“I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but as for the one who has nothing, even what they have will be taken away.”

— Luke 19:26

There are a lot of people who are like a little boy riding on his rocking horse. There is a great deal of motion and action, but very little progress. A lot of people in the church are like that. They may go through a lot of motion, be involved in all sorts of things, but they do not really make progress in their spiritual life. True use of the means of grace: i.e., the Word and the Sacraments, will inevitably cause us to grow because grace always grows. It is always progressing. Those who grow will be given more (Luke 19:26). That is the absolute law of God.

One farmer in a country church used to say at testimony time: “Well, I haven’t made much progress, but I am established.” One day he was bringing his wagon full of logs into town; the road was wet and the wheels sank into the mud. One of his fellow church members, who did not really agree with his view of the Christian life, happened to be passing by. He said, “Well, Farmer Jones, I see that though you are not making much progress, you are established.” What some people call “established in the faith” may be little more than established in the mud.

If you truly have the grace of God, the principle of life within you, there is growth. That means you will be growing in faith and love, peace, joy, and all the other fruit of the Spirit will show themselves in your life.

Jesus, the true Gardener, let Your grace produce fruit in my life. Give me the strength today to partake regularly in the means of grace…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, THE FRUIT OF
THE SPIRIT WILL ABOUND IN US.

“And other seed fell on good ground, and it yielded grain that sprang up and increased by thirty, sixty, or a hundred times as much.”

— Mark 4:8

Divine grace always grows. The good seed of God will inevitably grow. There is no doubt about it. Place a live bulb in the ground; and a stalk and buds will appear, and the lilies will eventually sway in the breeze. Put a post and a sapling into the ground and what happens? Immediately the post begins to decay and the sapling begins to grow. Come back twenty years later and, should the post still be there, you will find it completely decayed, but the little sapling will be a huge tree.

So it is with our lives. If it is true that divine grace always grows, then it is vitally true that this teaching of Jesus would instruct us to make certain that we have the true spiritual principle within.

I would ask you, are you a post or a tree? Go back twenty years. There are many people who grew up in the church, attended regularly, but there was never any divine principle of life within them. Are they growing in love and zeal and service to God, or do they actually find that there is less zeal, less desire for prayer, less interest in the Word of God, less interest in the worship of God, less interest in the service of God? If so, then you are a post and not a tree. Over the years you have decayed. You have not grown, and you need to seriously consider whether or not you have the true principle of life within you.

Lord of the harvest, may Your strength, Your power, Your Holy Spirit bring forth the fruit in our lives that You desire. Weed out and prune us that we may yield an eternal harvest a hundredfold…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, WE
CAN GROW AND BEAR FRUIT.

“For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from him who has nothing, even what he has will be taken away.”

— Matthew 25:29

As we continue to look at this verse, we note that many people often lament the fact that it seems that the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Money makes money; nothing succeeds like success. However, this is a principle Christ built into the universe and enunciated in his earthly ministry.

The essence of that principle is: Use it or lose it. Money does not make money, unless it is put to use. In the parable of the talents, there was the third servant who hid his talent in the ground. His money was buried and produced nothing. If he had used it, it would have produced more.

The principle certainly applies in the physical realm of the body. Build your muscles; don’t let them atrophy. This is also true in the case of our work. Is it not a fact that the person who is able to do something finds that he is given it to do? We will then unquestionably find that opportunities will grow with the exercise of our gifts.

It is also true in the moral area of conscience. Our characters will develop in due proportion to those aspects we give our time to exercise and develop. Would that more of that time were spent studying the Word of God.

If you are not being used by God as much as you wish, make yourself available to Him.

Divine Master, give us strength today to serve You well. We desire to be good stewards of Your gifts to us, and we know that You reward service with more service…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, WE SERVE
HIM BY SERVING OTHERS.

“For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from him who has nothing, even what he has will be taken away.”

— Matthew 25:29

In the Greek text the words of Jesus have a certain forcefulness about them that often is lost in the translation. I read the words of Jesus after one of His judgment parables in Matthew, “Then He will say to those at the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his angels’” (Matthew 25:41). I thought to myself, “What must it be like for a human being to actually hear those words intoned by the Judge of all of the earth upon himself?” It seemed to me that every single person on this earth ought to cast himself upon his knees and pray, “O God, may these ears never hear those words come from Your mouth.”

The great 19th century British preacher Charles Spurgeon said that there are two great principles of grace enunciated in the Bible. The first one is this: God gives grace to the empty…to the needy…to the poor…to the humble. Second: to those whom God has granted His grace, He is in the habit of granting more. This is the great truth of our text above, Matthew 25:29.

If you are in Christ, in one sense you are already a success. If you are not in Christ, no matter how well accomplished you may be, you are ultimately a failure. What does it profit you if you gain the whole world, but lose your soul? Serve the Lord with all your heart, and He will bless you with more opportunity and joy to serve Him.

Father God, Giver of all great gifts, thank You for Your grace in our lives and the abundance of Your blessings. Help us to be mindful of our responsibilities to share with others…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, WE
CAN SERVE HIM WITH JOY.

“If Christ has not risen, then our preaching is vain, and your faith is also vain.”

— 1 Corinthians 15:14

Some people begin with the assumption that miracles don’t happen; therefore, Christ could not have been raised from the dead. But this does not explain any of the facts. It is also circular logic. It’s merely a presupposition that disallows the possibility of the resurrection.

But the truth is that Christ rose from the dead. The greatest problem mankind has ever faced, generation after generation, century after century, millennia after millennia, has been solved by Jesus. Death has been with us since the fall of man, and always people have asked, “If a man dies, will he rise again?” Jesus Christ has given us irrefutable evidence that the answer is “Yes!”

The greatest efforts of the most brilliant, unbelieving skeptical minds of the last 2,000 years to disprove the resurrection have all come to naught. There is not one of them that could stay afloat in a debate for 15 minutes when the evidence is given a fair examination.

Notice even the transformation of the Sabbath from the Jewish Saturday to the Christian Sunday. The resurrection took place amidst Jews who were committed and zealous Sabbatarians. How is it that suddenly the Christian church changed from the seventh day Sabbath to the first day? Because the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead happened on the first day of the week.

When Jesus walked out of the tomb, He changed human history for all time. He put His seal on everything He said. We can believe in Him because He is truly alive forevermore.

Dear Lord, thank You that what we believe has been sealed for all time. Thank You that You have solved once and for all our greatest need and by successfully taking on death, You have solved life’s biggest problem…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, WE CAN
PROCLAIM THAT DEATH IS DEAD.

“…to whom He presented Himself alive after His passion by many infallible proofs, appearing to them for forty days…”

— Acts 1:3

When Jesus walked out of His own tomb 2,000 years ago, He changed all of history. His appearances to His disciples are crucial. He appeared to one, then to another, then to two, then to three and then to eight and ten and eleven and 500 people at a time, over a period of about six weeks (1 Corinthians 15:4-9). They saw Him, they heard Him, they handled Him. He fixed breakfast for them. He ate fish with them (John 21:7-15; Luke 24:42-43).

Connected to the appearances was the transformation of the apostles. One day they were cringing in an upper room for fear of the temple authorities, and soon after they were boldly upbraiding the Sanhedrin and proclaiming the resurrection of Christ.

Consider also their martyrdom. They were crucified, crucified upside down, sawed in half, stoned to death, and killed in many other ways, all except John, who was exiled to the island of Patmos by Nero. Why would they give their lives for what they knew to be false?

One could argue that they were deceived in believing Jesus rose from the dead. However, the notion that they knew He wasn’t really raised from the dead, but they made it up anyway? Why? So they could face horrific deaths? That does not make sense. People do what is in their own best interest. The apostles spread the Word everywhere because they knew Jesus rose from the dead from firsthand experience. He is risen indeed!

Lord Jesus, give me strength for today to boldly transform my world around me by letting others know You are risen from the dead. Thank You for showing the world for all time that Your truth is based on the unshakable foundation of Your historical resurrection…

BY HIS STRENGTH, WE CAN TELL OTHERS
THAT DEATH HAS BEEN DESTROYED.

“The next day John [the Baptist] saw Jesus coming toward him and said, ‘Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.’”

— John 1:29

In the obdurate hardness of his heart, Pharaoh had defied the Almighty God. So God had sent onto the land of Egypt plague after plague with ever-increasing severity. The tenth was the most severe. It is this one that gave rise to the Feast of Passover.

At God’s instruction, the Hebrews were to take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood from an unblemished lamb, and strike the lintel and the door posts of their houses. They were not to go out the door of the house until the morning, because at midnight the LORD would send His angel to destroy the firstborn throughout all Egypt. But when He saw the blood upon the door post, and the lintels, He would pass over those homes.

As they waited, eventually they heard a shriek and then another…moaning and crying went up all over Egypt, as the angel of death passed over. They waited until they would hear some sound close to their own houses, but seeing the blood upon the door post and lintel, the Angel of God passed by.

The Passover celebration continued down through the centuries until Christ our Savior came. All of the lambs of God slain before, all the lambs of the Israelites were but types of that reality which should come. When John the Baptist saw Jesus, He said He was the Lamb of God. Our Passover Lamb has been slain for us. When God sees our sin, He passes over it, if we are in Christ.

Dear Lord, thank You for Your brilliant yet simple plan to show the world that only by being covered by the blood of the unblemished lamb are we to be spared from death. Thank You, Jesus, Lamb of God, for dying on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, WE SEE THAT CHRIST
OUR PASSOVER LAMB HAS BEEN SLAIN.

“But our citizenship is in heaven, from where also we await for our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ…”

— Philippians 3:20

I don’t know if I really ought to let you know this, but I think it’s time I told you. I am actually an extraterrestrial alien visiting this planet. That’s true. Now before you think we are talking about the body snatchers, Christ, who is an extraterrestrial, has come to live in my heart and creating a new and heavenly nature within me. So my citizenship is in heaven, and I am an alien here on this earth. A resident for a while. We need to always remember that.

You know it is interesting in all of the sci-fi pictures that I have ever seen where there were aliens on this earth, they always seem to remember that they were from somewhere else and that they were really aliens and they had an agenda, usually malignant, for themselves while they were here.

Now we are not really illegal aliens because Christ owns this planet. He made this planet, this is His world. But we have an agenda. It is not malignant. It is most beneficial to bring about the salvation of mankind. We now look for Jesus Christ our Savior who will come from heaven and who will change our corrupted bodies. As soon as we mature, we begin to die, until finally we are a cold corpse lying in a casket.

While in this body of flesh, let us do good to others on this earth, recognizing that our ultimate citizenship is in heaven. Not bad work for an alien.

Lord of heaven and earth, give me strength today to live in this world, with my eyes fixed on heaven. Help us to remember that this is not our true home. So help us to not get too attached to this world…

IN GOD’S STRENGTH, WE LIVE
AS PILGRIMS AND ALIENS HERE.

“But now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.”

— 1 Corinthians 15:30

The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the greatest historical fact of antiquity. Author and speaker Josh McDowell has studied, written on, and debated about this for decades now. He writes: “After more than 700 hours of studying this subject, and thoroughly investigating its foundation, I have come to the conclusion that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the “most wicked, vicious, heartless hoaxes ever foisted upon the minds of men, or it is the most fantastic fact of history.”

He points out that the theories to try and explain away the resurrection make less historical sense than the resurrection itself.

When asked if the disciples stole the body of Christ, as some unbelievers assert, he says: “…here was a small band of men—most of them fishermen—just common people. They came out, fought off the Roman guard, some of the most disciplined soldiers in history, broke the Roman seal that anyone feared breaking because of the consequences of it, and then stole the body and spread abroad that Jesus had been raised from the dead.”

But what if He hadn’t really died, but swooned in the tomb? “Four professional executioners signed His death warrant; that was according to Roman customs. And then to try to believe that that damp tomb, instead of killing Him, healed Him, and I guess then He jumped up, hobbled over, pushed the stone out of the way, tied the guard unit up with His linen cloth and appeared to His disciples as the Lord of Life.” No, the only thing to explain the facts are that He is risen. He is risen indeed!

Lord of life, we praise You that You have conquered the grave. We praise You that You changed all history, Jesus, when You walked out of that tomb. Thank You for building Your kingdom on the solid foundation of Your historical resurrection…

BY HIS STRENGTH, WE KNOW THAT
WE WILL LIVE, EVEN AFTER WE DIE.

“…their glory is in their shame, their minds are set on earthly things.”

— Philippians 3:19

One of the sad things about our time is the fact that shame seems to have become almost extinct. When did you ever hear anyone say, “You should be ashamed”? We have so many people today that glory in their shame, that boast in their shame, that proclaim their shame publicly, and it is tragic that today people glory in the very things that they should be ashamed of.

And “their minds are set on earthly things.” That, I think, is sort of the bottom line of it all because their hearts and minds are not in heaven but simply upon this earth, and if we do not have that upward calling in mind we are going to mind earthly things. Paul says our citizenship is in heaven. The Greek word we translate as citizenship is the word from which we get politics or policy. We should remember that we are citizens of heaven.

This was particularly apropos to the Philippians because Philippi, though in Macedonia, was a Roman colony. It was attached to the Roman Empire, since they had been granted by Caesar Roman citizenship, which was to be devoutly desired. They were citizens of Rome. They were citizens of Rome, even as we are citizens of heaven and most particularly of the new Jerusalem, the heavenly city. That is where our true citizenship is.

We may be involved, rightly so, and concerned about the politics and citizenship of this world, but we need to remember ultimately we are citizens of heaven; thus, we naturally are repulsed at people glorying in their shame.

Heavenly Father, You are pure and holy, and we live among a twisted and perverse generation. Help us to be more grieved when we see people flagrantly breaking Your commandments and are proud of it. Give us the strength to choose the hard right over the easy wrong…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, WE CAN LIVE
IN THIS WORLD AS CITIZENS OF HEAVEN.