Hear and obey!

Friday, December 13, 2013 Devotions: Ps 31, 35; Haggai 1:1-15; Rev 2:18-29; Mt 23:27-39 Lord, I seek refuge in You; keep me from being put to shame. For Your name's sake, lead and guide me in everlasting paths of righteousness; into Your hand I commit my spirit, as Jesus did on the cross. I know you hate my idolatries; so I renounce them and determine, with God's help, to rejoice and be glad for Your steadfast love. It's true, Lord, that I am spent with sorrow, bowed down under the ongoing burdens of my life. But I know You have seen my afflictions and have taken heed of my adversities. Be gracious to me, Lord God, and ease my distress when I obey Your commands. I'm sorry for my frailties and willfulness. Let Your face shine on me, Your servant. Let all His saints love our God, Who preserves the faithful and abundantly punishes those who act with hauteur and arrogance. Let us be strong and take courage, and wait for the Lord. Let God content with those ho contend with me. Let all who devise evil be confounded. YHWH, take away my bent to sinning; let me seek You as diligently as I have indulged in ungodly desires and actions. Let every one of my bones shout His praise—Who is like my God? Vindicate me, Lord, according to Your righteousness, and in Your steadfast love and faithfulness. YHWH directed Haggai to address Zerubbabel and Jeshua, who led God's people in Jerusalem; this was on the first day of the sixth month—late summer of 520 B.C. The message: you live in paneled houses; now is the time to rebuild the house of our God, His temple. You languish because you have failed to serve Me with devotion—so the land and commerce languish. When Zerubbabel and Jeshua rallied the people, God sent this message through Haggai: I Am with you, says the Lord. And the people worked hard to restore the house of YHWH, Lord of hosts. John recorded Jesus' words to the church at Thyatira: The words of the Son of God, Who has eyes like flames of fire, and Whose feet are like burnished bronze: 'I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed those done earlier. But I have this against you: you tolerate the woman Jezebel who styles herself a prophetess; she teaches and beguiles My people to immoral acts and to eat food sacrificed to idols. I have given her time to repent, but she refuses. So look now: I will throw her on a sickbed; I will throw into great tribulation those who join in her adulteries, unless they also repent. And I will strike her children dead! All the churches will know that I Am He Who searches hearts and minds; and I will repay each one for your individual choices and acts. Now, to the others, who have not followed Jezebel into sin and have shunned the so-called 'deep things of Satan,' I lay no further burdens on you; only hold fast to what you have now, until I come to you. All who conquer and who are steadfast to the end, I will give power over the Gentiles; and they will rule with a rod of iron, My delegated power, as I received it from My Father. I give to these faithful ones the morning star! Let all who can hear note what the Spirit is saying to the churches.' Jesus confronted the Jerusalem scribes and Pharisees: 'Woe to you, hypocrites. You are like whitewashed tombs, outwardly beautiful, but full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, claiming you would not have harmed them, if you lived in the days when your ancestors murdered My servants. But in this, you witness against yourselves—that you stand in the traditions of My enemies; you are the offspring of those who murdered the prophets. So go ahead: fill up the measure of your fathers, you serpents! Brood of vipers, how will you escape being sentenced to Gehenna? I send prophets, wise men and scribes to you, and you kill some, crucify others, scourge them in your synagogues and pursue them from town to town. All the innocent blood ever shed is on your hands, from the blood of innocent Abel to that of Zechariah, son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar, in My own house! All I have declared will fall upon this generation. O Jerusalem! Murdering God's prophets and stoning those God sends to you! How often I would have gathered your children together, sheltering them as a hen shelters her brood in a barnyard fire, but you would not have it. Now look: your house is forsaken and desolate. I tell you solemnly: you will not see Me until the day you proclaim “Blessed is He Who comes in the name of the Lord.”'