Thursday 16 January 2014

TFTD - 16 January 2014 - Thoughts from Today's Bible Readings

16 January 2014

Genesis 28; 29
Psalms 33
Matthew 18

"THOSE WHO HOPE IN HIS STEADFAST LOVE"

The message that jumps out of all 3 Bible Readings today is how God can react to our attitudes. In Genesis Jacob married both Leah and Rachel, the daughters of Laban, but Rachel he loved and Leah he hated. God reacted, "When the LORD saw that Leah was hated he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren" [Genesis 29:31] God reacts to the attitudes of those who seek to serve him, also to those who do not! In Psalm 33:10 we read, "The LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples." Also in this Psalm we read, "Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love." [Psalm 33:18]

The teaching of Jesus in Matthew 18 also illustrates the same lesson. He reacts strongly when his disciples ask him, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" [Matthew 18:1] and sets a child in their midst and says a child-like attitude is necessary , "unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom …" [Matthew 18:3]

The chapter finishes with a parable about a king who set out to settle accounts with servants who owed him money and he is willing to forgive one who is deeply in debt, but when it was reported that this servant did not have a forgiving attitude toward a fellow servant who owed him a little money, the King was angry with that servant and delivered him to the jailers.

The chapter ends with Jesus saying, "So also my heavenly Father will do to everyone of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart." Note those last 3 words.
-------
- DC


Thought for the Day

16 January 2014

"When we are truly a part of this new creation in Christ, then we may live in him, not merely as a figure of speech, or in some rather distant imitative manner, but as forming the very material upon which he is working. And that, ... is the ever-present miracle that you and I may know for ourselves - the miracle that as God was in Christ, so Christ may be in us, the hope of glory."

- Ralph Smalley
The Epistle to the Colossians (1961)

No comments:

Post a Comment