Watching Daily At Wisdom's Gates

 Matthew 6:21 ESV  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.    What our treasure is says a lot about us. Not only so, but it reveals what our destiny will be. If our treasure is in stuff that will corrode, then so our hearts will corrode too.  Stuff isn't bad in and of itself. Yet it is not our raison d'etre, our purpose in life. Jesus urges us to get our priorities right. Christ commands us to store up treasures in heaven that can never corrode. When we invest in God's Kingdom, we're guaranteed to get a return. God's economy isn't Russian roulette, it's a guaranteed inheritance in glory.  It's not enough to pay God lip service if our treasures are on earth. He needs to be our everything. We are to invest our worldly treasures into the life to come.  'Father in heaven, please help us to get our priorities right. May we treasure you above all, for you are worthy, now and forevermore, amen'.   

 Proverbs 22:4 ESV  The reward for humility and fear of the Lord is riches and honour and life.    This is a surprising verse. We might assume that worldly people who idolise Mammon gain riches and honour and life in this world. Solomon suggests otherwise. Solomon, certainly early in his reign, was a humble man. God blessed him with riches and honour and life. He initially, and I believe in the end, feared the Lord, at the dedication of the temple and in his repentant swansong of Ecclesiastes. The Bible teaches the opposite of the world. The world celebrates pride. The Bible says that pride goes before a fall. If we are humble and fear the Lord, not only do we tend to have good lives in this world. We also gain eternity where the streets are paved with God. Even if we muddle through this life, there's a glorious destiny for those of us who belong to Jesus. 'Dear Lord God, may we be humble and fear you as we ought. Please bless us as we do so. For your honour we ask t...

 Luke 12:40 ESV  You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.   We need to be ready for Jesus like 1st Century Jewish men awaiting their friend the bridegroom. In Western weddings today, the bride tends to be fashionably late. In Eastern weddings then, the bridegroom often didn't turn up until nighttime. It would be very inappropriate to be sleeping when the bridegroom arrives. Our purpose as his friends is to be watchful and to wait for him. So it is with the return of Christ. I heard a good observation on the wise and foolish bridesmaids parable of Jesus. Even the wise bridesmaids fell asleep as they awaited the bridegroom. Yet at least they were prepared to brighten up his way with oil filled lamps when he arrived. Oil filled lamps symbolise lives filled with the Holy Spirit. A famous preacher was once asked if he was filled with the Holy Spirit. 'I am,' he replied, 'but I leak,' implying that we keep needing to be 'toppe...

 Mark 8:35 ESV  For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.   This seems a counterintuitive verse. If we want to save our lives, we would hope and assume we'd save them. If we lose our lives we wouldn't expect to save them. I think what Jesus is doing is contrasting selfishness (trying to save ourselves) and 'otherishness' (living for Jesus and the gospel). We're not to simply be out to save our own skins. We're to care for others. If we live and die for the gospel, we're telling the good news to others, whatever the consequences. We're doing our duty to tell of salvation in Christ. Even if we get persecuted, it's worth it. We can either live selfishly or self-sacrificially. Jesus is calling us to the latter. By his grace we can do this. 'Dear Lord God, please help us to be selfless and loving, not selfish. For your honour and praise we ask this, amen'.  

 1 Timothy 4:12 ESV  Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.     They say forty is the new thirty, but I still don't think I can call myself a youth: I'm well into middle age! In ancient Israel, Levite men started active service for God aged thirty, as did the Lord Jesus himself. So I suspect Timothy was probably in his twenties at most. Even if we're no longer youths, we can still obey the Apostle Paul's charge here. We're still to be exemplary. We're not just to be good when we're young, only to derail ourselves later in life. Our speech doesn't have to be exclusively religious Bible quotes, but it does have to be seasoned with salt. It's not enough to just talk about the weather or our favourite sports team. Our conduct is to be holy and pure, like Billy Graham refusing to be alone with a woman who wasn't his wife.  Love is to define us. Paul fleshes out what ...

' Depart from me, all you workers of evil, for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping. ' Psalm 6:8 ESV David wasn't perfect himself. He was guilty of grievous evil. He committed adultery with Bathsheba and murdered her husband Uriah. David was repentant of his evil. He literally cried out to the Lord, and the Lord heard the sound of his penitential weeping. We're all naturally evil, but not all of us repent and renounce our wrongdoing. Evildoers were like vultures with a carcass with David and his public fall from grace. They never let him live down what he had done. Nevertheless, he 'shooed' them away because the Lord was on his side. God knows our hearts. He knows if we're truly repentant for the evils we have done. If we are, we can have confidence that God is for us, not against us. 'Lord, we're so grateful that you hear the sound of our weeping. Help us repent and renounce evil, and to trust in you to deliver us. For your honour and praise w...

'O Lord , in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch. ' Psalm 5:3 ESV God doesn't just want the fag end of our days as it were, a hasty prayer at the end of the day by our bedside. He deserves the first-fruits of our time. The Lord should be our first thought in the morning. King David was a busy man no doubt, running the nation of Israel. Nevertheless, the Lord heard his voice in the morning. It seems his practice was to pray 'out loud'. We don't have to just pray 'in our heads'. No doubt it was a sacrifice for David to give up the first hour or so of his days to the Lord. Yet he knew it was worth it. He started his days out right, by consulting with the One who orders our time. Prayer isn't just about presenting a 'shopping list' of requests to God. He isn't a divine slot machine. We're to devote ourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful, as the Apostle Paul put it. 'O Lord, m...

 Psalm 103:2 ESV   Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits,    We are to bless the Lord. We're not just to pay him lip service. Our very souls are to bless his holy name.  Benefits have a negative connotation in the UK, which has a relatively generous welfare state which arguably many people exploit. Lots of people are on state benefits who should be working and benefiting the greater good by paying taxes. Spiritually, if we receive God's benefits, we're to bless others. It's not enough to scrounge benefits from God and to be miserly with them. If he forgives us, we're to forgive others. If he's a Father to us, we should treat others like family. As Jesus said, if we want to be forgiven, we need to forgive. We can't earn the benefit of forgiveness. Having been forgiven however, we should benefit others with forgiveness. 'O Lord, we bless your holy name. May we always remember your benefits to us, especially forgiveness. In Christ's...

 John 15:4 ESV   Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.     What does it mean to abide? Jesus goes on to illustrate what it means. As a branch abides in the vine, so we must abide in Christ. We're not very agricultural nowadays, so an easier illustration might be that of an arm within a body. As an arm is connected to the body, so we are to be connected to Christ. We can't bear spiritual fruit apart from him. The Apostle Paul talks about people who have a form of godliness, but deny its power. That's like a snapped off branch boasting of its fruit. Apart from Christ, we can do nothing. A severed arm can't boast if it's holding a tool by rigor mortis. It's only in connection with our Lord that we can be spiritually effective. We don't just abide in him to bear fruit, but because he is our raison d'etre, the meaning of our lives. 'Heavenly Father, may ...