Category: Daily Devotionals

The pithy statement, “Do not judge,” has become a mantra in a world both unwilling to own up to fault, and unable to discern the simplest matters. “The call not to judge has made its way deeply into popular imagination: ‘Who am I to judge?’ Unfortunately the applications people often make … probably have little to do with the intention of either Jesus or the Gospel writers. In a postmodern context there can be a siren call to a radical pluralism.”  

Jesus’ command, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged,” is anything but a call to radical pluralism. He is not suggesting we set aside discernment. In fact, in the context of that statement in Matthew 7:1, Jesus has just spent a great deal of time explaining to His followers how to better discern the intention of the Law! It should be clear that Jesus is not dismissing the need for a judiciary, either. The judge of all the earth would never say no one should be held accountable. So, it is not the practice of choosing between right and wrong or between better and best that Jesus is setting aside in this command. He is instead commanding us not to pass sentence. The Greek word Jesus uses here – in fact, “the whole word group…is used overwhelmingly for the eschatological judgment of God.” It is not discernment, but the practice of condemnation of another that Jesus speaks against. 

God created the world in just 6 days. He did that by speaking it into existence. And He created us in His image and afforded us power and authority over the rest of physical creation. Consequently, our words also have power. Obviously not the power of creation or authority over time and space as God’s words do, for He is God and we are most definitely not. But our words still carry a certain weight, and we recognize that every time someone says “I give you my word.” Yet if that is true for all people, then for God’s people’s all the more; for we are alive spiritually as well as physically. Moreover, Christ gave us His authority to expand His Kingdom. Therefore, when we glibly pass sentence of our own accord (that is, without Scriptural support for saying so), by saying, “You’ll never amount to much,” or “You are a loser,” or “You fate is certainly to burn in hell,” we are effectively condemning a person God made in His image for His glory. Someone for whom Jesus suffered on the cross.

Such talk has no place coming from the mouth of a child of God. Jesus already warned us against this in Matthew 5:22, “anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.” God takes His Word seriously, and we should take our words seriously too.

All the more so considering the context that Jesus gives us His command not to judge. 

Remember that Jesus had just said, “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness.” The disciple of Christ must know we will never find or bring about His Kingdom by speaking what is effectively a curse over that which God has made for His glory and one He may yet redeem. Rather, our role in regard to others made in His image is to do all we can to plant and grow God’s Kingdom within them – not the polar opposite. To this point James later said, “From the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be this way.”

The disciple of God must never curse others. It is given to us to judge past behaviour that cannot be changed, but it is not given to us to pass sentence on that which might yet be completely altered by the grace of God. Amen.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.

the Apostle Paul (from Romans 12:14)

APPLICATION: Intentionality

Look for opportunities today to lift people up by your words, to speak God’s peace and grace upon them and to in all ways honor Christ before them. 

Jesus is preaching His Sermon on the Mount, addressed to both His  disciples and the  crowd gathered there. As such, and in consideration of their relatively simple lives, He often speaks using metaphors and analogy. Such tools allow that deep truths and complex ideas can be articulated succinctly without the need for prior education, big words or a lengthy introduction. Now teaching about the use of money, He once again expresses a most profound truth using simple imagery, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” 

We know that the eye is simply a lens and gatherer of light, but the people of His day believed that the eye was an actual source of light. So His metaphor has a more solid landing in their thinking then ours, even though what He said more accurately lines up with modern science – light does enter the eye and ‘illumine’ the body (if we take the body as the mind). But the imagery Jesus uses actually transcends a modern human understanding of physics. He uses a metaphor for a metaphor to explain something that would otherwise take many days to explain, and the result is that we can innately grasp what He is saying, “As the lamp is an image for the eye, so the eye in turn is an image for the human capacity to absorb from what is available externally.” 

In other words, what Jesus is teaching is only grasp-able by those who can think straight – those who “have light coming into their bodies,” so to speak. Others, who have “bad eyes” – and so cannot grasp Jesus’ profound truth – are left completely in the dark as to what He is saying and completely unable to apply that truth in any capacity whatsoever. One must therefore understand that Jesus is not just hinting at something. He is raising the stakes on the value of what He is teaching. In fact, He is raising a huge red flag over it. He is telling us that we will completely miss the point if we are not very careful, and our lostness on that point will be severe. 

Certainly that can apply to the entire Sermon. But if so, how much more so His teaching on money? For immediately prior to talking about lamps, eyes and light, Jesus was saying, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Immediately after talking about lamps, eyes and light, Jesus says, “You cannot serve both God and Money.” The metaphor within a metaphor He uses cannot therefore be understood merely as a tool to communicate an erudite thought. It is a flag. It is a flare. A spotlight even, to tell us that our love of money will cloud our thinking and greatly diminish our spiritual insight. 

That is because while we sit and listen to Jesus preaching, our minds are illuminated and clear. But if we do not park our thoughts on what He has just told us, the moment we turn back to normal daily life the pressures and concerns of that daily life will completely overshadow what He just taught. Therefore let us be wise. Let us be of sound mind. Let us think clearly. And let us remember that the economy of God is not built on fiat currency, or on stocks and bonds, or on derivatives and debt, or on real estate or on private equity, or on silver and gold. It is built on gift and sacrifice for His glory.

And that idea we can take to the bank. Amen.

The undivided eye is singularly focused on eternal things; storing up treasures in heaven. The person with a good eye serves only God, not money. Since they are undivided in their commitment to God, they are also generous with their money in responding to the needs of the kingdom.

Alan P. Stanley

APPLICATION: Intentionality

What will you do today to ensure your eyes are good?

The phrase “Skin in the game” is a term coined by renowned investor and   billionaire Warren Buffet. It refers to the idea of management demonstrating confidence in the company they are running by using their own money to buy and hold its stock. The thinking is that corporations are better managed by those who share ownership. After all, it is common sense to protect and bless that which you own and value. Jesus knew that. In fact, He articulated that principle thousands of years before Warren Buffet put it into the modern business vocabulary. In the middle of His Sermon on the Mount He makes the profound observation, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” 

Jesus is imparting to us a simple equation: Value multiplied by ownership equals the level of heart engagement. 

It is a simple equation with complicated outcomes, because heart engagement forms the worldview of the individual. Our worldview is the basis upon which we make every one of our decisions. If your worldview is that X is most valuable (and that all should therefore be done to protect X), but reality is that X is not actually that valuable, you will innately make wrong decisions. This is what Jesus is warning us about. Placing too much emphasis on the temporary is eternally damaging. As Rev. Don Oslen used to preach, “Never sacrifice the eternal on the altar of the temporary!” 

The great commentator Matthew Henry once wrote, “We are therefore concerned to be right and wise in the choice of our treasure, because the temper of our minds, and consequently the tenor of our lives, will be accordingly either carnal or spiritual, earthly or heavenly. The heart follows the treasure, as the needle follows the loadstone, or the sunflower the sun.” Another commentator writes, “What really makes a treasure valuable is the affection of the heart. He whose treasures are on earth has his heart anchored to the earth; he whose treasures are in heaven has his heart anchored there. The earth and all its treasures must pass away; what, then, about the heart that loses all its treasures? Heaven alone abides forever; the heart whose treasures are there will never lose them.”

This is truth: The economy of God is not built on gold or silver. In God’s kingdom, gold will be used as a paving material, and silver will be as common as stones. Rather, the economy of God is built on gift and sacrifice. To have ‘skin in the game’ in heaven is to engage in gift and sacrifice now, so as to place treasure in heaven. There it will be kept for us – uncorrupted and free of danger of theft. And at the same time, here and now we will be both freer and less encumbered and at the same time, others will be encouraged and given hope. Amen.

Our decision about which bank we store our wealth in is a spiritual phenomenon! It is a piece of spiritual litmus paper, or to use another image, a spiritual thermometer. It tests the reality of our faith and indicates our spiritual health.

 Francis A. Schaeffer

APPLICATION: Intentionality

Look most carefully. Where is your heart?

People accumulate wealth for all manner of reasons. Having a thick bank   account and much financially invested gives one a sense of security. It allows a level of freedom from the tyranny of chronic financial urgency. It permits a certain level of freedom from slavery to the clock. You become free to do as you wish and go where you wish. But it also has a darker side. It grants opportunity to be seen as somehow more important than the rest of humanity, appealing to a sinful sense of pride. It affords that you gain at least temporary control of resources that the desperate among us truly need, which appeals to a wicked sense of power. Having much can put you in a position of needing great discernment at the very time your sense of discernment is impaired by the natural human inclination toward greed. Yet even if we do have and exercise discernment with wealth, there is still the constant corrosion of daily life expenses and the ever present need to guard against outright theft. 

When we want to keep a treasure safe from loss here in our fallen world, we put in a steel box called a “safe”. To give extra protection (and ensure the safe itself is not stolen) we put our treasure in a safe inside a vault in a bank. That’s called a “safety deposit box”. Although there have been thefts from safety deposit boxes, generally they are regarded as the safest place we can put something. Of course, such a privilege does have a cost. Safety deposit boxes are not free! The corrosion of annual cost slowly grinds down the treasure within.

Although there is no way to hoard God’s blessing without negative consequence on earth, there is a way to store up blessing in a godly way. Jesus explains, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.” Jesus is telling us there is a place where blessing can be stored with only positive outcomes! Where it is not corroded by expenses and taxes and subject to imminent theft. It is a place where we can store up good things without fear of loss. Luke wrote a more detailed account of Jesus teaching on this subject. “Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.”

Jesus equates giving to the poor to storing up treasure in heaven. Exactly how that works is not given to us, but it is obvious that God sees all that we do for those He made in His image, and we know that He is no man’s debtor. Moreover, 1Peter 1:4 tells us that God keeps something else aside for us in heaven, “an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you.” To give to the poor is to add to that inheritance. 

Safety deposit boxes are not unlimited in size, nor do they come with a treasure already inside them. Yet our heavenly safety deposit box has all those benefits and more. The student of Scripture can be confident that it is folly to store up treasure on earth, but it is most wise to store up treasure in heaven!

A man who is perfect before the Lord lays out his substance for God’s cause, depend on that. He does not merely attend conferences, and talk of good things, of spirituality of mind, and sanctification by faith, and all those glittering subjects; but he lives for Jesus in some practical work, and gives himself up, and his substance too, for the honour of the Redeemer’s name and the diffusion of the glorious gospel.

Charles Spurgeon

APPLICATION: Intentionality

What have you stored up in heaven? How are you adding to your eternal inheritance?

The Lord once sent the prophet Nathan to King David, telling him a story about a rich   man who had much, and a poor man who little; “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. […] Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.” David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die!”  

Nathan’s point was to show David the error of his way. It is a grave injustice for the rich to take what they need from the poor so they can keep what they have for themselves.  David’s visceral response is common to all who innately understand the idea of fairness. Yet all who know the full story of 2Sam 12 know just how ironic David’s response was, and how what he said to Nathan would immediately come back to bite him. For the Bible reader has already been informed by the prior chapter, “The thing David had done displeased the Lord.” That was probably an understatement. David’s sin was not unlike sticking his finger in God’s eye, and yet ironically it was only David who was blind to his personal folly. 

What then of us? Surely God Himself has at least as strong a reaction to injustice as David did. Certainly God knows that all around us are the very poor. What does God know about us that we don’t recognize, or that we won’t recognize? Are we just as blind to what we are doing as David was to what he had done?

In Deuteronomy 15, the Lord warned us that hard-heartedness toward the needy is not mere folly. It is sin. “Be careful not to harbor this wicked thought: “The seventh year, the year for canceling debts, is near,” so that you do not show ill will toward your needy brother and give him nothing. He may then appeal to the Lord against you, and you will be found guilty of sin. Give generously to him and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land.” 

God expects us to care for the less fortunate. He expects us to care enough to do something about their lack. It is not an understatement to say that the reason He gives wealth to us to start with is that we might share it with the less fortunate so that we might exercise His character of compassion, generosity and mercy. That we might see others through His eyes. That they might know that God (through those made in His image) has not forgotten them. That both they and us would build relationships that honor Him. But none of that happens if we just put the wealth and gifts God gives us on a shelf.  To that point Jesus said, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.” 

God doesn’t just see what we do with our wealth – He also knows what will happen to it as a result of our choices. Therefore, to accumulate treasure just for the sake of storing it up is not unwitting misuse or simple ignorance. It is taking the blessing God gave you (not just for yourself, but that you might honour His Name by blessing others), and feeding it to moths and giving it to thieves. That is not just simple foolishness. It is a great affront to the One who gave that treasure to you, for you are deliberately setting aside His purposes for your own. What then will be your reward? Surely there will be none. Only wrath. 

The end of each life and the final judgment show that the person and the possessions are not durable. Trusting in wealth because it supposedly “retains its value” is trusting in a charade.

Kurt A. Richardson

APPLICATION: Thankfulness

Thank God for His grace to you, that you might both receive and give to Him, and that you might both receive and give to others.

In our day, much has been made of the 1%. Every society looks on with   longing and no small amount of distrust at those who annually take more in than 99% of the rest of the nation. That distrust is driven largely by jealousy. The 1% take exotic vacations the rest can only dream of. They own large homes, wonderful properties and luxurious cars the rest of society wants but cannot afford. But the 1% has its own problem; The 0.1%. The 0.1% are those who fly to and fro in private helicopters, who control enormous companies and who have wildly out of proportion influence in political decisions. The 1% look at the 0.1% the same way the 99% look at the 1%. We might conclude that such is only just desserts. Yet, if we speak globally instead of nationally, most westerners are already in the top 1% income bracket, because half the world lives on less than 3$/day. So, the problem is not where you are on the wealth scale, but how you think about money that gives you peace about it or not, and it is how you use your money that causes the rest of society to trust you with it or not. 

Jesus has been teaching about hypocrisy. He has taught us about the hypocrisy of giving to impress others, of praying to impress others, of fasting to impress others. “Hypocrisy deceives others, yet it deceives the person guilty of it most of all. From the deception of others Jesus now turns to the deception of self; and the example he uses is the seeking of perishable treasures instead of the imperishable.” To this point Jesus says, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.”  

The issue at hand is not so much that you have stored up a sum of money. The wise save for future needs. The wisest man who ever lived encouraged us to be likewise diligent, saying, “Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest.” Gathering in the harvest so you won’t starve when no harvest is to be had is expected, necessary and wise, so do not think that Jesus is speaking against common sense. Rather, He is speaking against treasuring treasure for treasure’s sake. 

Treasure is meant to be used for blessing, not for hoarding. When it is used to bless it is helpful. But when it is hoarded it is not helpful, for it no longer is traded for goods and services you need or even goods and services you want. It therefore does nothing for you or for those you love. It does not even provide employment for others. Especially not when it is hoarded beyond all need, and most especially not when it is hoarded to the great grief of others who have much need and have no means at all. 

Besides which, even the most common of folks can recognize that earthly treasure does not last. Over time corrosion and natural forces degrade property, and the stored coin and jewels they cannot degrade the thief can steal. Being fixated on treasure can therefore never produce enjoyment of life. In fact it only ensures paranoia. The questions become not what to do with it, but, “What if you loose some of it?” and “What if you loose all of it?” We find that what was once sought for enjoyment becomes the very thing that throttles our enjoyment. Yet that too is not a newly found fact. people throughout time have found that amassing wealth on earth did nothing for their happiness, peace or true enjoyment of life. It only give more options on how to use your time. As the pagan philosopher Plutarch wisely said, “The right use of wealth is a fairer trait than excellence in arms; but not to need wealth is loftier than to use it.”

The modern reader of Scripture knows this. We are not blessed so we can accumulate to our own hurt. But what we know that Plutarch never realized is that we are blessed that we might be a blessing! Amen.

It is our duty to make the best use of every part of our possession that is possible in our circumstances. If there was any way within our reach in which our money might have produced more good and more honor to God when we spent it in something innocent, but less beneficial to his service, we have come short of our duty. We have sinned.

Robert Dabney

APPLICATION: Intentionality

How are you honouring God with some of your wealth? How are you honouring God with the rest of it?

Jesus has instructed His followers about giving, prayer and fasting. These three  spiritual  disciplines have some common elements, which Jesus has highlighted in His teaching: 

About giving, He said, “But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” Commentator John Nolland wrote, “The point about the left hand not knowing could be that such a tight circle of privacy would eliminate the possibility of building up one’s own image even in one’s own eyes (in the imagery left and right hands, in practical activity, are very close together—much closer to each other than to the head or eyes). The alternative is that such a restriction of knowledge would certainly eliminate any possibility of public acclaim.”

About prayer, He said, “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” Warren Wiersbe said of that, “The first step toward overcoming hypocrisy is to be honest with God in our secret life. We must never pray anything that we do not mean from the heart; otherwise, our prayers are simply empty words. Our motive must be to please God alone, no matter what men may say or do. We must cultivate the heart in the secret place. It has well been said, “The most important part of a Christian’s life is the part that only God sees.”

About fasting, He said, “But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” LeRoy Lawson wrote, “To exercise the discipline properly requires neither sackcloth and ashes nor hunger pains and dry tongue. Rather, a conscious and conscientious denial of self for the sake of another is what constitutes fasting. It is identifying with the miserable, the hungry, the thirsty, and the naked.”

This common theme tells us that Jesus wanted His followers to practice their spiritual disciplines without drawing attention to themselves. In fact, He expected them to take steps to ensure that what they do does not become public. Their motive must be pure. All of the focus driving their activity is to be on one’s own relationship with God, and not any of it is to be on self-glorification. Only God has the right to glorify Himself, for only God is God. His people must therefore be about glorifying Him, not themselves. As God is unseen (yet sees all), it serves best that the believer who wants to commune with Him act as He does: That we bless Him in giving while unseen. That we speak to Him in confidence while unseen. And that we beseech Him for His best for others, likewise unseen.

If we be sincere in our solemn fasts, and humble, and trust God’s omniscience for our witness, and his goodness for our reward, we shall find, both that he did see in secret, and will reward openly. Religious fasts, if rightly kept, will shortly be recompensed with an everlasting feast.

Matthew Henry

APPLICATION: Thankfulness

Meditate on Revelation 22:12, “Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done.” Thank God that He sees all you do for Him and His Kingdom.

Fasting usually results in God’s gracious response. But not always. Isaiah 58   relates the Lord’s frustration with Jewish religious leadership. “‘Why have we fasted,’ they say, ‘and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?’ “Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers. Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists. You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high. 

Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for a man to humble himself? Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed and for lying on sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?  Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?” 

The reader of Scripture can perceive that the Jewish leadership had been going through the motions of repentance without actually being repentant. Isaiah’s point to them is clear. Fasting is useless if it is not a heartfelt attempt to humble oneself before God. Merely abstaining from food will never gain God’s approval. Even if it is accompanied by sackcloth and ashes. It is impossible to try to “empty oneself” apart from actual repentance. It just cannot be done in God’s sight. Fasting just for the sake of abstaining from food is its own reward – it gives the body time to cleanse and heal. So do not expect an additional spiritual reward if there is no spiritual effort accompanying it. Rather, the Lord tells us it is better that we be concerned with the physical well being of others than to lay around in sackcloth and ashes. 

The whole point of fasting is to break bonds. Breaking the bond that food has on your own body is just an outward manifestation of the reality of breaking the spiritual bonds holding down others. It is an act of humility, because the one suffers for and on account of the other. Fasting is a weapon of spiritual warfare. It has the power to loose chains, untie cords, to set people free and to break yokes of slavery to ungodliness. But only if and when the practitioner has first emptied themselves in humility (ensuring their voice is clear and loud in God’s ears) and is seeking what God wants (ensuring His voice is clear and loud in their ears), not their own desire. 

What God wants is clear from Scripture. He wants His Kingdom (including the freedom of His people) and His rule (including the destruction of that which is opposed to Him) and His glory (including the praise His people give Him for freeing them and destroying what held them in bondage). What God does not want is attention and glory for the impure. To this point Jesus instructs, “But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”  In saying that, recognize that the Lord is not prescribing hypocrisy. Quite the opposite. Repentance must be a matter of the heart that results in outward action, not outward action alone.

Great prophets such as Amos, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Hosea came to the people to remind them that God demands genuine, godly sorrow that comes from the heart. The bottom line was this: the people were called to rend their hearts, not their garments. When the prophets exhorted the people in this way, they weren’t opposing the practice of the rending of garments, but were saying that it’s not enough to tear your clothes as a sign of repentance; the heart must be torn as well. When we realize that we have offended God, we must feel this rupture of our soul.

R.C. Sproul

APPLICATION: Intentionality

The next time you fast, keep it between you and the Lord.

Throughout the Bible, fasting and prayer seems to have a special place in finding positive  responses  from the Lord. That doesn’t mean we can manipulate God, obviously – He is God after all, and we are not. But unfortunately, that doesn’t stop people from trying to manipulate others around the subject.

Fasting any period of time creates discomfort. If you fast severely (no water and no food) you become dehydrated. That starts to show up in how you look. Fasting longer will result in loosing weight. Eventually it becomes quite noticeable to those in your circles that something is happening to you. If they connect that you are fasting with how you look, it can appear that you are taking your relationship with God most seriously. Sadly, some people are more interested in making sure others notice piety than in actually being pious. That’s nothing new. The Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible notes, “In general, in the OT, fasting was abused. Instead of a sincere act of self-renunciation and submission to God, fasting became externalized as an empty ritual in which a pretense of piety was presented as a public image.”  For this reason Jesus said, “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting.”

In our culture, it is almost laughable that someone would go so far as to disfigure their face to try to demonstrate that they are fasting. Yet Jesus’ admonition has a real application to us too. Deliberately casting a wrong impression so that others think more of you is actually more prevalent in our modern culture, not less. It is actually expected that we present a good image to all around us, and the fashion, hair dye and makeup industries attest to that. It is not uncommon to only post pictures that demonstrate your ‘good side’.  It is not uncommon to exaggerate the time spent at the gym or in study or in work. And one has only to  think of the many examples of influencers on Instagram who have been caught filtering their pictures to deliberately give a very wrong impression. In a world full of cameras, such immature foolishness is bound to be noticed. That is bad, but the foolishness of misleading others by appearing to please God is much worse, and only equaled by God’s ironic response to it. Christ notes, “I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.” In other words; instead of receiving praise from God for having sought Him, the deceiver’s only praise is their own self-satisfaction at having appeared to have done so – something they themselves know is just a foolhardy fabrication. 

Yet it is worse than that. The one who lies about their appearance or their labour is being dishonest to men before God about that which matters for little. But the one who lies about their devotional/prayer life is being dishonest to God before men about that which matters much. 

Those who hypocritically mislead others into thinking they are pious when they are not succeed only in trading a most positive response from God Most High (which is worth much for eternity) for a fake knowing glance by other human beings (which is worth less than nothing for but a moment). It is like trading a bag of pure gold for a single fair token to a rigged game of chance – one that you rigged yourself to ensure all bets loose. That is not just foolish. It is downright stupid.

It is possible to state partial truth in such a way as virtually to lie, and to be silent when silence may be designed to convey a false impression. [But] wise reticence will always be consistent with truthfulness.

Henry D.M.S. Jones

APPLICATION: Intentionality

Are you honest when a brother or sister in Christ asks you about your prayer/devotional life? Are you honest with God about the state of your own soul?

There are certain times that come in most everyone’s life that call for  unusual measures. Days of grief and mourning that are so severe they do more than fill your time with preoccupation, they interrupt your function as a human being. Sleep flees from you. Meals are missed and meals are avoided. Not because you are not hungry and not because you do not need sustenance, but because now is not the time for food. It is a time for uninterrupted, focused and constant prayer. 

David had a time like that in his life. His new wife had recently given birth, but the child had fallen gravely ill. 2Sam 12 records, “David pleaded with God for the child. He fasted and went into his house and spent the nights lying on the ground. The elders of his household stood beside him to get him up from the ground, but he refused, and he would not eat any food with them.”  Of course, if you know the whole story, you know that David was fully responsible for what was happening. He had conceived the child while Bathsheba was married to another man, and then he had ensured that her husband would be killed in battle. 

God had seen what David did and so purposed to humble him severely. To that point He sent Nathan the prophet, who accused David to his face and prophesied that the child would die. Then, “the Lord struck the child that Uriah’s wife had borne to David, and he became ill.”  David, aware of his part in what was now happening, was struck to the core with remorse and sought God’s face for forgiveness through prayer and fasting. 

Nevertheless, it is not a small thing to commit so grievous a sin when you are the leader of many. The child still died as prophesied. Solomon’s blood brother never saw his first birthday. There were other consequences too. David’s family became horribly dysfunctional. There was civil war for years. The sword never left Israel during his tenure as King. Many people died. Yet amazingly and through it all, God forgave David. David didn’t lose the throne or his relationship with God. Instead of becoming a footnote in history or an example of failure, David was enabled to persevere. Ultimately, he became the epitome of Israel’s success. But surely if David had not humbled himself before God at that critical time, the outcome would’ve been quite different. 

Thankfully, David knew there is something about ‘making oneself empty’ that is appropriate to repentance. Not only that, it helps one focus on God our Father – which is always helpful. Fasting is therefore not only a way for us to grieve over sin and brokenness (ours or others), it is a way to enter into God’s grief. Doing so draws His attention in a very positive way.

Grief and hardship are not always the result of our own foolishness. But whether they are inflicted upon us or not, fasting (with prayer) is always an appropriate response. 

Amen.

The Scripture says that “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2Cor 5:21) If the sinless Son of God could ‘take on’ our sin for us, surely we as His followers can ‘take on’ an act of repentance for those around us. Indeed, this is part of our calling. For we have been given a ministry of reconciliation that we might help bring the lost back into relationship with God Most High.

Marcus Verbrugge

APPLICATION: Intentionality

Have you ever fasted for the benefit of someone else? What happened when you did?