Archive for the ‘Daily Devotional’ Category

Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. 1 John 4:1

A group of children from an elementary school was on a field trip to a hospital. One of the children noticed that the doctors and nurses were frequently washing their hands. She asked one of the nurses, ‘Why does everybody here wash their hands so much?’ The nurse responded, ‘We wash our hands for two reasons, because we love health, and because we hate germs’. Let me suggest that there are two reasons why we as Christians try the spirits: because we love God and we hate sin, because we love the truth and hate error.

By trying the spirits, we refer to those who would teach us, or claim to teach us, about God and His Word. Just as wise parents teach their children to flee from strangers who offer them candy or who invite them to go for a car ride, so we teach young believers to flee from those who would teach doctrines that are contrary to the Word of God or are contrary to what they have learned from godly teachers. It is dangerous for us to fail to test the spirits, because there are many spiritual predators ready to pounce on the unlearned and the gullible (as well as on the learned and experienced). Peter warned of them: ‘But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction’ (2 Peter 2:1). Paul also warned about this danger in his message to the Ephesian elders: ‘For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock’ (Acts 20:29). Remember that a good test of the spirits is not how appealing it is to the listener nor how popular the message is with the young people. There is only one Guide to trying the spirits, and it is the Word of God.

Someone has observed that we don’t need a course in spirit testing to test the spirits. We have the ultimate Expert on the subject dwelling within each of us, the Holy Spirit. He will always guide us into truth, and He will never lead us astray from the Word of God. The most important criterion for testing the spirits is on the Person of Christ. For example, all of the cults deny either His deity or His eternal sonship. Many denominations have relegated Him to the roles of Teacher and Good Example, while denying or ignoring His redemptive work and the truth that ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners’ (1 Timothy 1:15). If anyone teaches false doctrines concerning the person of Christ, nothing else that they say will be the truth, either.

With all of the false prophets out there, we need to be careful who we listen to and read. But we can depend on the leading of the Holy Spirit, the teaching of Scriptures, and the guidance of godly teachers who have proven their faithfulness to God. – Jim MacIntosh

Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 1 John 3:16

After a naval battle in which the British fleet defeated a French fleet, the French admiral came aboard the British flagship, HMS Victory, to offer his surrender. The admiral had prepared for the ceremony by dressing in his finest regalia, with a handsome sword swinging by his side. He approached Lord Nelson and put out his hand to shake that of the British admiral. But Nelson shook his head and said, ‘Your sword first, sir’. Humbled, the French admiral unbuckled the sword and with bowed head presented it to Nelson. Only then did Nelson accept his greeting and handshake. That ceremony reminds us a little of our own salvation. God could never accept our surrender until we were willing to give up that last secret sin, that last pathetic bit of our own independence. Only when our surrender was total did He receive us with open and glad welcome. Our text today is not specifically speaking of that great moment of conversion, but of another surrender that is set before us in our Christian experience, the surrender of our lives.

Our great Example is the Lord Jesus, Who surrendered His life at Calvary, a surrender of total obedience to His Father’s will, and total sacrifice for lost and helpless sinners. His surrender was absolute in terms of His willingness and His fulfillment. So we are to surrender our lives to the will of God in service and devotion to Him, as well as surrendering our lives in service and devotion to the Lord’s people. For some Christians, this surrender has cost them their lives in martyrdom. For others, this has cost them their homes and families. For others, the cost has been their livelihood, their comfort, their former life’s ambitions, their health, and their popularity. For most of us in this part of the world, the cost has not been so high. But if there is no cost to us to lay down our lives for our Lord and for our brothers and sisters in Christ, we know nothing of the surrender that is to accompany our salvation.

In his challenging book My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers makes the following observation concerning this surrender: ‘If I am a friend of Jesus, I must deliberately and carefully lay down my life for Him. It is a difficult thing to do, and thank God that it is. Salvation is easy for us, because it cost God so much. But the exhibiting of salvation in my life is difficult.’ So today’s message is a challenge. Let’s compare it to the purchase of an item in a department store. You approach the item with a desire to own it. And you look at the price tag. Your decision whether to own that item is then based on whether you are willing to pay the price, whether you deem the asking price to be within your value of that item. What is the price tag that God has placed on our obedience to His lordship? Laying down our lives for the brethren. What is the asking price for displaying the love of Christ in our lives? Laying down our lives for the brethren.

You now know the price of true discipleship. Will you pay it? – Jim MacIntosh

Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you. 1 John 3:13

Most people are aware of the Ashers Bakery case in Northern Ireland, where the owners of a bakery were charged and eventually fined for refusing to provide a customer with a cake decorated with a promotion for same-sex marriage. The owners of Ashers, Daniel and Amy McArthur, are Christians. They testified that they could not produce such a cake because it violated their deeply-held Christian beliefs. They said they would provide that particular customer with a cake with any other type of message on it, and in fact had done so in the past. The Equality Commission painted the McArthurs as hateful and promoting hatred because of their refusal to produce the offending cake. But who was actually being hateful? Not the McArthurs, who treated the customer with respect at all times, and who directed the customer to another bakery that would bake the cake. But the homosexual community, with their supporters in the Equality Commission, seized the opportunity to persecute the McArthurs. The persecution had nothing to do with the availability of a particular cake, or discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The persecution was based solely on the fact that the McArthurs are Christians. And our text declares that this should come as no surprise.

The first proof of this truth comes in the murder committed by the very first man born into this world, as described in the previous verse in 1 John 3: ‘Because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous’. Consider King Saul’s mistreatment of David, a mistreatment that was based on jealousy because David’s righteous deeds condemned his own failures. Consider the mistreatment that was given the Old Testament prophets: ‘And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword; they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.’ (Hebrews11:36-38) Then, beginning with the persecution of the apostles in the book of Acts, the world has seethed with hatred and savagery against the Christians, those who name the Name of Christ and who live according to His Word. During the time it takes you to read this message, another two or three Christians will have been slain for their faith, some merely for the ‘crime’ of having a Bible or a portion of a Bible in their possession.

The world will hate us for being Christians. No surprise. The world will lash out at us for loving them enough to share the Gospel with them. No surprise. No, we won’t like it, but it is not anything to be discouraged about, in fact, just the opposite. The world’s hatred is proof that we belong to Christ. – Jim MacIntosh

For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. 1 John 3:11

I have a relative who spends far too much time talking about how we should be loving one another. She frequently posts platitudes about it on the Internet, and brings the subject up every time she is with friends or family. So what’s wrong with that? There would be nothing wrong with that if her actions matched her words. But they don’t. She constantly belittles others around her, flaunting her social and intellectual superiority. She mocks her neighbours and does little or nothing to help the needy in the community. She alienates many people by pointing out their flaws and comparing them to her own ‘qualities’. She is not a good example of how we should love one another. But we do have good examples to follow, none of them better than our Lord.

John speaks here of hearing this from the beginning. He is speaking of course of the beginning of the presentation of the Gospel. Loving one another was not the message of Judaism, which stressed rigid adherence to laws and rituals. Nor was it the message of the heathen religions that were steeped in brutality and immorality. But the Gospel came with the message of love. First of all was the display and announcement of God’s great love for us in the Person of Jesus Christ. Jesus Himself told Nicodemus that the manifestation of God so loving the world was His giving of His Son (John 3:16). Lovingly, the Lord Jesus gathered humble men about Him to make them into apostles. Lovingly, He taught the people and performed thousands of miracles of healing, comforting, and feeding. Lovingly, He endured rejection, shame, and torture as He bore our sins in His own body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24). Our Saviour did not only teach His disciples and His other followers to love one another, He also showed them how, including the great lesson that love does not have limits or partiality.

The disciples and other followers of the Lord Jesus learned their lesson well. In the early days of the book of Acts, we see the generosity and sharing of Christians, many of whom sold their possessions to help pay for food and comforts for the other Christians around them. And it did not end there. Down through the centuries, the hallmark of true Christians has been the love they have shown to one another, and the extent to which they have been willing to go to display that love. This has been a wonderful witness to the love of God as a stark contrast to the world around us that loves to talk about loving one another but in reality shows they have neither the interest or power to live up to their words.

Loving one another is not something to talk about; it is something to live as the leading passion of our daily lives. -Jim MacIntosh

And ye know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him is no sin. 1 John 3:5

We had a rule at our house when I was growing up: If you made the mess, you cleaned it up. It was a good rule. It didn’t always work, because not everybody owned up to making the mess. But for those of us who had not been involved in creating the problem, we could walk away with a clear conscience. Well, somebody made a mess in our world, a terrible mess that has caused untold grief, suffering, death, destruction, injustices and more. You and I might not have started the mess, but we certainly contributed our share to making it worse. The mess was caused by sin and is perpetuated by more sin, and the only way to resolve it is to get rid of the sin. That’s not something that Adam could do, nor any of the Old Testament patriarchs or prophets. The best that the tabernacle and temple sacrifices could do was to temporarily put a patch on the great problem, a patch that needed no end of repetitions. That is why our text offers such great news, the news that Jesus Christ was manifested to take away our sins.

God wasted no time in getting the word out about the One Who would be the Sin-bearer. Adam and Woman (her name was not yet Eve) were not yet out of Eden when God promised them that the seed of Woman would bruise the serpent’s head. Amid the record of man’s failure in the Old Testament is the consistent message in prophecy and picture that the Sin-bearer would come. Every Jewish woman longed that His coming might be through her. Joseph, Mary, and the Bethlehem shepherds heard an angelic proclamation that the Babe in the manger had come to be the Saviour. As He began His ministry, John Baptist announced Him as the Lamb Who God would provide to take away the sin of the world (John 1:29,36). And at Calvary, He did just that, fulfilling His mission, completing His Father’s purpose.

You nor I nor anyone we know or have ever heard of could accomplish what the Lord Jesus did on the cross. ‘None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him’ (Psalm 49:7). Our sinful hands and fickle hearts would not and could not do anything to take away sins. No counting of beads or saying of prayers or afflicting the flesh could remove one sin of our own, let alone the sins of others. But Jesus Christ had no sin, as our text makes plain. Having no sin, having nothing about Him to which sin could appeal, having perfectly thwarted the worst of the devil’s temptations, He stands as an acceptable Sacrifice. His holy soul could be exposed to divine wrath against sin, and bear that punishment, because in Him is no sin.

On a day when men would seek ways to appease the anger of a holy God, we give thanks that the holy Son of God took that anger upon Himself, and divine justice is satisfied that our sins are taken away.

Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is. 1 John 3:2

I am sure you have seen workplace notices such as the one that says ‘You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps.’ Or the one that says, ‘We are all nuts, every one of us. It’s just that some of us are screwed onto the right bolt.’ Well, good news, fellow nutty Christians, it’s you and me who are screwed onto the right bolt. We look about us and wonder at the insanity of a world that is shutting out the only source of true satisfaction and joy. We can’t understand how the poor lost souls can go on in their deadly sin while a free and full salvation awaits them for the taking. We shake our heads at the madness of those who sell their bodies and souls to destructive habits and fatal lifestyles. But it is the world that thinks us mad. ‘They think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you’ (1 Peter 4:4). There is no question that faithful, godly, witnessing Christians stand out in stark contrast to the world around us, so that sometimes we might seem to be from a different world. Actually, we are from a different world; we just haven’t arrived yet. And the difference there will be far greater than it is here.

Our text declares that we are now the sons of God. That’s not easy to describe, because it will take our entire lifetime to learn what it is to be a child of God, and an entire lifetime to display that relationship as we should. As a son or daughter of God, we have rights and responsibilities. Our rights include access to the full banquet of God’s blessings and promises. Our responsibilities include the great commandment, to love one another, the great commission, to spread the Gospel, and the great Example, the Lord Jesus, to imitate and follow. The more we appreciate our rights and exercise our responsibilities, the more we will be changed into the sons and daughters that our Lord desires us to be. But the really big change is still awaiting us.

‘Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed’ (1 Corinthians 15:51). With these words, Paul unfolds to the Corinthians (and us) the mystery of the Rapture, the truth that even for those of us who remain until the coming of the Lord, we will not enter Heaven in the same corrupt and sin cursed bodies that we dwell in here. We speak of the elimination of tears and sorrow in Heaven, of the replacement of pain with eternal comfort, of swapping the disappointments and regrets of earth with everlasting bliss. But speaking of it doesn’t mean we understand it. We can’t. We lack the facilities to know what Heaven will be like. And it’s not just our bodies that will change. So too will our minds, as they will be filled with the knowledge of God. Our occupation will change from the fleeting and fatal pursuits of earth to the exploration of the riches of the grace of God. Our desires for the empty cisterns and holey bags of earth will be replaced with an eternal passion to adore the Lamb and praise Him forever.

John reminds us that our eternal condition does not appear to us yet. But he assures us that the very best part of it is that we will be like our Lord, for we shall see Him as He is. – Jim MacIntosh

Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not. 1 John 3:1

The late preacher Doug Howard was telling us of a time when he and fellow evangelist Frank Piercey were travelling somewhere and stopped at a service station to a fill-up. As the attendant was pumping the gasoline, a barefoot little boy in dusty clothes and rumpled hair walked  up to their car and stared curiously at the preachers. In his friendly way, Frank spoke to the youngster, ‘Hey sonny, what does your daddy think about you?’ Confidently, the lad replied, ‘My daddy thinks the world of me!’ Well, good for his daddy, to let the boy know how important he was to him! The youngster might not look like much to anybody else, but there was a daddy who looked upon him as the apple of his eye, and that is all that mattered. It’s the same with you and me; the world around us might not appreciate our relationship with our Heavenly Father, but to our Father, we are His precious children.

In John 3:16, we read of God’s love being so great that it would offer everlasting life to all who believe. In today’s text, we read of the same love specifically directed to those who have believed. Here, it is not only everlasting life that we have entered into, but also the relationship of sons and daughters in the very family of God. ‘For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father’ (Romans 8:15). It was the very purpose of God in saving us, ‘To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons’ (Galatians 4:5). Most of the time, we take this great relationship far too lightly. If we were to sit down and ponder the truth and the magnitude of it, this would fill us with awe and transform our lives into loving and dutiful service to the One Who calls us His sons and daughters.

Whenever you see the word ‘therefore’ in the Scriptures, stop and see what is it there for. The ‘therefore’ in our text links our divine sonship with our rejection by the world. If the world rejects God and His righteousness, denies His existence, dismisses Jesus as only an irrelevant teacher of old, and mocks the Word of God, then it should come as no surprise that the same world will not recognize us in our relationship with God. The more we live in the good of that relationship, the less the world will want to have anything to do with us. The more Christ-like our lives, the more the world will reject us.

The more important our relationship with God is, the more we will be rejected by the world that crucified our Lord. Is that OK with you? – Jim MacIntosh

And now, little children, abide in Him; that, when He shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming. 1 John 2:28

A Christmas tree and an apple tree are standing side by side, and you must tell me what is the best of the two. If it is judged on appearance, the Christmas tree will probably win, depending on who decorated it. If the decision is based on popularity, there is no contest, many more will swarm around the Christmas tree than the apple. So let’s look a little deeper and see which tree is the most productive. Here the Christmas tree must hang its head in shame because it does not produce anything of itself. Most of its loveliness and all of its popularity come from the things that are added to it by somebody else. In contrast, the apple tree produces fruit  which, depending on the quality of the apples, will bring delight and satisfaction to the owner. This why the Christmas tree is tossed out with the trash on New Year’s Day while the apple tree is treasured for a hundred years. Every Christian is either a Christmas tree or an apple tree.

According to Philippians 1:11, God is looking for fruit in the life of the believer: ‘Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God’. This fruit is identified in Galatians 5:22,23: ‘The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance’. As the Christian submits to the leading and teaching of the Holy Spirit, that Christian produces fruit that is precious to our Father. Like a good apple tree, the Christian grows and produces more fruit with each crop. God never saved you and me to make us showpieces that would appeal to the folks around us, but He saved us that He might receive fruit from us. As our text declares, it’s because He doesn’t want us to be ashamed when He comes to take us to Heaven.

What happens to the fruit that is produced in the life of an obedient Christian? Philippians 4:17 calls it fruit that abounds to our account. Ah, we have an account with God! A fruit account. And when Christ comes for us at the day of His rapture and at the Judgment Seat of Christ, that account will display whether we have borne fruit for our Lord. Will the basket be filled with lovely fruit that will endure as eternal treasure? Or will it be filled with the tinsel, the baubles, and the blinking lights of the world’s attractions and pleasures and toys? All that stuff goes into the trash and will be burned up as waste. Will you have a basket that will bring delight as you present it to the Lord, or a basket that will bring you shame to present?

If only we would abide in him, we would not be ashamed before Him at His coming. -Jim MacIntosh

And this is the promise that He hath promised us, even eternal life. 1 John 2:25

Sadly, there are some who call themselves Christians who are terrified every day of committing a sin that will cause them to lose their salvation. They are even more terrified that, should they commit such a sin, and they die before they have time to confess that sin and restore their relationship with God, they would be forever lost. How thankful we should be that God has given to us the clear and plain revelation of His Word that salvation is neither conditional nor temporary. I encountered a web page recently that listed 101 Bible verses that prove the eternal security of the believer. There was much comfort in reading through those verses and being reassured that God doesn’t want us to have any uncertainty about our salvation. Our text gives us two great reasons for resting on the reality of our salvation. First, it is a promise of God. Second, God calls it eternal life.

Salvation, or eternal life, is just one of God’s many proposes to us. Mind you, it is the greatest promise of all, because it includes every blessing, both temporal and eternal, that God has brought us into. Peter describes the nature of these promises in 2 Peter 1:4: ‘Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust’. The more we learn of God’s promises, the more we realize how exceeding rich and precious they are. Through His Word and the Spirit’s guidance, we receive promises as individuals, promises that may mean nothing to others but to us are rich treasures. And all of these promises both great and small are established on the Word of a God Who cannot lie and Who has never, and can never, break a promise. Including the promise of eternal life.

What does the word ‘eternal’ mean? We sometimes use the term ‘the unending ages of eternity’. But that is not exactly right because there are no ages in God’s eternity. We sometimes say eternity is a very long time. Again, that is not accurate, because time does not exist in eternity. We are so tied to the concept of time that we have great difficulty understanding the nature of eternity. The clock and the calendar govern our earthly existence so absolutely that we can’t imagine being without them. But they will be meaningless in the eternal state. I am unable to describe it. But I do know that I have a life there, and so do you. That life was placed in God’s eternity at the moment we first trusted Christ. And because God placed it there, we cannot remove it even if we would, nor can anyone or anything else. That is why our salvation is called eternal life.

When it comes to our salvation, we cannot improve on the words of the apostle Paul: ‘I know Whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day’ (2 Timothy 1:12) – Jim MacIntosh

I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth. 1 John 2:21

The religion of Islam has a concept called taqiyya. According to taqiyya, a Moslem is allowed to say something that is not true about Islam in order to advance the cause of Islam. This is why Moslems are allowed by their religion to say that Islam is a religion of peace even though it clearly – according to their so-called holy writings – is not. Lying about this is justified by taqiyya because it helps break down resistance toward Islam and make Islam appear to be benign. But taqiyya is just one of several Islamic justifications for lying. Another is muruna, which allows Muslims to break some Islamic laws in order to advance other Islamic purposes. Under muruna, the terrorists involved in the 9-11 attacks were justified in going to bars and drinking, which is prohibited by Islam, so that people would not suspect them of being Muslim terrorists. The concept of tawyira allows a Moslem to lie in order to create a false impression. Some people who claim that former US President Barack Obama is a Moslem say he invokes tawyira when he claims to be a ‘Christian’. Now, I’m not saying that Obama is a Moslem, but I am saying that if he is and says he is not, that is just fine by Islam’s tawyira. So, with a good many verses in the Islamic book Quran justifying lying in order to deceive an enemy, when can you trust the word of a Moslem? Good  question. Ok, then when can you trust the word of a Christian? The answer to that question should be always.

Unlike the Quran, the Bible makes no provision for liars or deceivers. In fact, the Bible declares that all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone (Revelation 21:8). Christians are not to lie to each other, according to Colossians 3:9: ‘Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds’. The lying that was so easily a part of us in our unsaved days should disappear. Deceiving people in order to present the Gospel to them is also wrong, because the ends do not justify the means if the means involves anything that is false or deceptive. Deception is the way of the cults, but should never be the way of the child of God.

Why is honesty so critical to true Christianity? Our text answers that question: no lie is of the truth. Do we have the truth? The Lord Jesus declared Himself to be the truth (John 14:6). He did not, cannot, and will not lie. The Bible contains no lies because it is the Word of God, unless it has been tampered with. So as Bible believing followers of Jesus Christ, we must not lie but always tell the truth.

If you think you need to lie about something, think again. Jesus would never tell you to lie. But the devil would. – Jim MacIntosh