DAY 257 - The Right Stuff

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Deuteronomy 34:1-4, 7  (NIV) ¹ Then Moses climbed Mount Nebo from the plains of Moab to the top of Pisgah, across from Jericho. There the LORD showed him the whole land—from Gilead to Dan, ² all of Naphtali, the territory of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Mediterranean Sea, ³ the Negev and the whole region from the Valley of Jericho, the City of Palms, as far as Zoar. ⁴ Then the LORD said to him, “This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when I said, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it.” ⁷ Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died, yet his eyes were not weak nor his strength gone.

II Corinthians 4:16-18 (NIV) ¹⁶ Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. ¹⁷ For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. ¹⁸ So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

“Moses, Moses.” This time the call is not heard from a burning bush. It comes from a deep yearning, and a man aged in years and older in wisdom begins a last journey to the top of Mt. Pisgah where God completes His commitment to Moses. It is as if God has taken a parent and lifted him or her above the limitations of time and shown the future that their children will enjoy, and it is very good. Then, with the glory of God in his heart, the life of Moses and God’s plan for him come to an end.

Moses had aged like everyone else. He experienced the limitations that age often puts upon us. Yet, there was something apparently special about Moses both in old age and in death. “His eyes were not weak,” meaning something like “he was still a man of vision. He still viewed life with the eyes of faith.” The vision of faith ignited in the burning bush still shone brightly in the eyes of Moses.

It is possible for that to be said of us, as well, and it happens this way: we receive from God. We receive His spirit and His life, from His word and His people. We receive God in times of quiet and of prayer. And what we receive is the raw material out of which He fashions our life. We receive the right stuff.

His sovereignty, His commitment to us, is a shaping force always at work in the midst of the events and experiences of our life. Sometimes that shaping makes us swell with joy and sometimes we bristle with resistance. But, as God has given us the right stuff in the life of His Son, so He intends to shape us according to His will. As we prepare to receive the raw material with which God will work in our lives, the bottom line questions is this: “do I want God to have His way with my life?”

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope February 9, 1986

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

DAY 256 - Once and For All

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Hebrews 10:9-14, 17-18 (NASB) ⁹ then He said, “behold I have come to do your will.” He takes away the first in order to establish the second. ¹⁰ By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. ¹¹ Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; ¹² but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God, ¹³ waiting from that time onward until his enemies be made a footstool for his feet. ¹⁴ For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. ¹⁷ “and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.” ¹⁸ Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin.

When we think of guilt today we usually think of “guilty feelings.” In the Scripture, forgiveness is not so much release from feelings as it is from a fact. Guilt comes from the damage we have done to ourselves, to others, to our world. Guilt is God’s verdict on the darkness and distortions of our thinking and behaving. Guilt is real, but so is God’s forgiveness and that forgiveness is made real and effective in our life by the death of Jesus Christ. That is what the writer of Hebrews claims has happened for us.

“Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.” Put in modern terms the writer of Hebrews is saying that in many and various ways we seek our self-worth – by our achievements, by the standards we set for ourselves, by our own inner efforts of self-assurance. But all of our efforts, no matter how hard we try and even to a degree succeed, only serve to remind us of our failure by the very fact that it requires continued effort.

Christ offered one sacrifice for our sins, an offering that is effective forever, and then sat down at the right hand of God. The death of Jesus was the permanent cure for the fact of our guilt. The forgiveness we need, desire, and often seek becomes “effective forever,” because of the death of Jesus. The effectiveness of the Cross does not depend on our having a complete understanding of how it works. The effectiveness of the Cross depends on the fact that it does “Make perfect forever those who are purified from sin.”

Faith is our response to this fact. Faith is believing that God’s forgiveness removes the reality of our guilt. Faith is not wishful thinking. Faith is believing the truth, and that act of believing is like a hinge on a door that opens the way for life, love, and forgiveness to become a reality for us, meeting us at the point of our need. The echo of past sins ceases to interfere with the present acoustics of hearing God’s new words of command, and peace. Forgiveness continues to erase our sin so that God can speak and write anew His will for our life.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope, April 27, 1986

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

DAY 255 - The Stone

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Isaiah 8:9-14 (NIV)  ¹³ The LORD Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, he is the one you are to fear, he is the one you are to dread. ¹⁴ He will be a holy place; for both Israel and Judah he will be a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.

Isaiah 28:16 (NIV)  So this is what the Sovereign LORD says: “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation; the one who relies on it will never be stricken with panic.

Luke 2:25 (NIV)  ³⁴ Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, ³⁵ so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

Ephesians 2:19-22   (NIV) ¹⁹ Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, ²⁰ built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. ²¹ In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. ²² And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

Jesus fulfills all the predictions in the Old Testament; one that emerges to the surface is Jesus as both a stumbling stone and a building block. Mary Magdalene falls at His feet and is raised a new person. Nicodemus comes down from his lofty position and is raised a true leader. Peter stumbles over his pride and is raised a humble and pliable person. On the road to Damascus, Paul stumbles over his self-righteousness and is raised a forgiven and whole person.

All of us fall at some time or another. But by God’s grace we fall into discovery and delight. When we are brought down as low as a vulnerable baby born in a barn we are in the right place and the right position to discover that the stone we trip on is solid and secure and a sure foundation on which to re-build our life.

Jesus said we are to rebuild our life on the new foundation of hearing and obeying God’s word. We rebuild on what He says about what our true needs are. We rebuild according to His standards and specifications. We rebuild our beliefs about God according to what He reveals to us to be the truth.

God has not abandoned us to our self-determined, heedless, pushy ways. He places in our path a rock of stumbling. Sometimes it is also a stone of offense that makes us angry and frustrated. But a closer look soon reveals it is a precious stone, a tested stone, and secure foundation on which we can build our life.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope December 9 , 1984

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell