their knowledge of the Bible and obeying its rules became an end in itself, leading to their prestige, rather than to a deeper relationship with their God.
So when Jesus turns up, doesn’t grovel before their prestige nor obeys all their rules and regulations, they are so blinded by their distorted version of Judaism that they had developed, that there was no way Jesus could be the promised Messiah.
This raises the question for us: when we do read our bibles, what are we trying to achieve by our reading? If I have to be honest with myself, and with you, some of the reasons I have had for reading my Bible over the years are:
The challenge of reading the whole Bible from beginning to end, tick;
Gaining knowledge so that others can be impressed with my knowledge, tick;
Pastor telling us it is something we should be doing if we call ourselves a Christian, tick;
Searching for Bible passages that support a view I hold so that I can use the passages to refute someone with a different view, tick.
But even when we have the wrong motives, our loving God can still patiently work in our lives and break down our defences. For me, that meant learning that if I approach the Bible as God’s revelation to us, it becomes the means of learning how our Heavenly Family of Father, Son and Holy Spirit wants us to grow in our relationship with them. And it no longer becomes a matter of reading words, but becoming engaged in a conversation with a God right alongside us.
Prayer: Heavenly Family, thank you for revealing to us who you are through your word, as well as through other means. Please helps to always approach your word with the aim of growing to know you personally and your purpose for our lives. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping