'commandments' Tagged Posts
Daily Devotions
Your decrees are wonderful; therefore my soul keeps them. The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple. With open mouth I pant, because I long for your commandments.” vss. 129-131 Psalm 119:126-131 Most people only have a vague notion of what the Law meant to the Jewish people. We’ve heard it disparaged in countless sermons and have come to think of it as a stumbling block, an obstacle to the gospel of grace. But to…
Daily Devotions
If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.” vss. 15-16 John 14:15-17 Sometimes it can seem as though the world could care less about love, at least the brand of love that was at the core of Jesus’ ministry and that he commanded his followers to practice. Instead we are served up a steady diet of lies, deceit, and self-serving manipulation.…
Daily Devotions
If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess.” vs. 16 Deuteronomy 30:15-18 People who live by grace are often puzzled by the conditional descriptions of God’s love that figure so prominently…
Daily Devotions
If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord … then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess.” vs. 16 Deuteronomy 30:15-18 Our faith ancestors cherished the book of Deuteronomy, and rightly so! It was carefully crafted to describe how Israel should behave as a nation–it was like their constitution. In this section…
Daily Devotions
For the Lord will again take delight in prospering you, just as he delighted in prospering your ancestors, when you obey the Lord your God by observing his commandments and decrees…” vss. 9b-10a Deuteronomy 30:9-10 The scribes of Israel believed that if the people obeyed the Lord by observing the Lord’s commandments and decrees, the Lord would take delight in bringing prosperity to the nation. The Lord would make Israel great again! We can understand why this was such a…
Daily Devotions
Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed.” vs. 23 Galatians 3:23-26 Looking back, Paul now sees that his life before Christ, under the law, was like a rigid imprisonment. Strict adherence to the commandments and the ordinances kept him on the straight and narrow, but at a cost. He never experienced the freedom that comes with faith and grace. In this letter to the Galatians, he explores that new life…
Daily Devotions: July 21, 2020
July 21, 2020 Psalm 119:129-132 … “With open mouth I pant, because I long for your commandments.” vs. 132 The psalmist loved the law and was ecstatic as he pored over its commandments and savored its precepts. We who have been raised on a diet of grace and forgiveness might have some difficulty understanding that unabashed, almost amorous, delight in the law of the Lord. Often that’s because we think of law in terms of judgment rather than instruction. Paul…
Daily Devotions: February 17, 2020
February 17, 2020 For full passage click: Exodus 24:12-18 … “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Come up to me on the mountain, and wait there; and I will give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction.’” vs. 12 According to the Exodus tradition, the law and the commandment came directly from the Lord, with Moses as an intermediary. Those tablets of stone became the focus of community life for…
Daily Devotions: March 3, 2018
March 3, 2018 1 Corinthians 1:22-25 … “but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” vss. 23-34 There are some people who seem content to live in this world without ever thinking about matters of spirituality or mortality. They focus on the material and seem to believe that accumulation is the highest human…
Daily Devotions: March 2, 2018
March 2, 2018 1 Corinthians 1:18-21 … “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe.” vs. 21 There’s no doubt that there’s more to learn these days. Our children and grandchildren bring home assignments from school that leave us baffled, and we wonder what ever happened to good old arithmetic. Of course, with the advent of Google, all that information…
Daily Devotions: March 1, 2018
March 1, 2018 Psalm 19:7-14 … “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the decrees of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple;” vs. 7 We Christians are a silly bunch sometimes. Having fallen in love with grace as the loving word from God, we are prone to be dismissive about the law. Often we imagine that the coming of Jesus negated the law of the Lord and that in Christ we are free simply…
Daily Devotions: February 27, 2018
February 27, 2018 Exodus 20:12-17 … “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” vs. 17 The people of God have long agreed that there are ten commandments, though most would be hard-pressed to list them in the proper order. And there’s considerable debate about which commandments should be included in the list of ten. Most folks…