God’s-will

Exodus 15, Job 33, James 4

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Read Exodus 15, Job 33, James 4.

This devotional is about James 4.

Conflict is part of human life. It may manifest as sibling rivalry, office politics, negative political campaigns, first degree murder, or in some other way, but within humanity, someone is always struggling against someone else.

James 4:1-2b tells us that all conflict comes from “your desires that battle within you.” It is the impulses of our sinful nature—envy, jealousy, lust, hatred, and others—that create every disagreement, every conflict, every war. Verse 2c reminds us as believers that God is the source of everything and that, instead of striving with others to get what we want, we should bring our desires before the Lord through prayer.

It is our prayer-less striving that keeps us from finding satisfaction in this life because God prevents the accomplishment of our goals when we pursue them as Christians without asking him to provide them to us.

But, verse 3 reminds us that asking God for something in prayer is not like buying from a vending machine, as if prayer goes up then goodies come out. No, sometimes we ask God for things and don’t get them because we “ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures” (v. 3b).

Our biggest problem is not in our strategy—ask for what you want instead of fighting for it. No, our problem is that we want the wrong things. We want things for our own satisfaction instead of giving glory to God through our spiritual growth or the advancement of God’s kingdom in evangelism.

James accuses us of spiritual adultery in verse 4. We made a commitment to God but we’re friending and flirting with all the same desires and goals that unbelievers have. Like a jealous husband, our partner in adultery, the world, is the object of God’s anger; if we choose to have an affair with this world, we put ourselves on the wrong side of God’s wrath (v. 4b).

Except for one thing: God knows how intensely we struggle with affection for success, recognition, materialism, and pleasure. Instead of sending us away in divorce, he placed his Holy Spirit in us to give us a competing desire to love and serve him (v. 5).

But this calls for humility; when we’re frustrated for not getting the thing(s) we want in life, we need to honestly assess whether our desire for those things comes from a desire to serve and glorify God or from our own selfishness. If we turn to God in those moments of struggle, he gives us the power to resist sin and draw closer to him in holiness (vv. 7-10).

What is going on in your life that is causing you frustration? Is it something in your personal life, your family, or friendships? Is it a professional or financial setback or just stagnation in your job? If you find yourself arguing and fighting with others day after day, it is time to assess whether you’re cheating God. Instead, allow him to lead you where he wants and provide you with what he wants you to have. “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up” (4:10).

Genesis 37, Job 3, Matthew 25

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Read Genesis 37, Job 3, and Matthew 25.

Today’s devotional is about Genesis 37.

We know that Joseph becomes the hero that saves Israel–the man and the nation–from starvation.

But, that’s still in the future. Here we see Joseph as a teenager (v. 2b) and he doesn’t look very heroic at all. Although he had many sons, Jacob (aka Israel) showed favoritism to Joseph. We see that stated directly in verse 3 which says, “Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons….” The benefits Joseph received as the favorite son were:

  • The ability to tattle on his half-brothers (v. 2). This suggests that Joseph had some kind of supervisory role over the other sons of Israel. See also verse 14.
  • The “ornate robe” Israel made for Joseph (v.3).

But there was a price for this favoritism, too. Joseph may have had a great relationship with his dad, but, because of his father’s love, his brothers “hated him and could not speak a kind word to him.”

There is no favoritism with God, but that does not mean that God’s blessings are equally distributed. Joseph’s dreams (vv. 5-11) were revelations from God that would later be fulfilled. They caused Joseph further relationship problems (v. 8, vv. 10-11) but they prepared him for what would happen to him later in his life.

Before Joseph received the honors God had prophesied for him in his dreams, he was mistreated and nearly killed by his brothers (vv. 17-36). They mocked him (v. 19), robbed him of his robe (v. 23), imprisoned him in a well (v. 24), then sold him into slavery (v. 28).

Instead of feeling God’s love, Jacob may have felt abandoned by God. The honors God promised him in his dreams must have now seemed impossible. Joseph had no family, no love in his life anymore. He now had nothing to look forward to but a lifetime of slavery.

But God never fails to keep his promises and his plans for Joseph were not done. The trials he was now enduring were putting him into place and preparing him for what God was going to do with Joseph later.

Are you discouraged about your life? Do you feel abandoned and unloved–by God or by other people? Let this passage encourage you. Suffering and trials are part of God’s will for us. They teach us to depend on the Lord, not on the favor of men. They also put us in places and situations where we can serve God. So, whatever you’re suffering today, ask God for the grace to endure it faithfully and trust him and his plan to rescue and use you in his will someday in the future.

Genesis 30, Esther 6, Matthew 21

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Read Genesis 30, Esther 6, and Matthew 21.

This devotional is about Genesis 30. 

How do you get what you want? How do you achieve our goals if they depend on factors you can’t control?

That’s what Jacob and Rachel struggled with in this chapter of scripture. Rachel, to begin with, really wanted a baby (v. 1). Infertility can happen to a couple because of physical issues with the husband or the wife. In this case, though, we know the problem wasn’t with Jacob’s body because he was making plenty of children with his other wife, Leah.

Unable to conceive herself, Rachel begged her husband for help (v. 1). But Jacob wasn’t a gynecologist and, at that time, there were no medically-valid infertility treatments anyway, so he was frustrated in verse 2 that Rachel turned to him. Rachel came up with another idea which was to use her slave as a surrogate mother (v. 3). That plan worked (vv. 4-6), but sparked a baby war between Rachel and Leah (vv. 9-21).

Later in the chapter, Jacob was ready to leave town because he was not prospering financially by working for Laban. We see that in verse 30b where he said, “when may I do something for my own household?” Jacob and Laban brokered a deal that would compensate Jacob better for his work (vv. 31-36). But, rather than merely trusting God to bless his work, Jacob came with a superstitious way to try to tilt the odds of prosperity in his favor (vv. 37-42).

Ultimately, God did give Rachel what she really wanted–not a step-child but a son of her own (vv. 22-23, and another son later who is foreshadowed in verse 24). Note that, in verse 22, “God remembered Rachel; he listened to her….” In other words, it was prayer, not manipulative human schemes, that got Rachel what she wanted.

The book of James, chapter 4:2 says, “…You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God.” The human way to reach an impossible goal is to use devious, superstitious, manipulative, or other sinful means. 

The way of faith is to pray. Trust God, accept his yes or no answer, but ask him earnestly, repeatedly, sincerely for what you need or desire. Is there any desire or goal you have that you’re trying to use sinful human ways to achieve? Trust God and pray for it instead. 

Genesis 4, Ezra 4, Matthew 4

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Read Genesis 4, Ezra 4, and Matthew 4. This devotional is about Matthew 4, especially verses 1-11.

Having been identified by God as His Son in Matthew 3:17, Jesus was sent by the Holy Spirit into the desert. The purpose of this trip was, according to verse 1, “to be tempted by the devil.”

Apparently the devil was patient and waited until Jesus was physically depleted from having fasted for 40 days & nights (v. 2). Because Christ did not have a sin nature to appeal to, Satan waited until Jesus was starving, then tempted him to use his power as God to create food for himself from the abundant stones that lay around them (v. 3).

It is not immediately obvious that what Satan was tempting Christ to do was sinful. Didn’t Christ create all things? Aren’t all things created by him and for him (Col 1:16)?

Yes! So, would it be wicked for the son of God to sustain his human life by adapting what he created to serve him in his moment of physical need?

The answer is that it would not be a sin for Christ to change the stones into bread. He did miracles like this to feed others without being guilty of sin. No, it was not sinful for Christ to use his divine power to meet human needs.

But it would have been sinful for him to do for himself what other humans could not do for themselves. People die of starvation routinely somewhere in the world. It is part of the human condition. But, because it is part of the human condition, Christ, who was fully human, had to be subject to that aspect of the human condition, too.

In other words, it would be inappropriate and selfish for him to satisfy his human desires just because he had the divine power to do so. Because human salvation was dependent on Jesus living a fully human life, it would be wrong for him to make living as a human easier on himself by using his divine power to cheat.

Although you and I don’t have the power to satisfy our desires supernaturally, we do understand the temptation to live outside of the Father’s will. Many sins stem from a desire to exempt ourselves from the struggles of the human condition:

  • Those who steal are looking for an exemption from the command to work for a living.
  • Those who commit adultery are looking for an exemption from the marriage covenant they made before God.
  • Those who lie are looking to evade accountability about something or to make themselves look better than they really are.
In what ways are you tempted to sin and justify it by the extraordinary circumstances you are in? Remember that Christ has felt the pull of that temptation, too, so look to him and ask him for grace to do what you know is right. Then, do what is right because you trust God’s word more than your human desires (v. 4).

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….”

Judges 20, Ezekiel 9, Acts 2

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Read Judges 20, Ezekiel 9, and Acts 2 today.

This devotional is about Judges 20.

At the end of yesterday’s reading in Judges 19, each tribe in Israel received a piece of the dead body of a woman. Someone got her severed head, another received her right hand, and so on. Gross.

The people were naturally aghast at such a ghastly thing, so in today’s reading from Judges 20, they responded. Nothing unifies a nation like a dismembered body, I guess, so in verse 1 we read that “all Israel… came together as one… in Mizpah.”

One phrase that I omitted from that quotation was “before the Lord,” which describes a seriousness about the situation and a rare understanding from Israel’s leaders that their decisions were just a spiritually important as they were civilly important. The first part of chapter 20 described an investigation. The people of Israel asked the man with the complaint, the woman’s “husband” to describe his grievance (v. 3). The tribe of Benjamin were aware of the ongoing trial, probably because they, too, had received one of the woman’s body parts. After listening to the man’s description of events in verses 4-6 and hearing the man call for a decision (v. 7), the leaders decide to prepare for a civil war against the entire tribe of Benjamin (vv. 8-11). While they prepared, they also sent messengers “throughout the tribe of Benjamin” (v. 12), asking the tribe of Benjamin to do justice and hand over the culprits who sinned against the Levite and his concubine.

There are perplexing aspects to this story. The most difficult one for me is why the Israelites suffered two defeats to the Benjaminites. The defeats happened despite the fact that Israel’s cause was just and they had submitted to the Lord’s will the decision to attack in both cases (vv. 17-18, 23). Maybe the Lord wanted to humble the Israelites and increase their sense of dependence on him (see vv. 26-28). I wish the Lord had given us more insight on this.

What I do know is that Benjamin paid a heavy price for refusing to deal justly with the men who brutally treated one of their sister Israelites. If they had handled the Levite’s case justly, this loss of life could have been completely avoided. If they had simply handed over, when confronted by Israel, the perpetrators (v. 12), they could have avoided this civil war. Their stubbornness, their loyalty to blood over the just application of God’s law, caused much greater turmoil for the whole nation than was necessary.

And then I think about how easy it is for us for us to excuse or defend our own sin or the sins of those we like and how hard it is for us to do the right thing when we are confronted and given the opportunity to turn and do the right thing. Although the consequences, thankfully, of our sins are not this sweeping and brutal, a passage like this reminds us how damaging sin and defensiveness about it, can be. If we think about this in terms of our own lives, hopefully we can be wise by learning from this brutal story.

Ephesians 1:15-16

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Ephesians 1:15-16

Thanksgiving is an important American holiday. It is also an important Christian virtue and practice. But all Christians should be thankful for something important that few Christians actually ever give thanks for. What is that important something? Find out in this message from Ephesians 1:15-16.

This is a message from chapter 1 of the New Testament book of Ephesians by Pastor Brian Jones.

This message was delivered on Sunday, November 15, 2009 at Calvary Bible Church in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Watch on other platforms:

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Calvary Bible Church
Vimeo

Ephesians 1:11-14

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Ephesians 1:11-14

The Bible teaches that God has a plan but what evidence is there that God’s plan is actually working? How do we know that God is doing something in this world? Find out in this message by Pastor Brian Jones on Ephesians 1:11-14.

This message is from chapter 1 of the New Testament book of Ephesians by Pastor Brian Jones.

This message was delivered on Sunday, November 8, 2009 at Calvary Bible Church in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Watch on other platforms:

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Calvary Bible Church
Vimeo

Ruth 2

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Ruth 2: U-Turns

From the series, “U-Turns.” This message teaches us that God will direct you and provide for you when you trust Him through the U-Turns of life.

This is a message from chapter 2 of the Old Testament book of Ruth. It is part of a series called U-Turns by Pastor Brian Jones. This message was delivered on Sunday, July 19, 2009 at Calvary Bible Church in Ypsilanti, MI.

Watch on other platforms:

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Calvary Bible Church

Ruth 1

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Ruth 1: U-Turns

Sometimes our lives reverse course, forcing us to make a U-Turn. In those moments, we should trust God’s plan. 

This is a message from chapter 1 of the Old Testament book of Ruth. It was the first message in a series called U-Turns by Pastor Brian Jones. 

This message was delivered on July 7, 2009 at Calvary Bible Church in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Watch on other platforms:

Rumble
YouTube
Vimeo
Calvary Bible Church