David Encouraged Himself in the Lord

1 Samuel 30:6-8

Sometimes it seems like we are alone in our own little vessel in the middle of a great big ocean. Everywhere we look, people are having their own problems and difficulties and there appears to be no time for us and no help on the horizon. Where do we turn to when we have no one to turn to? Who encourages us when we have become accustomed to always being the encourager?

Of course we know that we can turn to the Lord no matter what, for He is a friend that sticks closer than a brother (Proverbs 18:24), but that brings us to another question: How do we turn to the Lord? Do we just get on our knees and pray an earnest prayer, hoping that God makes us feel better? Surely there is a better way to hear from God than to “pray and hope”.

David returned from the land of the Philistines with his 600-man army to the village, Ziklag. Upon arrival they see that the Amalekites had invaded, burning their houses to the ground and kidnapping their wives and children. This horrible news caused David’s small army to turn on him and talk of stoning him to death. With no one to lean to for advice, David could either give in and just accept his fate, or he could turn to the good Shepherd.

“David encouraged himself in the LORD his God” (1 Samuel 30:6) speaks volumes about David’s heart. The word “LORD” is in all-caps in your Bible because it has a different meaning in the Hebrew than the word “God” that follows it. LORD means Jehovah or “Covenant God” while God means Adonai or “Creator God”. One speaks of God’s power while the other speaks of God being a covenant keeper. David turns away from God’s creative power and towards God’s power to keep a promise. David is a covenant believer and he knows that God is a covenant keeper.

To encourage himself, David does more than just kneel and pray. He instructs the priest Abiathar to bring him the ephod, which was worn by the high priest in his service before the Lord in the tabernacle. This ephod had two shoulder pieces of gold which had six of the tribes of Israel engraved in one and six in the other. From these shoulder pieces were chains of gold that attached a breastplate. On the breastplate were 12 precious stones, each with a tribe of Israel engraved onto it. These items, worn by the high priest, were shadows of what Jesus bears on His shoulders and on His heart: you and me!

David wore the ephod and asked God what He was supposed to do, and God answered him, “Pursue: for thou shalt surely overtake them, and without fail recover all” (1 Samuel 30:8). The ephod would light up, with light shining through the appropriate stone, highlighting various letters. As one stone was lighted, one more letter from God was revealed, until you had the entire message from God. David knew what to do because the light of God had told him.

You and I do not have a physical ephod of course, but we have something just as good. When we are discouraged or down and we need to encourage ourselves in the Lord, we do exactly what David did. We go to our high priest and we shed light on our situation. Jesus is the light of the world, and we shine His light on who we are. When Jesus said, “I am the light of the world”, what was the thing He said just before that? It was “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more” (John 8:11). The light of Jesus shines on our lack of condemnation and our current standing of righteousness in Him. Shed light on who you are in Jesus and you are truly encouraging yourself in the Lord.

Manna

Exodus 16:31-36

Manna means, “what is it?” in Hebrew, and that is exactly what the Israelites said when they saw this small, white piece of bread on the ground, given by God as their provision. What an amazing gift this was, for here is their daily portion of food and they do not have to grow it, cultivate it, water it, feed it or sweat over it. God gives them all that they need, everyday through absolutely no goodness on their part. All they must do is reach down and pick it up every day.

Manna is a perfect picture of God’s grace. It is given without regard to whether the recipient has earned it and all one must do to have it is pick it up. In spiritual terms, picking it up is believing and receiving. Simply believe that God has provided it for you and that you are made worthy to receive it by the blood of the New Covenant and you can then take all that you need.

Just as manna was new every day, the blessings of God in Jesus Christ are fresh and new everyday as well. The prophet Jeremiah wrote, “It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22, 23). Israel was forbidden from taking extra manna to last into the next day, with the eve of the Sabbath being an obvious exception. God did this so that they were never eating yesterday’s blessing. Jesus wishes for His church to feed on Him and His goodness on a daily basis; not surviving on last Sunday morning’s blessing.

Jesus said that as the manna fell in the wilderness, feeding the children of Israel, so He is the bread of life sent to feed the church. “I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world” (John 6:51). Our spiritual bread is the broken body of Jesus Christ, which we partake of every time that we realize what Calvary accomplished for us. We now feed on His finished work on the cross, with all of our sins having been punished in His body, and all of our sickness having been paid for in Him. This is glorious food for the believer, for it takes all that is wrong with us and puts it in Jesus, so that we can be truly free.

God told Moses to fill an omer of manna to be placed into the Ark of the Covenant. An omer was the tenth part of an ephah (Exodus 16:36), and an ephah was a day’s worth of manna. In other words, God instructed Moses to put 1/10 of a day’s worth of manna into the Ark. This 1/10 is also called the tithe, denoting that God put the tithe into the Ark in the form of manna. Everything inside of the Ark was covered over by the mercy seat which was covered in blood. The blood sealed everything inside, freeing man from whatever its contents held over him. Israel placed the tithe of manna, Aaron’s rod that budded and the 10 Commandments into the Ark. Since these items are inside the Ark, they cannot be held against us again.

This means that we are free from the tithe, the 10 Commandments and the authority of man. Though free from every one of these, we still live them out through our righteousness: tithing by revelation of how good our God is; living the moral code of God through the finished work of Christ; and submitting ourselves to the authorities of the world and the church. All bondage to works has been placed beneath the blood and now we feed on the heavenly bread, Jesus Christ.

Possess the Dew of Heaven

Genesis 27:26-39

This story picks up with Jacob entering his father Isaac’s tent to receive the blessing of the firstborn son. The problem is that Jacob is not the firstborn; that honor belongs to his older brother Esau, but Isaac is blind and can’t see the difference and Jacob is a deceiver by nature, so the story unfolds. Isaac blesses Jacob with the “right-hand” blessing, meaning that Jacob gets the favored blessing, while his brother will be relegated to whatever is left-over. Jacob is going to get out of town before Esau comes in and finds out about this transaction, by which time it will be too late.

There is a lot that could be said about these two brothers: what they represent and how they live their lives, but for purposes of this devotion, let’s look at what constituted their blessings, as given by their father Isaac. Pay attention to the wording, starting with Jacob. Note the similarities and the important differences:

Jacob – “God give thee the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine” (Genesis 27:28).

Esau – “Behold, thy dwelling shall be the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above” (Genesis 27:39).

The first and most obvious difference is that Jacob’s blessing comes as a gift from God, while Esau’s denotes his own works. There are two basic ways for the believer to attempt to live: by grace and favor or by works and effort. When your blessings come from nothing that you do then you are living in the abundant favor of God. When you play a part in what you get, whether it is due to your consecration, or your attendance or your devotion, then you are a recipient of what you deserve, with no regard to favor.

Next we see the order with which God mentions the blessings: Jacob receives the dew of heaven followed by the fatness of the earth, while Esau gets them in the opposite order. The provision of grace is always from above, while the provision of works is always from beneath us, where our hands labor. The ark had one window and it was at the top of the vessel so that Noah and his family could not see the waters beneath them, only the heavens above. Grace and favor rains your provision from God, so that the economy of this world and the provision of man cannot affect you. Feast off of heaven and not earth and you will be full, longer.

Finally, God promises to GIVE the good things to Jacob with “plenty of corn and wine”, while Esau is only promised to be able to DWELL in these things. The believer who rests in grace and favor will see manifold blessings come their way as a gift from God, while others will feel content simply to dwell near God’s goodness. Some Christians seem content to struggle through life, dependent on the world’s system, with heaven as their ultimate reward. We were saved to live for more than heaven! You and I are to have life more abundant (John 10:10), and corn and wine on the way!

God has destined you to receive the “right-hand” blessing. Be a recipient of grace and favor by faith today; receiving nothing by your works. The dew of heaven is ready for you. You are His beloved!

God is Love

1 John 4:10, 16-19

God is love! What a glorious statement; to know that God does not HAVE love, and He is not IN love, but He IS love. The very definition of His character is love, and everything that comes with love comes as a by-product of who God is. Anything and everything that we know or think we know about this blessed emotion, we know because God gave it to us, and taught it to us.

There are those in the church world who seem intent on making God out to be less than loving. They teach God as full of wrath and anger; ready to spew out judgment on America and all of its ills. They say that God is love, “but He is also holy”, as if the two are mutually exclusive. In their doctrine, there is very little room for a loving God because too much of that message and people might get the wrong idea about who God is.

Why are we so scared to declare that God is love? John was not afraid to say it; so much so that his title has become, “The Apostle of Love”. He knew how loved that he was, calling himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved” some five times in the book that bears his name, and then stating, “God is love” in 1 John 4:16. If declaring God to be full of unconditional love is a dangerous message, then John must have been the number one enemy of the early church!

All that we understand about love, we learned from God and His perfect example of love. “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). True love is not our perfect love toward God; for we do not have perfect love. Think about it; doesn’t your love for Him float up and down on a day-to-day basis? One moment you are passionately in love with Him, and the next moment your mind is a million miles away? Love cannot be defined by our actions and thoughts toward God, but by His actions and thoughts toward us. The perfect example of His love is then found in the cross, where He sacrificed His Son as the payment for our sins.

Paul told us that God showed His love to us, “in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). The cross was God’s shining example of His love for humanity. By sacrificing Jesus on the cross, God was providing a way for all of humanity to be saved without having to be punished for their wrong-doings. He loves the human race so much that He couldn’t bear the thought of judging each one of us for sin. Instead, He put all of that punishment into His Son so that we could have life and peace. Wow, what a love!

When we accept His perfect love for us, all of the fear that we have toward God and judgment will begin to fade away. His perfect love, dwelling inside of us, casts out all fear and torment, giving the enemy no foothold in our life to torture us with doubt and confusion. The believer that knows how loved that they are lives free from fear and discouragement and they position themselves for great things in life. This knowledge will not lead us away from the Father, but ever closer toward Him, for “We love Him, because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Hallelujah.

Defeating the Roaring Lion

1 Peter 5:7, 8

As believers, we have the awesome right to cast our cares onto Jesus because He cares for us. This right of casting is a continuous action, meaning that we can cast all of our cares on Him forever; with no limit to how much He will take upon Himself. In fact, Jesus bore a crown of thorns at the cross which pressed into His skull so that we would never have the cares of this life press into our minds.

Notice that the scripture that tells us to cast our cares on the Lord falls just in front of a scripture warning us about our adversary the devil. The equipment to overcome the devil is found in casting our cares upon the Lord. We are helpless to face the foe with the cares of this life weighing us down, so as we cast them upon Jesus, we are free to win the battles of life.

The devil is our enemy and his intent is to “steal, kill and to destroy” (John 10:10). His Hebrew name is “Satan” which means, “the accuser”. Anytime you read a reference to the devil, learn to insert the meaning of his name into the sentence, that way you are quick to remember what his purposes are. He is here to accuse each one of us before the Lord.

Not only does the devil accuse us before the Lord, he also hurls accusations at all of us as well. He is walking about, seeking whom he may devour. A predator does not run into the middle of a flock of sheep while they surround their shepherd; he waits until there is a sheep straggling away on his own and he attacks him there. Satan is watching intently for those believers who have wandered away from the protection of the shepherd, basically carrying their cares and burdens on their own. These sheep are vulnerable to attack and the wolf and the lion are quick to pounce.

The accusations that the roaring lion sends our way will always point to our works or lack thereof. The only weapon that Satan has to use against the believer is guilt and condemnation which are direct by-products of our knowledge of the law. He will heap guilt on you for things you have done and for the things that you didn’t do. This condemnation will cause you to hang your head before your loving Father and oftentimes leads to you doing “spiritual” things to try and appease God and earn His favor. When you begin to live this way, you surrender the free favors of God in order to walk only in what you can earn and maintain. Now, you have fallen back under the curse of the law (Galatians 3:10), and misery is soon to follow.

What kind of lion roars BEFORE it attacks? A lion stalks its prey and never roars until the kill is finished. To roar prior to pouncing would give away his position and intent, giving the prey a crucial heads up in escaping. At the cross, Jesus triumphed over the devil and his kingdom with a complete victory. Hebrews 2:14 says that Jesus’ death literally destroyed the devil, so any fierceness that he has now is perceived, not actual. He roars before he attacks so that the believer will be scared and powerless. Satan knows that he can do nothing to the believer, but as long as the believer doesn’t know that, he will have the same effect as if he could hurt them.

Your enemy has been de-fanged and de-clawed. Don’t let a roaring, powerless predator scare you. You have cast your cares on the shepherd and He definitely cares for you!

The Backbone of the New Covenant

Hebrews 10:15-18

The author of Hebrews quotes from Jeremiah 31:34, where God gives the promise of the New Covenant. That promise includes God’s laws being written into our hearts and minds, meaning that under the New Covenant we live according to the identification of the Spirit within us, not according to some written list of instructions. Granted, that identification of the Spirit will always line up with God’s holiness, but the higher form of living is being led by the heart, not by the hand.

The second promise is found in verse 17, and it includes a distinctive New Testament feature. In Jeremiah, God promises to forgive the iniquities and to remember the sin no more, but when it appears in Hebrews He promises that He will forget all sins and iniquities; not just forgive them. What a glorious point of the Covenant; that all of our sins and our iniquities are remembered no more by God. Sin speaks of your personal wrongdoings, while iniquities speak of the sins of your fathers or the “generational curse”. There is no punishment for you lingering from the sins of your family members, for Jesus took the curse away.

This second promise is the backbone of the New Covenant. All of the beauty of this deal between Jesus and His Father is found in the understanding of this statement. Whereas under the Old Covenant, God promised that He would never forget our sins and that He would visit them upon our household, in the New Covenant, God promises that He will NEVER remember our sins and that He will not hold them against us anymore.

To be perfectly honest, I am not sure why we are not going crazy with excitement over this verse. Perhaps we have not had it preached to us enough, or we have been led to believe that it has some form of condition or clause to it that takes away its power and influence. Read it slowly and soak it in believer: God has promised not to remember out sins and our iniquities anymore. WOW!

Since these sins are gone, there is no more offering for sin (Hebrews 10:18). No more lambs need be killed; no more priests need to work the altars. Jesus has paid our sin debt and now no more blood must be shed. Keeping sin consciousness in your heart causes you to go back and forth to God for washing and re-washing. Remember, God does not remember your sins; neither should you.

You say, “Pastor, don’t I need to confess my sins in order for the Lord to forgive me for them?” This idea comes from 1 John 1:9, where John says to confess your sins and He is faithful and just to forgive you of all unrighteousness. Look at the context of this passage as John is speaking to people that deny that they have any sin. He is speaking to sinners who do not see their need for a Savior. All they have to do is confess their need and He is faithful to cleanse them. When John speaks to you and me, he refers to us as “little children” and then tells us that if we sin we have an advocate with the Father (1 John 2:1).

Rest against the backbone of the New Covenant; the fact that God chooses to remember your sins no more. Hallelujah!

Once, For All

Hebrews 10:10-14

We are sanctified (set aside for service and made holy) through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ on the cross! I place the exclamation point because this should be a great point of emphasis. You and I are considered holy in the eyes of God because of the sacrifice of Jesus at the cross. The scripture speaks of the “offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all”, denoting that something happened in His body that was significant and that won’t happen again.

What occurred in the body of Jesus that made His offering of that body so important? Peter said, “Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness…” (1 Peter 2:24). He bore my sins and your sins in His body on the cross, so that we would die once to sin and then live righteousness. No lesson on how to be a good person can ever replace the message of the finished work of the cross, for in it our sins are crucified in Him forever.

The author of Hebrews then tells us that earthly priests stand daily ministering and offering the same sacrifices all day long, none of which can ever take away sins (Hebrews 10:11). There were no chairs in the tabernacle because the work of a priest was never finished. There was simply no time to sit down!

“But this man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God” (Hebrews 10:12). The King James Version says “this man”, but the Greek (which is properly reflected in the NIV) says, “This priest”, referring to Jesus’ role of high priest for us. Jesus is our High Priest, interceding before God for us; but He is in a seated position while doing so. Why would earthly priests have no opportunity to sit down, but our high priest is sitting at the right hand of God? Because once Jesus offered His blood as a sacrifice for our sins, having placed those sins in His body on the tree, there was no reason to remain standing. His work was finished!

In the Old Testament, the priest kept on his feet because the people continued to sin. There was a constant going back with the blood of bulls and goats (Hebrews 10:4). People are still sinning now, so why is Jesus not up offering the blood over and over again? Once He offered His body for sin, the sin issued was settled. There is no judgment left against man sinning, for all of that judgment was poured into Jesus. Men that go to hell now do not go because of their sins, but because “they believe not on me” Jesus said (John 16:9).

The one offering of Jesus Christ has perfected you forever (Hebrews 10:14). As Jesus is, so are you; thus you are viewed as perfect and righteous and holy in the eyes of God. Don’t be led astray by some who tell you that your holiness is a process and that you should work on it every day. You cannot be any more holy in the eyes of God than you are when you are resting in Jesus and His “one sacrifice”. Don’t keep sacrificing; IT IS FINISHED!