Daily Devotions from Lutheran Hour Ministries by Pastor Ken Klaus, Speaker Emeritus of The Lutheran Hour "Looking Like Jesus" for Thursday, April 19, 2018
Matthew 22:35-38 - A lawyer, asked Him a question to test Him. Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" And He said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment."In my wanderings, I have seen many different artists' renditions of the Savior.
Sometimes He has been depicted as having straight long hair, and other times He has short wavy hair. He has been presented with brown eyes, hazel eyes, and blue eyes. He has had rough features like a prizefighter and been shown with a gentle face. He has sported a beard and been close-shaven.
Naturally, every honest artist will admit that his depiction of the Savior comes from his own imagination and special vision. According to the Chinese government, that may have to change -- at least just a little. You see, Christian villagers in Southeastern China have been told they need to take down their pictures of Jesus and replace then with the likeness of the Chinese president.
Now there are a number of reasons the Communist government is behaving that way.
1. In many places, Christianity has been growing by leaps and bounds. It is now estimated there are more believers than there are members of the Communist Party.
2. The Chinese government still equates Christianity with 19th-century imperialism. Political leaders want everything in China to have a Chinese flavor and be purged of Western thinking.
3. The national leaders of China take Jesus seriously when He said "Nobody can serve two masters." They are desperately afraid the people will consider the Savior to be of greater importance than the government.
For example, Qi Yan, who is in charge of his community's aid fund, has said, "Many poor households have plunged into poverty because of illness in the family. Some resorted to believing in Jesus to cure their illnesses. But we tried to tell them that getting ill is a physical thing and that the people who can really help them are the Communist Party and General Secretary Xi."
Qi Yan has said people are free to believe whatever they want, but if they expect to receive assistance, they will have to "take down (religious) posters in the center of the home. What we require is for them not to forget about the Party's kindness at the center of their living rooms. They still have the freedom to believe in religion, but in their minds they should (also) trust our Party."
A similar philosophy is being directed against Christian congregations that are being told their church can be closed or torn down if they don't remove their crosses from the exteriors of their buildings.
It would appear the rulers of China have decided it is not in their best interest to confront Christianity directly. Instead, they will be more subtle. All they ask of Jesus' followers is that they violate the commandment which Jesus said was the greatest. You remember, the First Commandment which says, "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me."
Now the ball is in the court of the Christians. How much can they render unto Caesar before they stop rendering unto the Lord? As they fight the fight and run the race, we do well to remember them in our prayers.
THE PRAYER: Dear Lord, first, I give thank that I live in a land of relative religious liberty. Next, I pray that You will send an extra measure of the Holy Spirit upon those who suffer physical, emotional, social, and financial persecution. Grant them the courage to be faithful to the always faithful Savior. In His Name I pray. Amen.
The above devotion was inspired by a number of sources, including one written by World Watch Monitor and was shown in Christian Headlines on Nov. 6, 2017. Those who wish to reference that article may do so at the following link, which was fully functional at the time this devotion https://www.worldwatchmonitor.org/coe/chinese-christians-told-believe-president-xi-not-religion/
In Christ I remain His servant and yours,
Pastor Ken Klaus
Speaker Emeritus of The Lutheran Hour
Lutheran Hour Ministries
Today's Bible in a Year Reading: Judges 13-15; Luke 15:1-10
Judges 13:1
Again the people of Isra’el did what was evil from Adonai’s perspective, and Adonai handed them over to the P’lishtim for forty years.
2 There was a man from Tzor‘ah from the family of Dan, whose name was Manoach; his wife was barren, childless. 3 The angel of Adonai appeared to the woman and said to her, “Listen! You are barren, you haven’t had a child, but you will conceive and bear a son. 4 Now, therefore, be careful not to drink any wine or other intoxicating liquor, and don’t eat anything unclean. 5 For indeed you will conceive and bear a son. No razor is to touch his head, because the child will be a nazir for God from the womb. Moreover, he will begin to rescue Isra’el from the power of the P’lishtim.”
6 The woman came and told her husband; she said, “A man of God came to me; his face was fearsome, like that of the angel of God. I didn’t ask him where he came from, and he didn’t tell me his name. 7 But he said to me, ‘Listen! You will conceive and bear a son, so now don’t drink any wine or other intoxicating liquor, and don’t eat anything unclean, because the child will be a nazir for God from the womb until the day he dies.’”
8 Then Manoach prayed to Adonai, “Please, Adonai, let the man of God you sent come again to us and teach us what we should do for the child who will be born.” 9 God paid attention to what Manoach said, and the angel of God came again to the woman as she sat in the field, but her husband Manoach wasn’t with her. 10 The woman hurried and ran to tell her husband, “Here! That man, the one who came to me the other day, he’s come again!” 11 Manoach got up, followed his wife, went to the man and said to him, “Are you the man who spoke to the woman?” He answered, “I am.” 12 Manoach asked, “Now, when what you said comes true, what are the guidelines for raising the child? What should be done for him?” 13 The angel of Adonai said to Manoach, “The woman should take care to do everything I said to her. 14 She shouldn’t eat anything that comes from a grapevine, she shouldn’t drink wine or other intoxicating liquor, and she shouldn’t eat anything unclean. She should do everything I ordered her to do.”
15 Manoach said to the angel of Adonai, “Please stay with us a bit longer, so that we can cook a young goat for you.” 16 The angel of Adonai said to Manoach, “Even if I do stay, I won’t eat your food; and if you prepare a burnt offering, you must offer it to Adonai.” For Manoach did not know that he was the angel of Adonai. 17 Manoach said to the angel of Adonai, “Tell us your name, so that when your words come true we can honor you.” 18 The angel of Adonai answered him, “Why are you asking about my name? It is wonderful.” 19 Manoach took the kid and the grain offering and offered them on the rock to Adonai. Then, with Manoach and his wife looking on, the angel did something wonderful — 20 as the flame went up toward the sky from the altar, the angel of Adonai went up in the flame from the altar. When Manoach and his wife saw it, they fell to the ground on their faces. 21 But the angel of Adonai did not appear again to Manoach or his wife. Then Manoach realized it had been the angel of Adonai. 22 Manoach said to his wife, “We will surely die, because we have seen God!” 23 But his wife said to him, “If Adonai had wanted to kill us, he wouldn’t have accepted a burnt offering and a grain offering from us, and he wouldn’t have shown us all this or told us such things at this time.”
24 The woman bore a son and called him Shimshon. The child grew, and Adonai blessed him. 25 The Spirit of Adonai began to stir him when he was in the Camp of Dan, between Tzor‘ah and Eshta’ol.
14:1 Shimshon went down to Timnah, and in Timnah he saw a woman who was one of the P’lishtim. 2 He came up and told his father and mother, “I saw a woman in Timnah, one of the P’lishtim. Now get her for me to be my wife.” 3 His father and mother replied, “Isn’t there any woman from the daughters of your kinsmen or among all my people? Must you go to the uncircumcised P’lishtim to find a wife?” Shimshon said to his father, “Get her for me. I like her.” 4 His father and mother didn’t know that all this came from Adonai, who was seeking grounds for a quarrel with the P’lishtim. (At that time the P’lishtim were ruling Isra’el.)
5 Shimshon went down with his father and mother to Timnah. When they came to the vineyards of Timnah, a young lion roared at him. 6 The Spirit of Adonai came powerfully upon Shimshon, and barehanded he tore the lion to pieces as easily as if it had been a young goat. But he didn’t tell his father or mother what he had done. 7 Then he went down and talked with the woman and found he still liked her.
8 Awhile later, as he was returning to claim his bride, he turned aside to look at the carcass of the lion and saw that there was now a swarm of bees in the body of the lion, and honey. 9 He scraped the honey out into his hands and went on, eating as he went; and when he came to his father and mother, he gave them some; and they ate too. But he didn’t tell them that he had scraped the honey out of the body of the lion.
10 His father went down to the woman, and there Shimshon gave a banquet — this is what the young men used to do. 11 When the P’lishtim saw him, they provided thirty companions to be with him. 12 Shimshon said to them, “Let me present you with a riddle. If you can solve it within the seven days of the banquet and tell me the solution, I will give you thirty linen shirts and thirty changes of good clothes. 13 But if you can’t solve it, you give me thirty linen shirts and thirty changes of good clothes.” They answered, “Tell us the riddle, we want to hear it.” 14 So he said to them,
“Out of the eater came food;
out of the strong came sweetness.”
Three days passed, and they couldn’t solve the riddle. 15 On the seventh day, they said to Shimshon’s wife, “Coax your husband into telling us the solution to the riddle. Otherwise we’ll burn down your father’s house and you with it. You two called us here to turn us into paupers, didn’t you?” 16 Shimshon’s wife went to him in tears and said, “You don’t love me, you hate me! You told a riddle to my fellow countrymen, and you haven’t told me the answer.” He said to her, “Look, I haven’t even told it to my father and mother! Should I tell you?” 17 But she had been crying throughout the seven days of the banquet; so on the seventh day, because she had kept pressing him, he told her the solution; and she passed it on to her people. 18 Then, before sundown on the seventh day, the men of the city said to him,
“What is sweeter than honey?
and what is stronger than a lion?”
Shimshon answered,
“If you hadn’t plowed with my young cow,
you wouldn’t have solved my riddle now.”
19 Then the Spirit of Adonai came over him powerfully. He went down to Ashkelon, killed thirty of their men, took their good clothes, and gave them to the men who had “solved” the riddle. He was boiling with rage, so he went straight up to his father’s house, 20 and his wife was given to the companion who had been best man at the wedding.
15:1 But after a while, during the wheat-harvest season, Shimshon went to see his wife. He brought a young goat for her and said to her father, “I want to go to my wife in her room.” But he wouldn’t let him. 2 Her father said, “I really thought you hated her altogether, so I gave her to your best man. But her younger sister — isn’t she even prettier? Why not take her instead?” 3 Shimshon said to them, “This time I’m through with the P’lishtim! I’m going to do something terrible to them!” 4 So Shimshon went and caught three hundred foxes. Then he took torches, tied pairs of foxes to each other by their tails, and put a torch in the knot of every pair of tails. 5 Then he set the torches on fire and let the foxes loose in wheat fields of the P’lishtim. In this way he burned up the harvested wheat along with the grain waiting to be harvested, and the olive orchards as well. 6 The P’lishtim asked, “Who did this?” They answered, “Shimshon the son-in-law of the man from Timnah, because he took Shimshon’s wife and gave her to his best man.” Then the P’lishtim came up and burned both her and her father to death. 7 Shimshon said to them, “I will certainly have my revenge on you for doing such a thing; but after I do, I’ll stop.” 8 Infuriated, he began killing them right and left; it was a massacre. Then he went down and stayed in the cave at the ‘Eitam Rock.
9 The P’lishtim went up, pitched camp in Y’hudah and attacked Lechi. 10 The men of Y’hudah said, “Why are you attacking us?” They replied, “To arrest Shimshon, that’s why — to treat him the way he treated us.” 11 Then 3,000 men from Y’hudah went down to the cave at the Eitam Rock and said to Shimshon, “Don’t you know that the P’lishtim are our rulers? What are you doing to us?” He answered, “I’ve only treated them the way they treated me.” 12 They said to him, “We’ve come down to arrest you and hand you over to the P’lishtim.” Shimshon replied, “Swear to me that you won’t fall on me yourselves.” 13 They said to him, “No, but we will tie you up and hand you over to them. However, we promise not to kill you.” So they tied him up with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock. 14 When he got to Lechi, the P’lishtim came running and shouting at him; and the Spirit of Adonai came on him powerfully. The ropes on his arms became as weak as burnt flax and fell from his arms. 15 He found a fresh donkey jawbone, took it in his hand, and with it he struck down a thousand men. 16 Shimshon said,
“With the jawbone of a donkey I left heaps piled on heaps!
With the jawbone of a donkey I killed a thousand men!”
17 After he finished speaking he threw the jawbone away, and the place came to be called Ramat-Lechi [jawbone heights].
18 Then he felt very thirsty, so he called on Adonai, saying, “You accomplished this great rescue through your servant. But am I now to die from thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” 19 Then God made a gash in the crater at Lechi, and water came out. When he had drunk, his spirit came back; and he revived. This is why the place was called ‘Ein-HaKorei [the spring of him who called], and it is there in Lechi until now. 20 He judged Isra’el in the period of the P’lishtim for twenty years.
Luke 15:1 The tax-collectors and sinners kept gathering around to hear Yeshua, 2 and the P’rushim and Torah-teachers kept grumbling. “This fellow,” they said, “welcomes sinners — he even eats with them!” 3 So he told them this parable: 4 “If one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them, doesn’t he leave the other ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it? 5 When he does find it, he joyfully hoists it onto his shoulders; 6 and when he gets home, he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Come, celebrate with me, because I have found my lost sheep!’ 7 I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who turns to God from his sins than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need to repent.
8 “Another example: what woman, if she has ten drachmas and loses one of these valuable coins, won’t light a lamp, sweep the house and search all over until she finds it? 9 And when she does find it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Come, celebrate with me, because I have found the drachma I lost.’ 10 In the same way, I tell you, there is joy among God’s angels when one sinner repents.”
(Complete Jewish Bible).
Use these devotions in your newsletter and bulletin! Used by permission; all rights reserved by the Int'l LLL (LHM).
CHANGE THEIR WORLD. CHANGE YOURS.
THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING.
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