Daily Bread: May 2006

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

People around the world are deeply interested in “Elijah” being sent to us. They are realizing that “he” will come as a message, just as “Elijah” came to Israel in the message of John the Baptist (Mal. 4:5, 6; Lkuke 1:13-17).

They see that as John the Baptist prepared God’s people of his day for the first coming of Christ, so “Elijah” in these last days will prepare a people for the second coming of Christ (Rev. 14:6-15).

John’s message was a clarion call for repentance (Matt. 3:1-8). In these last days, “Elijah’s” message is a call to the leadership of Christ’s last days’ church to “be zealous therefore, and repent” (Rev. 3:14, 19; the “angel” of the church of the Laodiceans has to be its leadership). In ancient Israel, Elijah zeroed in on the top, the leader of the nation, King Ahab.

Just as Elijah was “zealous” and called on king and Israel to “repent” of their Baal worship and return to the true LORD (just as Jesus calls on Laodicea), so the Elijah message today will call upon God’s people to “examine [themselves] as to whether [they] are in the faith. Prove yourselves” (2 Cor. 13:5).

That must mean a close re-examination—do we understand what God’s holy Word says about justification by faith? Or have we repeated ancient Israel’s century-long slide down the slippery slope into Baal worship—that is, counterfeit ideas of popular Christianity that Revelation says are “Babylon”? “Test yourselves to see if you are in THE faith,” says Paul in the Greek; don’t be confused and bewildered by Babylon’s false version.

That genuine “the faith” will be Elijah’s message: (a) He “slays” the recalcitrant, unrepentant modern “priests of Baal” (which is the same as the “perishing” of those who disbelieve in John 3:16; the “should not perish” is in the middle voice of the Greek verb meaning those who disbelieve commit their own spiritual suicide). (b) Elijah proclaims the reconciling, “at-one-ment” message that heals the wounded hearts of those who appreciate Christ’s cross.

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Robert J. Wieland's inspirational "Dial Daily Bread" phone message is available via e-mail to anyone who wishes to receive a daily portion of uplifting Good News. "Dial Daily Bread" is FREE. Due to travel or other circumstances, there may be intervals when "Dial Daily Bread" will not be sent.

Monday, May 29, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

The news is plastered all over the media: the jury has found Ken Lay guilty on all six counts of conspiracy and fraud when he was head of the giant Enron Corporation.

I think I have never read such vilification of anyone in the media. One columnist: “Normally I am a ‘bleeding heart’ when it comes to long prison terms, but an appropriate sentence for the Enron boys might be six trillion years.” I don’t remember anyone has postulated that much even for Osama.

We wouldn’t comment except that our readers will be interested: Ken Lay has been studying our special series of 33 “Glad Tidings Bible Study Guides” and has been writing personal letters of appreciation to one of our Dial Daily Bread readers. (I am glad that this personal contact has been made. Of course I must make clear: Ken Lay’s study of our gospel lessons has been subsequent to the events for which he has been condemned.)

No question, terrific wrong happened in the Enron crimes.

But the question comes up: Is it possible that someone who has been legally condemned for crime can sense a hunger for God’s forgiveness that can lead to salvation in God’s kingdom? All that was stolen must be returned—of course; the amount was “$6 trillion overall,” the editorial says. (But Lay’s sitting in jail six trillion years wouldn’t reimburse those who lost.)

The editorial says there are many “corporate titans and financial con men who got away.” Yes, many such: “Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you!” James 5:1 also refers to “Elijah the prophet” whom the Lord is sending with a message of healing and reconciliation for alienated hearts (cf. vss. 1, 17; Mal. 4:5, 6). If we already see a spectacular case of judgment being executed on the “rich,” can we expect the blessed salvation message from “Elijah” also to come soon?

“Elijah” will “lift up” “Christ and Him crucified” for sinners, clearly and powerfully, beyond anything in all past history (John 12:32, 33; 1 Cor. 2:1-3).

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Friday, May 26, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

This weekend a special conference of alert Christian people is gathering in a small church almost hidden in “the wildwood” in Northern California. They study the significance of the “Elijah message.”

You remember the last two verses of the great Old Testament where the LORD declares: “I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and dreadful day of the Lord.” But Elijah’s work will be different than the popular idea of a stern disciplinarian who chops off the heads of the prophets of Baal. He will minister a message of reconciliation: “He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers.” That of course cannot be unless he also “turns the hearts” of husbands and wives, and love will be reawakened.

Such “turning hearts” is what the word “atonement” means; here is God’s prophecy of the greatest ministry of heart-reconciliation the world has ever known since the days of Jesus. Elijah’s message is the solemn call of the great antitypical Day of Atonement that closes the work of Christ as the world’s High Priest. It’s the “Loud Cry” of the angel of Revelation 18.

Then the next event on God’s agenda is the close of human probation and the second coming of Christ. That will be the day which to those who have rejected this heart-reconciliation will be “the great and dreadful day of the Lord.”

But the one heart that most needs “turning” is hers who figures as the Heroine in the drama of Revelation 19:7, 8—the alienated “Bride-to-be” of the Lamb, whose “marriage” has been long delayed due to her heart coldness toward Him. It’s a world church that hasn’t yet learned to recognize her own identity, to see herself as she appears pathetically on the stage of the universe.

The scholars and leaders of such a world church have long debated how the heart of such a massive corporate “body” can be “turned” and melted in personal but also corporate contrition. Let’s not be unbelieving; unbelief here becomes the sin of the ages. “Elijah” will do what seems impossible.

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Thursday, May 25, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

No matter where we turn in the Bible, we meet someone who suffers what we moderns call “depression.” The Psalms of David are a prime example. There is one entitled, “Out of the depths I have cried to You, O LORD” (130:1); that’s the powerful name that just saying it humbles one’s heart). Then in verse 2, David begs, “Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.” He does not get immediate relief for he adds, “I wait for the LORD, my soul waits” (vs. 5).

David’s problem that makes his depression painful is guilt: “If You, LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” (vs. 3). The Holy Spirit has been speaking to him, whose first work on David’s heart is the conviction of sin, and it’s painful. If we trace that conviction to its source, we come to Calvary—where Jesus prays the Father to forgive those who crucify Him. Then we realize that it’s us He is praying for! Not the Jews or Romans.

We have two wonders unfolding here: (a) the wonder of God’s redeeming love, and (b) David’s deep unworthiness that now he realizes. Therefore, “there is forgiveness with You,” he says, “that You may be feared” (vs. 4).

The Prince of sufferers from depression is the Lord Jesus Christ; see Him in Gethsemane. His disciples, even Peter, James, John, couldn’t even give Him an hour of their precious human time without going to sleep on Him (Matt. 26:36-40). He “began to be sorrowful and deeply depressed” (the KJV says “very heavy”). How “heavy”? “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death.” Have you ever been near there?

And we know that Jesus never sinned; therefore we must conclude—to be “depressed” is not of itself sin. It’s human, and Jesus the Son of God became human, the Son of man. He took into His soul all the depression that all humans have suffered, cumulative, corporate, and bore it, “even unto death,” the final God-forsaken kind of hopeless death when He cried out in those “depths,” “My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

Kneel with Him in Gethsemane; but you can’t endure that death. Even suicide isn’t close; He won’t let you suffer the second death! Not even share or taste it ever so tiny—without you sharing also with Him His resurrection.

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Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

Someone has wisely told me I must not leave Abraham without seeing him through his grand final victory. It is true that he had failed miserably in his (and Sarah’s) unbelief that let them fall into the Old Covenant. While God had given them the New Covenant promise of having a “child of promise” (Isaac), they had disbelieved and assumed they must “work,” themselves, to help fulfill it—hence, Hagar and Ishmael (Paul says they ARE the Old Covenant! See Gal. 4:22-25).

Finally, after decades of heart-bitterness even while they were having daily family worship and doing their Sabbath-keeping, Sarah allowed her unbelieving heart to be melted in repentance (see Heb. 11:11). Let the gynecologists argue it out: her new and different feelings about God made it possible for her to get pregnant, and “by faith Sarah received strength to conceive.” All this time, they were “one flesh” and so Abraham shared the repentance with her.

Isaac came, well named—“laughter.” Grew to be a most delightful teen, the joy of their hearts.

Then the bomb, when Abraham was old and weak: the same voice of God that had made the promises now told him to offer the beloved son as a sacrifice on a hill to be known as Calvary (Gen. 22:1, 2). The years of bonding went further than if he’d been told to do this when Isaac was a baby. Sarah couldn’t take it. Father roused Isaac, left without telling her goodbye (vs. 3).

That 3-day safari was the longest and saddest Abraham had ever taken. But when puzzled Isaac quizzed him, he expressed no Old Covenant despair as we would do probably. Instead: “My son, God will provide Himself a lamb.”

A shining tribute to “Christian education”: Isaac then joined in the willingness of the sacrifice. He had learned to believe the New Covenant promises.

Note: Abraham didn’t actually kill Isaac with his knife—but he made the full commitment to make the sacrifice. “You have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me,” said God” (vs. 12). It reflected Christ’s cross. Christ didn’t go into the literal Lake of Fire, but He made the full commitment, and thus He died the equivalent of our second death. (Let’s say “Thank You!”)

Now Abraham has finally earned his title, “father of the faithful.”

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

Question: Why do so many people who go to church suffer from depression just like so many people who do not go to church?

Answer: For the same reason that Abraham’s free-born descendants let themselves become slaves in Egypt. They became entangled in Old Covenant thinking, and the apostle Paul at last had the keen insight to see that their Old Covenant thinking even is what “gives birth to bondage” (Gal. 4:24). It was God’s intention to renew to them at Sinai the glorious liberty of New Covenant experience—He had promised it to Abraham; but their slave-mentality at Sinai they brought with them from Egypt instinctively drove them to choose again the Old Covenant experience. Their bodies were free but their minds were still in bondage.

God had promised Abraham, “‘Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.’ And He said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ And he believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness” (Gen. 15:5, 6). But newly delivered Israel at Sinai did not so “believe in the LORD.” They responded with a firm self-righteousness: “Then all the people answered together and said, ‘All that the LORD has spoken we will do’” (Ex. 19:8). They didn’t believe God’s promise as Abraham did (at first); they made their own promise. (Even he fell back into this slippery Old Covenant in his affair with Hagar and Ishmael—hence modern Palestine today)

Thus God’s true people at Mt. Sinai fastened themselves in their own home-grown Old Covenant; God did not lead them into it. Their national history thereafter all the way to a cross outside Jerusalem’s wall where they murdered their holy Messiah was the up and down, revival/backsliding syndrome. Every revival such as that even of King Josiah (2 Chron. 34, 35) ended as did his with 36:14-16, “till there was no remedy,” and the “City of peace” with its glorious holy temple had to be burned. The pagan Babylonians took the people off in captivity for 70 years.

Paul’s conclusion: Learn from your history! “Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free” (Gal. 5:1).

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Monday, May 22, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

Of all people in the world, the last one you would expect to be living in the darkness and bondage of the Old Covenant is Abraham, “the father of the faithful.”

And God had already given him the sunlit promises of the New Covenant! (Gen. 12:2, 3). His taking Hagar for a second wife was entirely Sarah’s foolish, unbelieving, Old Covenant idea. God had nothing to do with that foray into darkness. Nonetheless, Abraham plunged into it. Paul says that the Hagar chapter of Abraham’s life was pure Depression—“this Hagar is mount Sinai,” which because of unbelief, Israel turned into Depression. These “things are symbolic,” says Paul in his clear understanding, in Galatians. The covenant “from Mount Sinai.... gives birth to bondage,” which is always the horror of Depression (read Galatians 4:21-31).

Some 430 years after Abraham, God tried to renew those bright New Covenant promises to Israel as they had come out of dark Egyptian slavery on their way to the Promised Land (Ex. 6:4-9). But Israel were Abraham’s descendants who had to learn as he did the folly of Old Covenant promises. Likewise, God had nothing to do with Israel embracing their Old Covenant ideas at Sinai. He wanted to renew the same New Covenant with them (see Ex. 19:4-6), the same promises He had made to Abraham.

We lock ourselves into confusion if we try to interpret the covenants at Mt. Sinai in any other way. Israel’s slavery in Egypt had been a massive case of national Depression. Would God at Sinai lead them back into that darkness? If we picture the character of our loving heavenly Father as One who deliberately led His people Israel into an Old Covenant spiritual bondage at Sinai, we distort His character. The Old Covenant was not a preliminary step toward national salvation—that’s twisting little text snippets with our own pre-set Old Covenant philosophy. Yes, He ratified their choice with animal blood; only in that sense can it be said that He “made” the Old Covenant with them—because that was what they insisted on. He had to let them take their long detour “under the law” until they could come to the place to be “justified by faith” as Abraham was (Gal. 3:19-24).

Now, you can believe today and skip all the Depression!

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Sunday, May 21, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

Seven times Abraham is spoken of in Romans 4 as “our father.” He had to wait until nearly 100 for the birth of his first son, Isaac, the one “promised.” Can you imagine the years of depression he and Sarah endured—waiting “against hope,” who still “believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations”? Abraham learned that “God.... gives life to the dead, and calls those things which do not exist as though they did; who, contrary to hope, in hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations..... He did not consider his own body, already dead (since he was about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah’s womb. He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith. Giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform” (vss. 16-21).

Our “father” Abraham became an expert in battling with depression. The New Covenant promises are what brought him through into the sunlight. The New Covenant promises given to him and thus to all his descendants (you and me!) are in Genesis 12:2, 3. To say glibly that they are the “cure” for our widespread malady of depression is to be superficial; they are not to be compared with this or that drug developed by the pharmaceutical companies; they are simply “the faith of Jesus.”

But they are included in the “everlasting gospel” of Revelation 14:6-12, and it is our privilege to live in their sunlight every day of our lives.

We want to examine those seven promises that God made to Abraham. And see how they apply to us. Tomorrow if the Lord wills, we shall do so.

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Friday, May 19, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

It’s a very widespread malady—depression. Even many who sincerely want to follow the Lord Jesus Christ suffer from it. Physicians are trained to treat it, books written about it, institutions exist where sufferers can be treated, huge economic losses come because of it, the wealthy endure equally with the poor—perhaps more so. Even little children are given medications to correct it.

How does the Holy Spirit relate to it? Medical scientists who do not recognize His existence can rely on drugs and psychology in efforts to treat it. Even in the church there is widespread depression that pastors are at a loss to relieve. Many people find that jokes, funny stories, amusements, a social whirl, are helpless bandaids.

Depression is the condition that Jesus describes in Matthew 11:28-30: “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” But often the way seems blocked, and we wrestle with nagging doubts about whether “coming” can really help. Aren’t committed Christians also “heavy laden”? Doubts plunge us back into the pit.

Depression afflicts multitudes, and right here is an acid test of “the faith of Jesus.” The shadows are dark and heavy; can we let in a ray of sunlight?

(1) The first work of the Holy Spirit is to “convict of sin” (John 16:8). When He is resisted, depression is created—unless we cut our spiritual vagus nerve and create a soul-lobotomy (the final sin against the Holy Spirit). Some then find endless carefree abandon, because He is gone.

(2) The one truly sinless Man in history suffered the most enormous depression of any human—crying in an ultimate heart agony, “My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46). Yet that depression was not personal sin on His part. There have been faithful followers of Jesus who have suffered depression—Joseph sold as a slave into Egypt, David persecuted by King Saul (his psalms are healing medications), the prophet Jeremiah, et al. It could be a hidden blessing.

(3) The faith of Jesus gets slighted (as relief from depression) because many pastors cannot distinguish between the Old Covenant and the New. Time’s up; the Lord willing, we may probe a bit into that tomorrow. The New Covenant is not mere psychology; it’s honest truth.

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

The “Da Vinci Code” movie is stirring some Christian churches like Mel Gibson’s “Passion” movie. Pastors and elders feel that their Christianity is threatened by it and they are making heroic efforts to counteract the devastation that they fear the movie will make to the faith of their church members. One pastor in California has given away 350 iPods full of sermons opposing “Da Vinci.”

The big question that attracts attention again is sex. But this time the assumption is that Jesus Himself has given the world a divine example of giving in to self-centered, lustful sex—exactly what the enemy in the great controversy between Christ and Satan wants for the world. The same media that focuses on the idea that Jesus “married” Mary Magdalene is reporting on the horrific ravages of AIDS worldwide; Newsweek devotes an entire issue to what AIDS has done as a plague—40 million “cursed” by it. As George Wills has said in an earlier Newsweek article, promiscuous sex is very often the means of infection. Now if the Enemy can spread abroad the idea that illicit sex is what Jesus gives His blessing to, think of the massive tragedies yet to afflict the world through distorting and twisting the Bible.

But the Bible is clear: Mary Magdalene’s “seven devils” were far worse than simply going to bed with the wrong men, even for hire. Fierce, mortally bitter resentment against a man who had betrayed her had flooded her mind until devils possessed her soul seven times over. The serious extent of her captivity is defined by the fact that Jesus had to pray for her to be delivered seven times! Six times His earnest prayers in her behalf had been frustrated—there was only partial deliverance (this is an encouragement to all of us when our prayers don’t get their full answers!). Finally there was that seventh prayer and the last evil angel was cast out of her soul and she was free (cf. Mark 16:9; Luke 7:36-47).

Yes, in purity Jesus loved the soul of Mary Magdalene in exactly the same way that He loves your soul. The love of Christ delivers from sexual infatuations; it is infinitely more powerful. “Close your heart to every love but mine; hold no one in your arms but me. Love is powerful as death; passion is as strong as death itself..... Water cannot put it out; no flood can drown it. But if anyone tried to buy love with his wealth, contempt is all he would get” (S.S. 8:6, 7, GNB).

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Robert J. Wieland’s timely book about Mary Magdalene dispels the confusion over her role in the life of Jesus. The author refers to his work as a “modest essay, concerned only with what comes to light in the Four Gospels.” A small book of 64 pages that you will want to read it at one “sitting.” Includes a Bible study on “The Woman the World Can Never Forget.” Glad Tidings Publishers, (269) 473-1888; www.1888msc.org.

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Monday, May 15, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

Lord, I feel sorry for You tonight.

A sheltered child, I sleep secure, content;

No swordlike, piercing pain of tortured folk

On lonely sickbeds stabs my sovereign skin;

I sense no anguished dread in dying hearts.

No tattered waifs from Africa besmudge

My windows with their dirty hands, or peer

Inside with hungry eyes that plead for love.

Yet they crowd 'round Your windows looking in!

No cursed untouchables from Bombay streets

Beg leave to make my lawn their bed tonight.

I hear no heartsick sob in vice-cursed haunt,

Nor curdling scream of suicides dark leap,

Nor soldier's pain-racked gasp in alien land.

I sense no shock of riven flesh in crash

On bloody road. I cannot even surmise

The reason for my next-door neighbor's tears!

But through the starlit hours You may not sleep.

You dare not look the other way, avert Your gaze.

You sense each twitch of pain, and count

Our sighs, Yours the helpless agony

To feel our universal tragedy.

Lord, I feel sorry for You tonight—

But is there something I might do to help?

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Sunday, May 14, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

There are many places in the world where Satan has intervened to do his horrible work of injustice and cruelty. The cry of the “labourers who have reaped down [the] fields [of the rich men] which is.... kept back by fraud, crieth” all over the world. Wicked people have even “condemned and killed the just” (cf. James 5:1-6, KJV). Perhaps the most visible example just now is Darfur; and the daily litany of suicide bombs and murders in Iraq is distressing to anyone who thinks about the gospel of peace that fills the Bible.

Is this God’s will that this horror go on and on, year after year, decade after decade? How can we enjoy our pleasure and our gourmet food and luxuries knowing that our “neighbors” are suffering (yes, Darfur and Bagdhad are our neighborhood according to Jesus!)?

Actually, it has never been God’s will that such evil prevail on earth. When God made His New Covenant promises to Abraham in Genesis 12, He intended that they be enjoyed by all of Abraham’s descendants—that is, those who had “the faith of Abraham” who should not revel alone in their delightful inheritances while the world around them perishes; God’s plan was that their very presence should be a blessing to the world. He said to Abraham, “In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” (vs. 3, KJV).

“All families”? That must include Darfur; and Iraq. We read that “God preached.... the gospel unto Abraham” (Gal. 3:8), meaning that those who believe in Jesus can be a blessing even to Abraham’s literal but unbelieving descendants, the political Israel of today; God is distressed at the suicide bombings there, as anywhere.

It’s an enormous thought to try to think through: if Abraham’s true descendants in Jesus will proclaim the pure gospel that calls God’s people out of “Babylon,” even the Muslims in Darfur and Iraq and the Jews in Israel will in some way be “blessed.”

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Friday, May 12, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

Roger Bothwell and I share a distinction: the only surviving expatriate directors of what was once the Uganda Mission. He also writes a little daily mini-sermon that is widely read. His latest has pricked the laptop bubble, and I admire his courage.

He has outlawed laptops in his classroom: “I am not an old man fighting technology,.... but there are certain functions in life that cannot be enhanced by keyboards and chips. Classroom discussions are one of them. While computers are excellent at instantly finding a Bible text or a commentary reference they cannot replace the opening of the human heart to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.” He wants the students to look at him in class, not at laptops. Amen.

I go a step further. I’ve been concerned about pastors replacing their Bible with the laptop. The images on the monitor/screen quickly disappear for others to take their place. Our minds grasp the cold fact we retrieved from the Internet and then the monitor either goes blank or is filled with another transitory cold fact and we hurry on. More convenient, less time, than “searching the Scriptures” in an old fashioned Bible.

You can’t take the computer to bed for a last minute good-night devotional and if you could, the monitor images vanish. Meanwhile, what the old Bible has been saying is still there in print that doesn’t go away. And, thanks to the Holy Spirit, the words printed on the holy paper are also imprinted on our minds.

Yes, I am also profoundly grateful for technology but I thank the Lord supremely for the old Holy Bible that I can mark and hug to my heart as an eternal treasure.

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

We have an intensely personal contact with Jesus in the story of the Samaritan woman in John 4.

(1) He “knew” something—jealousy developing; the Pharisees knew that His disciples were baptizing more people than John the Baptist. He gets out of town for Galilee.

(2) “He needed to go through Samaria.” Why? Maybe the shortest route; probably He wanted to win some Samaritans.

(3) It was hot weather, twelve noon, He was walking, “wearied from His journey.” You’d be tired, too, and hungry. Jesus, the Son of God, Commander of the heavenly host, has humbled Himself to be one of us! He sits down by the town well, thirsty, hot, tired.

(4) A five-time-loser lady comes to draw some water, flippant in her disdain for a strange man with whom she doesn’t want to make eye contact (the man is a Jew). Get the water and get away.

(5) The Savior of the world notices her, cares for her soul. But how to make contact?

(6) Heavenly psychology: ask for a favor—even the heathen can’t refuse a drink of water. (But He is doomed to stay thirsty, for in the end she forgets to give it to Him.)

(7) He is “meek and lowly in heart,” but promises her the sky—“living water,” something the legendary “Messiah” alone will be able to give. But He lets her know He is Somebody. He has caught her with his “hook,” she bites.

(8) Then He appears untactful, ungracious, even persnickety—opens a can of worms about her marital status. Why not first win her to Christianity and leave her to work out her morals? Why pain her at the beginning? Answer: the Holy Spirit’s first job is to “convict of sin,” and cohabiting without marriage is. Thus He proves that He is the divine Son of God.

(9) The disciples have left Him while they buy safari groceries in town; coming back, they haven’t a clue what’s going on. The Samaritans are in process of making an amazing theological discovery.

(10) The Samaritans discover who the disciples’ “Master” is, whom they hadn’t realized—He is “the Savior of the world.” It took Paul years later to explain what that means in his Galatians and Romans. We are still trying to realize who He is—is He the Savior of the world, or has He merely made an offer to be?

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Thursday, May 11, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

The Lord in His mercy has given us what was our “tomorrow” yesterday. Let’s return to eavesdrop on the conversation between the Philippian jailer and our “beloved brother Paul” (cf. Acts 16:22-34).

The jailer has heard Paul’s preaching which stirred the anger of the city fathers who threw Paul and Silas into prison. The jailer could have heard Paul's message and been convicted of truth but stubbornly hardened his heart; he did exercise some vigor in “fastening their feet in the stocks” (it took an earthquake that night to deliver him from his prejudice).

The apostles had sung midnight hymns, the psalms of David, in duet (maybe in rich baritone and tenor). The hard heart was melted; then came the earthquake, and the question, “What shall I do to be saved?” It’s Paul answer that troubles many: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” Was that simplistic and maybe unbalanced? Shouldn’t the man be told to keep all the commandments and do good works?

Yes, he should do them; but it’s not that he HAS to do all these things on pain of God’s rejection; HE WILL DO THEM through a heart appreciation of who “the Lord Jesus Christ” is! He has heard Paul declare that what “avails” is “faith working through love [agape]” (Gal. 5:6). Such faith works! It’s a verb, not a noun.

One of the psalms that the apostles sang in duet may have been #22—it probes the depths of Christ’s love in giving Himself for us eternally; the jailer was overcome with.... what can we call it? faith: a heart appreciation of the “width and length and depth and height [of].... the love of Christ which passes knowledge” (Eph. 3:18, 19). It’s not being motivated by terror toiling to do everything just right; it’s faith “constraining” one to join Christ on His cross in self “crucified with Him” (Gal. 2:20).

Then there’s no end to the good works the jailer will be motivated to do—forever.

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

God does not tease someone who sincerely asks, “What must I do to be saved?” When Paul and Silas answered the jailer in Philippi, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,” they were not giving an unbalanced and thus deceptive answer.

In fact, they were quoting what Jesus Himself had told Nicodemus: “The Son of man [must] be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:14). Believe what?

He answers that question two verses later: “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish....” (a) Believe that God is a Father. (b) Believe that He loves the world with a love that is agape. (c) Believe that His love embraces a sinful world. (d) Believe that His giving was complete—it was not lending. It was not just for time; the giving was for eternity.

Mr. Jailer, you ask “What must I do....?” You must believe that God is your Father in heaven and that He loves you personally, and has adopted you as His child “in Christ.”

Too complicated?

The Bible explains this simply. The Son “emptied Himself,” like pouring out the last drop of a bottle (Phil. 2:7; Isa. 53:12), which means that this love known as agape drove Him as far as hell in His search for us as the Good Shepherd (Luke 15:4-7). He died the same death that we would have had to die if He had not come and died it for us! (You can think and think about that for a long time!)

“But,” says the Jailer, “aren’t you leaving out the real answer to my question: the works that I must do?”

If the Lord gives us a tomorrow, we’ll try to dig a little deeper yet.

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Dial Daily Bread

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":

It was “at midnight” in a city called Philippi, in a jail. Two servants of God, of whom He had once said, “Touch not My anointed ones, and do My prophets no harm” (Psalm 105:15), had been rudely thrust into a prison cell by the city fathers who did not understand the message of God’s grace. Paul and Silas were proclaiming that good news. You might wonder why the Lord even permitted them to be locked up with chains when He has said “Don’t touch them!” The reason: He wanted His servants to win the hearts of the jailer and his family and this was the only way to get through to them (learn the lesson: what you think are calamities, by God’s grace become avenues of special blessing!).

A severe earthquake (common in that land) had shaken the prison walls, sprung the doors wide open, and loosed the chains. In setting His two servants free God also set all the prisoners free (another little lesson: when God delivered His people from slavery in Egypt He also delivered the world from the slavery of sin). The jailer thought he would have to pay with his life next morning for the prisoners being freed, for what God had done for his prisoners; so he decided to kill himself. Paul said, no; the gospel hymns that he and Silas had been singing had solemnized the prisoners and now they were ready voluntarily to stay in prison until their cases could be decided, so, don’t kill yourself, says Paul (all this is in Acts 16:22-28).

It was pitch dark, of course. In the confusion, the jailer had someone bring in a torch, and “trembling,” asked the apostles, “What must I do to be saved?”

Now here’s the critical point. The two did not mislead the poor man: they told him the truth, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household” (vs. 31; another little point, if papa is truly converted, he will win his family!).

But was mental “believing” all the man had to do? If you want to be saved, is your part simply, raise your hand in the evangelist’s meeting, walk down the aisle, get baptized, and presto, you’re eternally saved? What does it mean to “believe”? If the Lord gives us a tomorrow, we’ll dig a little deeper.

Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.

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