“…for the zeal of Your house has consumed me…”

— Psalm 69:9

There was a man who was watching sailboats out on a large lake. The breeze was brisk and the sails were filled, and he noticed one boat did not seem to be moving. He asked a friend, “That boat does not seem to be moving. Why not? The sails are full.” And his friend replied, “It is anchored.”

A lot of Christians may come to church and put up their sails; they may even read the Bible. Yet they are anchored into some sin, some carnal habit, something they refuse to give up. Thus, they make no progress in their spiritual life.

Christ would have us to grow in our zeal for Him. If the divine principle is within us, if we truly have that which comes from God, it will produce within us a zeal, a flame, and a fire. A flame consumes everything about it. It will continue to grow, transforming everything it touches into its own nature of fire, but a painted flame, a painted fire, will never grow.

As Jim Elliot said, “He makes his ministers a flame of fire.” Let’s ask ourselves: Are we ignitable? Are we weak? Yes, weak in ourselves, but strong in God. May our prayer be that cry of young David Brainerd, the missionary to the American Indians, who said, “O God, would that I were a flaming fire in Thy service.” Wouldn’t it be a fantastic thing if ten thousand sparks would spread out from our churches and set afire our communities for Jesus Christ?

Father, forgive us that we can be wildly enthusiastic about those things that interest us here on earth, while remaining diffident to You. Give us strength for today, Lord, to love You above all…

LORD, GIVE ME STRENGTH FOR TODAY
TO BE MORE ZEALOUS FOR YOU!

“Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first.”

— Revelation 2:4

Do you love the Lord more than you did ten years ago? I can think of a little girl of about six who was kneeling beside her bed saying her prayers. Her mother was sitting on the bed, helping her by suggesting things for her to pray about. Finally, her mother said, “Darling, why don’t you pray that God might enable you to love Jesus more.”

The little girl looked up in astonishment and said, “But mommy, I am just crazy about Him now.” I wonder how many could really say that today. Paul said, “If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be cursed!” (1 Corinthians 16:22).

In one of the great art museums, a poor man, not well dressed, was standing in front of a picture of Christ on the cross. He was standing there with his hat in his hand, looking at the picture for a long time. Finally, totally oblivious of those who were in the museum about him, he said, “Bless Him. Bless Him. I love Him. I love Him.” The quiet mumbling stopped and all turned their eyes upon him.

Another man walked up to him, took him by the arm, and said, “I love Him, too.”

A third said, “And so do I.”

A fourth, “And I, also.” A little group of people, totally unknown to one another, was drawn together by the love they had for Christ.

It is God’s grace in our hearts that causes us to love the Savior.

Oh, Lord Jesus, forgive me for ever taking Your cross for granted. Please, increase my love for You. As the hymnist said, “let me never, never outlive my love for Thee”…

IN GOD’S STRENGTH, OUR LOVE
FOR JESUS GROWS DAILY.

“The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands.”

— Revelation 9:20

The greatest confrontation that is to be found in all of the Old Testament and perhaps in all of literature, save that confrontation of Christ himself with Pilate, is Moses’ confrontation of Pharaoh. Here we see the true God dealing with unbelief and bringing these ten grievous plagues upon the nation of Egypt and destroying it.

These were not the end of plagues in the Bible. We find throughout the whole Old Testament that there were plagues that came upon not only the pagan nations around Israel, but came upon the people of Israel repeatedly because of their sins. And down through the last 2,000 years there have been plagues that have come upon the people of this earth, most notable of which was the bubonic plague in the 14th century, which killed one-third of all of the people of Europe.

And now we are asked could God send a plague today? Well, we do know that some of the sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS, are ravaging some populations in our world. In effect, we sent a letter to God, and we said, “God, we have thrown off Your law. We have rebelled against your Commandments. We are in revolt against your dominion, and we will now go our own way and do our own thing.”

But people are now suffering the physical, emotional, and spiritual consequences of defying God’s law. STDs are a type of plague upon all sexual promiscuity, whether heterosexual or homosexual. God will bring it to an end.

Dear God, thank You so much that You spare Your obedient children from all sorts of diseases when we follow You. Of course, the ultimate healing is when You take us home and free us from this body of death. Help us to show compassion to those suffering for whatever reason…

LORD, GIVE ME STRENGTH FOR
TODAY TO AVOID SEXUAL SIN.

“For I will at this time send all My plagues upon you and your servants and your people, so that you may know that there is none like Me in all the earth.”

— Exodus 9:14

As noted, when Moses confronted Pharaoh, God judged the false gods of the Egyptians, one by one in each of the plagues.

The seventh plague was hail that came down from the sky. One of the gods of the Egyptians was the god Shu, who was the god of the atmosphere. Now it is hard to go out to worship the god of the atmosphere when you are being pounded with large hail stones.

And then there were the locusts that swarmed all over the land, and this was a rebuke of the god Serapis, who supposedly was the protector against locusts. Their prayers to him were of no avail as the whole country was black with locusts.

And then there was the darkness that came upon the land for three days, which was an assault upon the chief god of the Egyptians, the god Rah. Rah was the sun god, the principal deity of ancient Egypt, and here this deity was blotted out.

And finally, in the last plague upon Pharaoh himself who was supposedly descended from the sun god Rah, his first born was killed. This was God’s attack upon Satan and Egypt. Egypt here is a picture of the world—an unbelieving, godless, pagan world. And Pharaoh is a picture of Satan, who is the god of this world. Moses was a representative of the living God who took on all of the gods of Egypt.

In the ten plagues, God shows the world for all time that He alone deserves our worship.

Sovereign One, give us the strength to worship You alone. When we see plagues coming back on a worldwide scale, we tremble. Keep us close to You and keep us safe from demonic power…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, WE ARE SEALED
AND KEPT SAFE IN AN EVIL WORLD.

“…if you will not let My people go, indeed I will send swarms of flies on you…all the livestock of Egypt died, but not one of the livestock of the children of Israel died…and it became a boil breaking forth with blisters upon man and beast…”

— Exodus 8:21, 9:6, 10

In the ten plagues, the Lord God did not just judge the Egyptians for their 430 year enslavement of the Hebrews, He also judged their false gods, as we have seen.

The fourth plague involved the flies. The Hebrew word means swarms. Scholars say they probably were not flies, but were were the beetles common to that area, called the scarabaeus from which we get the word scarab, which is a black beetle. I am sure after they had a couple hundred thousand of those in every home in Egypt they were not too thrilled with the god of Scarabaeus.

The fifth plague was a disease of cattle. The god Apis was the sacred bull. You’ve seen many Egyptian figures of a man with the head of a bull that they worshiped.

And sixth, there was the god Typhon. This was when the dust caused the breaking forth of boils and blisters. Typhon was a magical genie that was worshiped in ancient Egypt. Here was a god who was connected with the magicians, who were the priests of the Egyptian religion. We find here that the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boil was upon the magicians and upon all of Egypt. So their power was broken.

God alone is to be worshiped.

Lord of all, today we see people turning to false gods and playing with spiritual forces they know nothing about. Free us from Beelzebub, “The Lord of the flies.” Thank You for calling us out of darkness and into Your marvelous light…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH ALONE,
CAN WE STAND AGAINST EVIL.

“But if you refuse to let them go, then I will plague all your borders with frogs….All the dust of the land became gnats throughout all the land of Egypt.”

— Exodus 8:2, 17

In the 10 plagues of Exodus, we have a confrontation between the one true God and the false gods of the Egyptian people.

Plague number two was an attack by frogs. The frogs were one of the many gods of Egypt. It was the goddess Hekt, which is a form of the Egyptian word Hathor, who was the goddess of love and mirth and joy. It is from this goddess Hathor that the Greeks got the name of their goddess Aphrodite, the goddess of love and mirth and joy.

But when the frogs started hopping over everything—in their houses, into their ovens and into their food, even into their beds—they didn’t have much mirth and joy. And then when they all died and the nation stank, they were not too thrilled, I believe, with the goddess Hekt or Hathor.

Plague number three was probably fleas. Now one of the gods of the Egyptians was the god of earth, Seb, and they worshiped the earth. We can picture those fleas hopping up all over the place. The Egyptians’ reverence for their earth god Seb would no doubt have cooled when they saw their land covered with trillions of fleas. These two hard lessons underscore the fact that we should worship the one true God alone.

Lord of lords, free us from all false worship and spirituality of our day. Make us aware of subtle forms of idolatry that are attached to seemingly good causes. May we worship You, the Triune God, and You alone…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, WE CAN
OVERCOME FALSE RELIGION.

“Thus says the Lord, ‘In this you shall know that I am the Lord: Indeed, I will strike the waters of the Nile with the rod that is in my hand, and they shall be turned to blood.’”

— Exodus 7:17

In the Book of Exodus, we see the great confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh. This is the Old Testament counterpart to that confrontation between Christ and Pilate, the representative of the pagan Roman Empire, with Pharaoh being the representative of the pagan empire of Egypt.

Here is a classic confrontation between good and evil, Christ and Satan. It is the high point in the Old Testament. It is that point to which the Jews looked for centuries afterward remembering the great acts of God.

Now these ten plagues are not simply punishments upon Pharaoh and the people of Egypt, but they are a concerted effort on the part of Jehovah to destroy the idolatry of the Egyptian people and to bring to naught their many gods. And so, in the plagues, we have a systematic, cumulative crescendo of attacks on the gods of Egypt before the watching Egyptians.

Take, for example, the first plague, the attack that God made was upon the River Nile, which was a great god to the Egyptians because it was the source of all their livelihoods. Egypt of course is a huge desert with the Nile River running down it, giving about a 50 mile wide swath of greenery and life. Without the Nile, that nation would dry up and blow away. And so first of all, God attacked that, the great god of the Nile.

God alone is to be worshiped and not any false idols.

God above all gods, give us the strength of heart to worship only You. We ask that You cast down any idol in our lives and that our worship might be true and right…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, WE CAN AVOID IDOLATRY
AND DESTROY ANY IDOLS IN OUR LIVES.

“But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.”

— Mark 4:6

A man who owned a vineyard noticed that one of the plants was not doing well. It was sickly for two years, and it had never produced grapes of any significance. He wondered why all of those around it were quite filled with fruit, and so he decided to dig down around it and see if there was some problem in the soil. He dug down about six inches and ran into boards underneath the plant covering an old abandoned well. When he took away the boards he noticed that the roots of the plant had gone down between the cracks and were dangling in the empty well, trying desperately to get nourishment. The plant could not grow. What a picture that is of many Christians. They do not grow and they do not produce fruit because their roots are not into the Word of God.

I would ask you this: Are the roots of your faith reaching down into the Word of God? If they are not, you will not be growing. If the true principle of grace is in your life, it will be giving you a hunger for the Word of God.

If you are growing in faith, you will be growing in repentance, too. Are you growing in that area in your Christian life? Our whole life is a continuation of repentance. Failure to repent is one of the sure ways to stop spiritual growth. Is there some sin in your life that is keeping you from growing? Ask God to show you.

Lord, help me to be mindful of the depravity in my own soul. Help me to live in daily repentance, always taking time to confess my sins before You. Thank You for Your blood that washes away my sins and cleanses me from all unrighteousness…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, WE CAN SEE OUR SINS, CONFESS
THEM, TURN FROM THEM, AND BE FORGIVEN DAILY.

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”

— Exodus 20:17

In modern America, we are like mice wandering in a maze—we don’t know where we are going. We don’t know which way to head, or even which way is which way, because we have turned away from the Word of God and from the instructions that our Founding Fathers believed in and looked to and upon which this great country was built.

One of those areas in which we have lost our way is the realm of economics. While the Soviet Union imploded because of forced socialism, many in our own country have been clamoring for less violent versions of socialism.

Though we have seen the greatest experiment in socialism in the history of the world in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics come to a disastrous end, crash in flames and burn, bring utter disaster and bankruptcy and perhaps famine to that nation, still socialism is alive, though not well, in America. I think one of the great lessons we need to learn from the events of recent years is that socialism doesn’t work. It doesn’t work in the Soviet Union. It doesn’t work in Poland. It doesn’t work in East Germany. It doesn’t work in Cuba. It doesn’t work in China. It doesn’t work in America. What is it going to take to wake us up to that fact?

Socialism is built on covetousness, but the Bible says, “You shall not covet.” The Bible also says, “You shall not steal”—not even if you are the federal government.

Lord, give me strength for today to see through the politicians’ wily plans to buy votes from the unsuspecting. Lord, forgive us for stealing from our neighbor through exorbitant taxation. Help us to work for our daily bread and to share with others…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, WE ARE
CONTENT, NOT COVETOUS.

“But he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”

— John 3:18

A minister once said, “I have the most marvelous news for lost sinners, if only I could find one.” He added, “The problem with most people in America is not getting them saved. They think they are saved already. The problem is getting them lost.”

Unless we understand the bad news, we can’t begin to appreciate the good news. Jesus says the world is condemned already. But so many people suppose that if they just live a reasonably decent life, it will be all right with them in the end and they will finally make it.

It was 12:45 A.M. on April 15, 1912, when the first lifeboat was lowered from the stricken Titanic, one hour after the ship struck the iceberg. The passengers were told that they must leave the ship. Many of them didn’t believe it. Even if the ship was taking on water, they were quite confident they were in no danger. Surely this ship couldn’t sink, after all, a White Star Line employee at the time of Titanic’s launch on May 31, 1911 had said, “Not even God himself could sink this ship.” So they went inside into the warmth of the interior chambers and refused the offer of a lifeboat. Most of them died. They couldn’t accept the good news that there was a place in the lifeboat for them, because they wouldn’t accept the bad news that they were in danger of perishing.

We cannot be saved until we first recognize that we are lost and need to be saved.

Dear Lord, how permanent this life seems to be. But in reality, how fleeting it is. Help us to live for eternity and not just for the very short time of our earthly sojourn. Give us strength for today to share the Gospel with those who are lost, even if they don’t know it…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, WE REALIZE WE
ARE LOST AND IN NEED OF BEING SAVED.