Listening to the Word

  Exodus 28-29; Acts 7   “’Whenever Aaron enters the Holy Place, he will bear the names of the sons of Israel over his heart on the breastpiece of decision as a continuing memorial before the Lord.’” Exodus 28:29 The breastpiece contained precious stones which covered the front of Aaron’s ephod, each representing one of the tribes of Israel. This was to be worn over his heart as the priest entered the presence of the Lord. What is on our heart as we enter the Lord’s presence? Are we bringing those in our family and families of faith before the Lord as a memorial? Are we remembering to love people as the Lord does, even while we talk to the Lord about our decisions and discernment questions? God’s covenant is with people. Jesus, our high priest, ever lives to make intercession for us. As a royal priesthood, redeemed by the blood of Christ, we, too, are seated as Christ’s body in the presence of the Lord. Our intercession, like incense, goes up before the throne of God, even as ...

Exodus 25-27; Acts 6   “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Tell the Israelites to bring me an offering. You are to receive the offering for me from each man whose heart prompts him to give.’” Exodus 25:1, 2 God’s discipleship of a nation of former slaves included worship and an invitation to give. The sudden plunder of Egypt by the Israelites, who had lived as slaves their whole lives, tested their hearts. Would the Israelites hold on to their recently acquired wealth, or would they open their hearts and generously give offerings to God for the building of the tabernacle? With the blessings we have received, are we committed to tithing - is our heart in it? Are we listening to the promptings of our heart? The freewill offering principle that God instituted shaped how Israel worshipped God. Without freewill offerings the tabernacle would not have been constructed and the priests would not have been able to function. How is the Lord disciplining us to worship him with our resources? “Lord God,...

  Exodus 23-24; Psalms 14; Acts 5   “Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. With his wife’s full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostle’s feet. Then Peter said, ‘Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received from the land?’” Acts 5:1-3 The motives of our heart are seen by the Lord God. Ananias and Sapphira sold their land to impress the Church. Their donation was to gain attention and status within the Church, not to worship the Lord with thanksgiving. They publically announced their donation amount, but gave the amount for the sale of their land that was not true. Their very public deaths, after lying to the Holy Spirit, shocked the Church and reverence for God grew within the Church. Is there any activity in worship, service, or giving that we are doing to impre...

Exodus 21-22; Psalms 12; Acts 4   “Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus. After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.” Acts 4:29-31 The Church was birthed in a prayer meeting, and after their first major test, they returned to a prayer meeting asking God for more. The word for power is the word “dynamic”, the same word we use for dynamite. Jesus promised the disciples they would receive power when the Holy Spirit came upon them and they would be his witnesses (Acts 1:8). The healing of the man at the temple who had been crippled from birth was like a spiritual bomb exploding. This display of power shook the city of Jerusalem and its leaders. The powers of darkness were shaken and they reacted, as they still do...

E xodus 17-20; Acts 3 “When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, ‘Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.’ Moses said to the people, ‘Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.’” Exodus 20:18-20 At first glance, Moses seemed to contradict himself when speaking about fear. First, he told the Israelites not to be afraid; then, he said that the whole point of the dramatic sound and light display on Mt. Sinai was so that they would fear God. Do we understand the difference between fear that separates us from God and a reverence for God that keeps us from sinning? When this text is referred to in Hebrews 12:18-29, the invitation is to receive discipline from God so we can share in his holiness. We are invited up the mountain of the Lord through the at...

Exodus 14-16; Acts 2   “Moses answered the people, ‘Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only be still.’” Exodus 14:13, 14 “When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting…All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.” Acts 2:1, 2, 4 God’s deliverance of Israel required that they stood firm and were still in their surrender to God’s purpose and plan. The strongest army in the world was defeated by the ‘ruach’, or breath of God, as he parted the Red Sea. This same breath, or wind, of God blew through the Upper Room and filled 120 people with the Holy Spirit. The disciples went from fear to bold faith as they immediately began proclaiming...

Exodus 12-13; Psalms 21; Acts 1 “When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said ‘If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.’ So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea. The Israelites went up out of Egypt armed for battle.” Exodus 13:17, 18 There is a big difference between being armed for battle, and actually engaging in battle. God protected his people from tests in battle that they were not yet ready to face. Just because we have memorized Ephesians 6:10-18, doesn’t mean we can face spiritual warfare and overcome. The love of God toward us goes beyond what we know, to the battles we have been spared from without our knowledge. Peter loudly professed his love and faithfulness toward Christ, yet Jesus knew Peter would deny him three times. Later, Peter taught the Church that they were to clothe themselves with humility toward one another, because G...

  Exodus 9-11; Luke 24   “When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?’…Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.” Luke 24:30-32, 45 It is a work of God’s grace in our lives to have our eyes and our mind opened to recognize Jesus and understand the Scriptures. The revelation of our need for God’s mercy and forgiveness for sin is the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which followed this revelation of the resurrected Christ on the road to Emmaus, opened the hearts and minds of thousands and now hundreds of millions of people in all nations to their need for Christ. For those of us who are opening the Scriptures to others, we, too, must be praying for...

Exodus 6-8; Luke 23   “God also said to Moses, ‘I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord I did not make myself known to them. I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan…’” Exodus 6:2-4 The progressive revelation of God’s name and nature to those with whom he covenants is the story of human history. Moses received God’s name, “I am”, the self-existent one. Jesus later declared “…before Abraham was born, I am” (John 8:58). It was the Lord Jesus who appeared to Moses and redeemed his people from their slavery in Egypt. In Christ, the fullness of God’s name and nature dwells. We, too, have the privilege of covenanting with God through Jesus Christ and learning to know the great “I am” – “Yahweh”. We, too, have been delivered from the slavery of sin and death and given an inheritance in the kingdom of God. We, too, testify to God’s name and nature by our story of walking with God by faith. What asp...

Exodus 3-5; Luke 22   “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” Luke 22:31, 32 Satan is still asking God if he can sift the followers of Jesus like wheat! The sifting process separates the wheat from the chaff and exposes any stones or unwanted pieces. While Satan’s purpose is to destroy the followers of Jesus, God redeems this persecution to both purify and strengthen our faith. Those who are not sincere in their faith are exposed. When leaders stumble and fall like Simon, they find new depths of God’s mercy and grace. When they turn back to the Lord, their brokenness and new levels of humility and dependency on Christ serves to strengthen the community of faith. Have we been sifted recently? How are we responding? Is this testing producing good fruit in our lives and in our community? Is our faith failing, or being forged by the fire? Jesus i...

Exodus 1-2; Ps 88; Luke 21 “Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, but the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful and multiplied greatly and became exceedingly numerous, so that the land was filled with them…But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly.” Exodus 1:6, 7, 12, 13 At the base of a large statue of Ramses II in Luxor, Egypt, is carved a long row of Jewish men with pointed beards, roped together as slaves. Pharaoh wanted all to know that his foot was on the necks of his Jewish slaves. Yet the more Pharaoh oppressed the Jewish people, the more they multiplied. This same anger toward God’s covenant people is evident in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and other countries where the Church is growing quickly, despite, and even because of, persecution. Pharaoh’s persecution of the Jews, like that of the Second World War, clarified identity and led to a deliverance that r...

Genesis 49-50; Psalms 8; Luke 20   “Jesus looked directly at them and asked, ‘Then what is the meaning of that which is written: “The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone”. Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed.’” Luke 20:17, 18 The capstone is the final stone at the top of an archway and absorbs the pressure of the two sides of stones. Jesus is the pinnacle of God’s plan of salvation and the only one we trust for our righteousness. He was rejected by his own people who were looking for a Messiah. Jesus was the stone the builders rejected and the one who became the capstone. Christ’s call to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him, is a call to brokenness and full surrender. We, too, like living stones, are being fitted together to become a temple in which God dwells by his Spirit. The fitting of stones requires chiseling and breaking. The alternative to putting our lives in the hands of God is to...

Genesis 47-48; Psalms 10; Luke 19   “As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, ‘If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace – but now it is hidden from your eyes…because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.’” Luke 19:41, 42, 44 God’s mission is still to bring the peace of his kingdom to every city. The Kairos moment, or appointed time of God’s favour toward us in Christ, is now. The word “episcope”, or apostolic leader, is used to describe the coming of God’s presence. The Church is God’s missionary to the world. Are we bringing the reality of God’s manifest presence to our cities? When the Church forgets who she is, she becomes focused on her own well-being and comfort. We are God’s apostolic mission in the world; the time of God’s favour is now. The good news of the Gospel is that peace is available for every conflict, every nation, and every person. Jesus has paid the price for the wrongs we have done, an...

Genesis 44-46; Luke 18 “To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: ‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men.”…But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast, and said, “God, have mercy on me a sinner.”’” Luke 18:9-11, 13 The depth of our awareness of our need for Christ’s salvation, mercy, and sacrifice on our behalf, shapes how we pray or even whether we pray. Trusting in our own righteousness through church attendance, tithing, devotions, and regular prayer, will be reflected in how we pray. One of the first evidences of full surrender to the Spirit of God in our lives is a new awareness of how our sin grieves God. We grieve for sin because God is grieved. We are grateful for forgiveness to the degree that we are aware we ne...

  Genesis 42-43; Psalms 5; Luke 17   “’…If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, “I repent”, forgive him.’ The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’” Luke 17:3-5 Why does Christ’s call to his disciples to forgive a brother who sins against them require faith? Our human response is to withhold forgiveness until we either see a change in behavior or some sense of justice or punishment meted out to our offender - especially if we see repeated sinful behavior toward us. Forgiveness requires faith that God is at work in the life of our offending brother or sister. God will ultimately bring good out of the pain of our offense. With faith, we see our own sin took Christ to the cross to die for us. With faith, we see that our sin grieves God; yet, he continues to extend his grace to us, in Christ. It takes faith, lots of faith, to daily receive God’s forgiveness...

Genesis 39-41; Luke 16   “’…My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?”...So Pharaoh asked them, ‘Can we find anyone like this man, one in whom is the spirit of God?’” Genesis 39:9; 41:38 Joseph was anointed by the Spirit of God and it was evident to those around him. The presence of the Lord is the most valuable reality in our lives. The enemy of our soul will attempt to rob us of the anointing of the Holy Spirit through temptation and willful sin. However, God’s mercy, grace, and restoring presence will prevail. God’s presence in our lives is a deterrent to sin and functions like salt and light in whatever context we are in. God’s presence also gives us favor, wisdom, insight, and authority. Joseph rose to leadership in whatever context he was in because God’s presence was leading through him. The Creator of the universe has offered us his very presence to give us peace, joy, love, stre...

Genesis 37-38; Psalms 7; Luke 15   “Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more…His brothers said to him, ‘Do you intend to reign over us? Will you actually rule us?’ And they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said. Then he had another dream, and he told it to his brothers.” Genesis 37:5, 8, 9 Not all dreams from the Lord are meant to be shared with others. Prophetic dreams are meant to encourage us in our circumstances. We put them ‘on the shelf’, and when the circumstances that the dream points to happens, the Lord reminds us of the dream and it serves as a confirmation of God’s hand at work. However, when we unwisely share prophetic words or dreams prematurely, they stir up the anger of the enemy of our souls. Joseph experienced God’s sovereign blessing through his trials and tests in Egypt, and through this learned self-control. He later used that self-control in the disclosure of his identity to his brothers an...

Genesis 34-36; Luke 14 “…’Blessed is the man who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God.’ Jesus replied: ‘A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests…Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town   and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame…Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full. I tell you, not one of those men who were invited will get a taste of my banquet….And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.’” Luke 14:15, 16, 21, 23, 24, 27 Jesus told the story of inviting guests to a wedding banquet and being rejected. So, the invitation was expanded to the poor, crippled, blind, and lame, with the goal of filling the banquet hall. He then spoke to large crowds which probably included the poor, crippled, blind, and lame. He said that anyone who wants to be his disciple must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow him.   So, which one ...

Genesis 31-33; Luke 13 “Jacob answered Laban, ‘I was afraid, because I thought you would take your daughters away from me by force.’…In great fear and distress Jacob divided the people who were with him into two groups…Then Jacob prayed, ‘O God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, O Lord, who said to me, “Go back to your country and your relatives, and I will make you prosper…Save me, I pray from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid…”’” Genesis 31:31; 32:7, 9, 11 Jacob, the deceiver, had run out of tricks and options. God’s call to return to Canaan put him on a collision course with his father-in-law, Laban, and his brother Esau. Fear gripped Jacob’s heart and mind. Often our greatest fears are connected to relationships with those who are closest to us. God’s call exposed those fears in Jacob’s heart and drew him to cry out to God for salvation. God’s tests are not meant to destroy, but to transform us if we repent, humble ourselves, and cry out to him. What fears or ...

Genesis 29-30; Luke 12   “…’Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whom the master finds doing so when he returns. I tell you the truth, he will put him in charge of all his possessions…That servant who knows his master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know…will be beaten with few blows.’” Luke 12:42-44, 47, 48 When we live as steward-servants in Christ’s kingdom, with an expectation of his return, we serve differently. When we understand that our service in Christ’s kingdom now is an apprenticeship for future responsibility, we also serve differently. Living and serving as stewards of the King’s resources and people means we don’t use people or resources to advance or enrich ourselves; they don’t belong to us! The rewards for faithful service are not the s...

Genesis 27-28; Psalms 4, Luke 11   “He said to them, ‘When you pray, say: “Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.” ‘…how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!’” Luke 11:2-4, 13 Jesus’ teaching on prayer focused on worship and full dependence on our Father in heaven. We have often isolated this prayer from the teaching around it; but, Jesus was clear that through persistence we, too, could receive the gift of the Holy Spirit who empowers and enables us to live a life of prayer. The 120 early disciples spent ten days in the Upper Room asking the Father for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Why do we believe there isn’t more of the Holy Spirit’s presence that we could discover, and why are we so casual about this gift? The Lord’s Prayer comes alive in the power of the Holy Spirit. It becomes our life, ...

Genesis 25-26; Psalms 6; Luke 10 “Now there was a famine in the land…The Lord appeared to Isaac and said, ‘Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land where I tell you to live. Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you.’…When the men of that place asked him about his wife, he said, ‘She is my sister.’…” Genesis 26:1-3, 7 God allows tests in our lives both to teach us dependence on him and to reveal our hearts. The tests of God humble us, discipline us, and teach us obedience if our hearts are open to learning (Deuteronomy 8:1-5). Even with responsive hearts to God in the tests he allows in our lives, we can still fall back on generational sin-strategies like Isaac’s claim that his wife was his sister. This deception caused conflict and mistrust for both his father Abraham and for Isaac. In the test, we, too, can have a “Plan B” solution in our back pockets, rather than trusting in the Lord for provision, protection, and deliverance. How are we engaging the ...