gods-greatness

Genesis 5, Ezra 5, Matthew 5

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Read Genesis 5, Ezra 5, and Matthew 5.

This devotional is about Matthew 5:1-12.

Matthew chapters 5-7 record what has been called the Sermon on the Mount. Christ’s sermon begins with “The Beatitudes.” The word “beatitude” is transliterated into English from the Latin word that begins each line. Since the only available translation of the Bible for hundreds of years was the Latin Vulgate, this Latin word for “happiness,” beatitudo, stuck as the title of the first section of Christ’s sermon. The beatitudes are eight statements of Christ about who is really happy; his list is quite surprising.

If we were to commission the Gallop organization to do a nationwide poll of ordinary Americans and ask them who is happy, I don’t think the list we would get would be anywhere close to the one Jesus made here in Matthew 5:3-10. Even if we polled most Bible-believing Christians, my guess is that there would not be one answer in the top 10 that would correspond with anything on Jesus’ list. Each verse in the beatitudes is worth thinking deeply about, but let’s focus on one for today. Verse 6 says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”

We humans long for so many things. We long for love, for security, for prosperity, for peace. We long for youth, or good health, or just a really great mocha. (OK, maybe that last one is just for me and few others of you…).

Sometimes our longing for these things is palpable; we talk about “starving for attention” or “thirsting for more.” But, think about people who have what you’re starving for. Are the wealthy so happy that they never get divorced? Are the famous so satisfied with the attention they receive that they chase the paparazzi, begging to have their pictures taken? If you wish you had your boss’s job and all the perks that come with it, think: Is she deeply satisfied with that station in life, or is she longing and plotting to take her boss’s job?

In contrast to all the things that we think will satisfy us, Jesus said that those who are truly happy are the ones who long to be righteous. They thirst to live a life that is pleasing to God. The hunger within that drives them is a hunger to think like God does, to act like God does, and to radiate the greatness of God in their words and actions. Instead of wanting to “Be like Mike” (as the old Gatorade commercial put it), they want to like Christ. THESE are the people Jesus said would be satisfied; he promised at the end of verse 6: “they will be filled.”

When we talk about being righteous people, we have to remember two things. First, our own righteousness is detestable to God because it is, at best, imperfect and incomplete. In reality, it is tainted through and through with our sinful attitudes and our other sinful acts. The only way we can ever be accurately described as “righteous” is if God gives us credit for being righteous even when we’re not. And, that is what he has done in Christ! When we trust God’s promise of life in Jesus, God treats us as if we lived the perfect life Jesus lived; he also forgives us for our sins through the payment Christ made for us on the cross.

Once we’ve been credited with righteousness by God, God goes to work on our longings. Over time and through the gifts of the scripture, the church, and the trials of life, God uproots our longings for sinful things and replaces them with a desire to BE righteous in reality. As we grow in Christ, we long to be more like him. The payoff for this, though, comes in the future. Jesus said, “they WILL be filled” not “they are filled.” In other words, the experience of happiness will be fully delivered when we see Christ and are transformed perfectly and finally into his likeness. Until then, we have the peace and joy of the Spirit as our downpayment, giving us a delicious taste of what it will like to feel full of righteousness when we are with Jesus.

Genesis 1, Ezra 1, Matthew 1

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Welcome to my DailyPBJ devotions for this year! If you do all the Bible readings in this program, you will read through the Bible this year.

Read Genesis 1, Ezra 1, and Matthew 1.

This devotional is about Genesis 1.

What is the greatest feat of human engineering ever accomplished? Could it be the Apollo missions to the moon or the pyramids in Egypt or the creation of the Internet or the Palm Islands in Dubai?

An Internet search will yield many interesting suggestions; people have designed and built some incredible things. All those things, however, required years of thinking, planning, and building not to mention large amounts of money.

By contrast, God spoke and things were formed instantaneously. That’s the message of Genesis 1. Our massive universe with innumerable planets, including earth, were brought into existence from nothing. God willed and spoke and there they were.

This is even more impressive when we consider that God is pure spirit. He created not only the physical objects in an instant but also the very concepts of matter and energy that comprise them. Imagine writing a story with shapes and rules and beings and language that do not already exist. Before you could create the setting and the characters in the story, you’d have to make up the shapes and rules for how matter and energy behave and so on. That would take time and mental effort to develop before you could even begin writing the story. But God did all this and made it a reality with merely a series of commands. The more deeply I think about this, the more it causes me to stand in awe of God and has greatness.

But let’s come back to all that people have created and accomplished. Fish don’t build homes, much less rockets. Bears wouldn’t know what to do with a computer if they had one; they certainly could never build one. When verse 26 says, “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule…,'” we understand that humans create things is because we were made in the image of God our creator.

Everything that exists started with an idea but ideas themselves are worthless until someone takes action to make them into reality. When we decide to act on an idea, to put thought and energy and effort into making an idea into reality, then we are following in the image of God our creator.

A new year is upon us. What ideas do you have in your mind that would be amazing if they were reality? Did you have the same idea last year? Did you do act at all to move toward making those ideas into reality? One year from now, what could be true about your life that is now only an idea? What steps do you need to take to move closer to that reality?

God gave you and me and every other human being the power to create. We can’t speak things into existence or make something out of nothing but we can take the ideas we have and the raw materials God deposited into this magnificent earth and follow the example of our creator.

Be a good steward this year of the mind and resources God gave you. Take those ideas in your head and act on them, moving them closer to reality. By doing this you will be obeying the command God gave to us through Adam in verse 28b: “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it….”