See His Goodness
Introduction
When we were children, my sister and I went on a picnic with our parents. The two of us were playing on what we all assumed was a disused railway track. Suddenly my mother shouted, ‘Jump! Get off the track!’ She had seen an express train coming down the track. Thankfully, we didn’t shout back, ‘Don’t threaten us. You can’t scare us.’ If we had done, I would not be in a position to write this now. We both jumped off the track.
The command arose out of a mother’s love for her children. God’s commands arise out of his goodness and his love for you. They are given for ‘your own good’ (Deuteronomy 10:13). See his goodness. The warnings of Jesus about the coming judgment and how to be ready for it come out of his love for you. In all the passages for today we see that obedience is the way to experience his goodness and be a magnet for his blessing.
Psalm 43:1–5
1 Vindicate me, my God,
and plead my cause
against an unfaithful nation.
Rescue me from those who are
deceitful and wicked.
2 You are God my stronghold.
Why have you rejected me?
Why must I go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?
3 Send me your light and your faithful care,
let them lead me;
let them bring me to your holy mountain,
to the place where you dwell.
4 Then I will go to the altar of God,
to God, my joy and my delight.
I will praise you with the lyre,
O God, my God.
5 Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Saviour and my God.
Commentary
The presence of God
Like many of the great men and women of God down the ages, the writer is struggling with spiritual depression. He is ‘downcast’ (v.5). His soul is ‘disturbed’ within him (v.5). Jesus himself cried out, ‘Now my heart is troubled’ and ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow’ (John 12:27; Mark 14:34).
The psalmist is surrounded by an ‘ungodly nation’ (Psalm 43:1a), a ‘deceitful and wicked’ people (v.1b). He is ‘oppressed by the enemy’ (v.2b). There is something very real and authentic about the Psalms. Life is not easy. We may face battles, opposition and even depression.
The right response is to turn to God. Pray for God’s guidance, and his presence, his ‘joy and delight’ (vv.3–4). The focal point of God’s presence with his people at that time was the temple in Jerusalem. Built on a ‘mountain’, it was ‘the place where you dwell’ (v.3). In the New Testament Jesus is the temple in whom God dwelt in all his fullness (see John 2:19–21; Colossians 1:19).
On the day of Pentecost, Jesus sent his Holy Spirit as the way in which God now dwells in his ‘holy temple’ – both in the individual and in the gathered community. ‘Church’ should never be boring. It should be a place of joy, delight and praise.
At its heart, obedience is all about turning to God, trusting his goodness, no matter what the situation. What we need in our darkness is the presence of God – and you can trust that is ultimately what you will find.
Prayer
Lord, please send your light and your truth; let them lead me into your presence (Psalm 43:3a).
Luke 12:35–59
Watchfulness
35 “Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, 36 like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. 37 It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. Truly I tell you, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. 38 It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the middle of the night or toward daybreak. 39 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. 40 You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.”
41 Peter asked, “Lord, are you telling this parable to us, or to everyone?”
42 The Lord answered, “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? 43 It will be good for that servant whom the master finds doing so when he returns. 44 Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. 45 But suppose the servant says to himself, ‘My master is taking a long time in coming,’ and he then begins to beat the other servants, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk. 46 The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers.
47 “The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows. 48 But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.
Not Peace but Division
49 “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 50 But I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed! 51 Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. 52 From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. 53 They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”
Interpreting the Times
54 He said to the crowd: “When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘It’s going to rain,’ and it does. 55 And when the south wind blows, you say, ‘It’s going to be hot,’ and it is. 56 Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time?
57 “Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right? 58 As you are going with your adversary to the magistrate, try hard to be reconciled on the way, or your adversary may drag you off to the judge, and the judge turn you over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison. 59 I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.”
Commentary
The reward of Jesus
Life is a wonderful gift. You have been ‘entrusted’ (v.48) with talents and responsibilities. It really matters how you use these. The warnings that run throughout this passage about how you use your life are given out of love. Jesus warns of the coming judgment and how to be ready.
Jesus calls you to be ‘ready for service’ (v.35). Expect Jesus to return today. What a wonderful reward is offered to those who are ready: ‘It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes’ (v.37a). You will sit and eat with Jesus and he will serve you (v.37b). The goodness and grace of Jesus is almost unbelievable. He reverses the roles in a way that most human beings would never even contemplate.
Be ready for when he returns (v.40). Be like the ‘faithful and wise manager’ (v.42). You will be richly rewarded; ‘It will be good’ for you (v.43). He will put you ‘in charge of all his possessions’ (v.44).
There is a danger in thinking that Jesus won’t come yet (v.45), that we can carry on doing exactly what we like and that there will be plenty of time to put things right.
It is the fact that the master ‘is taking a long time in coming’ that deceives the unwise servant into neglecting his task and not acting as the master would want (v.45). To many people today, God seems a distant or irrelevant figure with little impact on their lives. This story is a warning to remind us that there will one day be a reckoning for all that we do, and we would be wise to act on that now.
Jesus says that if you know something is wrong and do it anyway, that is worse than doing something wrong when you didn’t realise. But the latter is still wrong (vv.47–48).
Jesus calls you to obey and to serve him with faithfulness and wisdom. If you use what God has given you wisely, he blesses you by giving you more responsibility. The more that God has given you, the greater the responsibility to use it well. Jesus says, ‘From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked’ (v.48b).
If you have a happy home, a good education, health, friends, job, food, clothes, holidays; if you have access to the Bible, freedom to meet together and pray, and so on, then you are one of those to whom much has been given. And much will be expected.
Jesus himself did not have an easy life. He says, ‘I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed!’ (v.50). Jesus lived under the shadow of the cross. He knew that he was going to have to suffer. When we know we are facing some difficulty or challenge in our lives, we often feel ‘constrained until it is accomplished’ (v.50, RSV). If we feel this with relatively small things, how terrible it must have been for Jesus as he saw ahead the horrors of crucifixion, bearing the sin of the whole world.
This would be the means by which Jesus would bring us peace with God. Yet Jesus says that at one level we will not always experience an outward peace. Rather, there will be division: ‘Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division’ (v.51). This division can even be with those who are most closely related to us. There may be division between those who are for Jesus and those who are against him.
Yet you are called to be a peacemaker. Always ‘try hard to be reconciled’ (v.58).
Prayer
Lord, help me to be always ready for service and to make the most of everything that you have entrusted to me.
Deuteronomy 11:1–12:32
Love and Obey the LORD
11 Love the LORD your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands always. 2 Remember today that your children were not the ones who saw and experienced the discipline of the LORD your God: his majesty, his mighty hand, his outstretched arm; 3 the signs he performed and the things he did in the heart of Egypt, both to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his whole country; 4 what he did to the Egyptian army, to its horses and chariots, how he overwhelmed them with the waters of the Red Sea as they were pursuing you, and how the LORD brought lasting ruin on them. 5 It was not your children who saw what he did for you in the wilderness until you arrived at this place, 6 and what he did to Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab the Reubenite, when the earth opened its mouth right in the middle of all Israel and swallowed them up with their households, their tents and every living thing that belonged to them. 7 But it was your own eyes that saw all these great things the LORD has done.
8 Observe therefore all the commands I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and take over the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, 9 and so that you may live long in the land the LORD swore to your ancestors to give to them and their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10 The land you are entering to take over is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you planted your seed and irrigated it by foot as in a vegetable garden. 11 But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. 12 It is a land the LORD your God cares for; the eyes of the LORD your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end.
13 So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today—to love the LORD your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul — 14 then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and olive oil. 15 I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied.
16 Be careful, or you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them. 17 Then the LORD’s anger will burn against you, and he will shut up the heavens so that it will not rain and the ground will yield no produce, and you will soon perish from the good land the LORD is giving you. 18 Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 19 Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 20 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, 21 so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land the LORD swore to give your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.
22 If you carefully observe all these commands I am giving you to follow—to love the LORD your God, to walk in obedience to him and to hold fast to him— 23 then the LORD will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations larger and stronger than you. 24 Every place where you set your foot will be yours: Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the Euphrates River to the Mediterranean Sea. 25 No one will be able to stand against you. The LORD your God, as he promised you, will put the terror and fear of you on the whole land, wherever you go.
26 See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse — 27 the blessing if you obey the commands of the LORD your God that I am giving you today; 28 the curse if you disobey the commands of the LORD your God and turn from the way that I command you today by following other gods, which you have not known. 29 When the LORD your God has brought you into the land you are entering to possess, you are to proclaim on Mount Gerizim the blessings, and on Mount Ebal the curses. 30 As you know, these mountains are across the Jordan, westward, toward the setting sun, near the great trees of Moreh, in the territory of those Canaanites living in the Arabah in the vicinity of Gilgal. 31 You are about to cross the Jordan to enter and take possession of the land the LORD your God is giving you. When you have taken it over and are living there, 32 be sure that you obey all the decrees and laws I am setting before you today.
The One Place of Worship
12 These are the decrees and laws you must be careful to follow in the land that the LORD, the God of your ancestors, has given you to possess—as long as you live in the land. 2 Destroy completely all the places on the high mountains, on the hills and under every spreading tree, where the nations you are dispossessing worship their gods. 3 Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and burn their Asherah poles in the fire; cut down the idols of their gods and wipe out their names from those places.
4 You must not worship the LORD your God in their way. 5 But you are to seek the place the LORD your God will choose from among all your tribes to put his Name there for his dwelling. To that place you must go; 6 there bring your burnt offerings and sacrifices, your tithes and special gifts, what you have vowed to give and your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks. 7 There, in the presence of the LORD your God, you and your families shall eat and shall rejoice in everything you have put your hand to, because the LORD your God has blessed you.
8 You are not to do as we do here today, everyone doing as they see fit, 9 since you have not yet reached the resting place and the inheritance the LORD your God is giving you. 10 But you will cross the Jordan and settle in the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, and he will give you rest from all your enemies around you so that you will live in safety. 11 Then to the place the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his Name —there you are to bring everything I command you: your burnt offerings and sacrifices, your tithes and special gifts, and all the choice possessions you have vowed to the LORD. 12 And there rejoice before the LORD your God—you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites from your towns who have no allotment or inheritance of their own. 13 Be careful not to sacrifice your burnt offerings anywhere you please. 14 Offer them only at the place the LORD will choose in one of your tribes, and there observe everything I command you.
15 Nevertheless, you may slaughter your animals in any of your towns and eat as much of the meat as you want, as if it were gazelle or deer, according to the blessing the LORD your God gives you. Both the ceremonially unclean and the clean may eat it. 16 But you must not eat the blood; pour it out on the ground like water. 17 You must not eat in your own towns the tithe of your corn and new wine and olive oil, or the firstborn of your herds and flocks, or whatever you have vowed to give, or your freewill offerings or special gifts. 18 Instead, you are to eat them in the presence of the LORD your God at the place the LORD your God will choose —you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites from your towns—and you are to rejoice before the LORD your God in everything you put your hand to. 19 Be careful not to neglect the Levites as long as you live in your land.
20 When the LORD your God has enlarged your territory as he promised you, and you crave meat and say, “I would like some meat,” then you may eat as much of it as you want. 21 If the place where the LORD your God chooses to put his Name is too far away from you, you may slaughter animals from the herds and flocks the LORD has given you, as I have commanded you, and in your own towns you may eat as much of them as you want. 22 Eat them as you would gazelle or deer. Both the ceremonially unclean and the clean may eat. 23 But be sure you do not eat the blood, because the blood is the life, and you must not eat the life with the meat. 24 You must not eat the blood; pour it out on the ground like water. 25 Do not eat it, so that it may go well with you and your children after you, because you will be doing what is right in the eyes of the LORD.
26 But take your consecrated things and whatever you have vowed to give, and go to the place the LORD will choose. 27 Present your burnt offerings on the altar of the LORD your God, both the meat and the blood. The blood of your sacrifices must be poured beside the altar of the LORD your God, but you may eat the meat. 28 Be careful to obey all these regulations I am giving you, so that it may always go well with you and your children after you, because you will be doing what is good and right in the eyes of the LORD your God.
29 The LORD your God will cut off before you the nations you are about to invade and dispossess. But when you have driven them out and settled in their land, 30 and after they have been destroyed before you, be careful not to be ensnared by inquiring about their gods, saying, “How do these nations serve their gods? We will do the same.” 31 You must not worship the LORD your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the LORD hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.
32 See that you do all I command you; do not add to it or take away from it.
Commentary
The strength of God
Jesus was not the first to connect love and obedience. The law of Moses was given by God out of love. This calls for a response of love: ‘So love God, your God; guard well his rules and regulations; obey his commandments for the rest of time’ (11:1, MSG).
Ensure that the words of God permeate your entire being. ‘Place these words on your hearts. Get them deep inside you... Teach them to your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning until you fall into bed at night’ (vv.18–19, MSG).
Know, learn and teach God’s word and put it into practice in your life. Great blessing comes from living openly and honestly, walking in the light of God’s truth as he reveals it in his word.
He promises his blessings to those who faithfully obey the commands he gives – to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul’ (v.13; see also vv.22,27).
Disobedience is very draining and destructive. I know that in my own life deliberate sin leads to guilt and saps energy. Ultimately, we end up miserable. Moses said in effect, ‘See his goodness’: ‘it was your own eyes that saw all the great things the Lord has done. Observe therefore all the commands I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength…’ (vv.7,8). Obedience brings the blessing of strength.
Make good choices. God says, ‘I’ve brought you today to the crossroads of Blessing and Curse’ (v.26, MSG). If you choose obedience you will be blessed by God; you will be a magnet for his blessings. Wisdom is choosing to do now what you will be satisfied with later.
The temptation is to disobey God because we see everyone around us doing that. Moses says, ‘Be careful not to be ensnared by enquiring about their gods, saying, “How do these nations serve their gods? We will do the same”’ (12:30). He goes on to say, ‘Do all I command you; do not add to it or take away from it’ (v.32).
Prayer
Lord, thank you for all your goodness. Please fill me today with your love and strength, joy and delight, faithfulness and wisdom.
Pippa adds
Deuteronomy 11:18 says:
‘Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the door-frames of your houses and on your gates (vv.18–20).’
Learn verses while you are young. (It is much harder when you are getting older!) I’m not sure we did a very good job teaching the Bible to our children. I did occasionally stick a verse up here or there!
But the verses I learnt when I was younger, I’ve gone back to again and again and again.
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References
The Bible with Nicky and Pippa Gumbel (commentary formerly known as Bible in One Year) ©Alpha International 2009. All Rights Reserved.
Compilation of daily Bible readings © Hodder & Stoughton Limited 1988. Published by Hodder & Stoughton Limited as the Bible in One Year.
Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version Anglicised, Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 Biblica, formerly International Bible Society. Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Publishers, an Hachette UK company. All rights reserved. ‘NIV’ is a registered trademark of Biblica. UK trademark number 1448790.
Scripture quotations marked (AMP) taken from the Amplified® Bible, Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)
Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from The Message, copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.