Devotional Guide For the week of March 16, 2008
GOD SO LOVED
About deserving
To read the Bible in one year, today read Job 10-12
To Know:
³All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts
are like filthy rags² (Is.64: 6)
³For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that
whoever
believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.² The word deserve
threatens to kill our culture. The other evening my wife and I watched a
television game show. Halfway to the ultimate prize, the host asked two
members of the contestant¹s family and one of his friends to tell him
about
the competitor. They agreed that the player deserved to win the money. The
host smiled and did not for a moment challenge the assertion. How, we
wondered, did a contestant who was playing a game of pure chance, come to
be
³deserving² of the prize money. The game being played involved no
questions
to be answered and no feats to be completed. The game was a matter of pure
luck. How we wondered was it possible for this contestant to be
³deserving²
of good luck? Has our entitlement culture twisted our thinking so that we
now really believe the world owes us a living?
The prophet Isaiah unmasks our deserving worldview. ³All of us have become
like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags²
If our good deeds are evil, why would we ever believe ourselves to be
deserving? Plainly we would not. Instead, we will cast ourselves on the
grace promised to us by the God of love. That is what Jesus was telling
Nicodemus in John 3:16.
To read the Bible in one year,
Saturday read Job 13-15
Sunday read Job 16-18
03218$-03218
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