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For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.Eph 2:9 |
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| Archived Manna: | |
Dear
Friend,
If you do not already have a habit of gathering daily manna the first thing in the morning (we can look at the example given to us in Exodus 16 and find the pattern for make it a habit. Establish your life and your schedule to allow you the necessary time to do your daily collection first thing every morning to give you the strength to make it through the day. And remember that today’s manna will not be sufficient for tomorrow; tomorrow’s manna must be collected tomorrow morning. Saturday, September 21, 2019
Today's Passage : Today's Passage:Crime and Punishment Bible Verse :Ecclesiastes 8:6-11 "Because for every matter there is a time and judgment, Though the misery of man increases greatly. For he does not know what will happen; So who can tell him when it will occur? No one has power over the spirit to retain the spirit, And no one has power in the day of death. There is no release from that war, And wickedness will not deliver those who are given to it. All this I have seen, and applied my heart to every work that is done under the sun: There is a time in which one man rules over another to his own hurt. Then I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of holiness, and they were forgotten in the city where they had so done. This also is vanity. Because the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. " Message:
This poetic and philosophical passage from Ecclesiastes, the great book of wisdom, treats two similar themes. The first describes the misery that people suffer from not knowing when they will suffer or when they will die. Nobody knows what will befall him, or when. We go to the doctor and find out that we have a disease we didn’t ever expect; a man or woman is walking and is attacked by a criminal. These things happen unexpectedly. And you can’t opt out. There is no “honorable discharge” from the vicissitudes of life.
Medieval Queen of Sheba
Some people seek power over others, and even become rulers and leaders, glorious in their day. They might “visit places of holiness,” i.e. make resolutions to follow God, but then relapse into earthly pride; they can die in sin, and nobody remembers their good deeds. It is all “vanity,” a major theme of Ecclesiastes. People slip into evil, because their punishment is slow to come.
Solomon should know; he is speaking from experience.
The point is, that when we do good works, the feeling of satisfaction we get is vanity — personal pride that will soon be gone, forgotten by others, in a year, or a decade, or ten thousand years. And when we do evil, the feeling that we have gotten away with it is similarly temporary. Like the punishment for crime that is so often slow to come, God’s day of judgment is unpredictable. And so we put the inevitable out of our minds, that there will be no consequences. The day of judgment will come, when our faith and steadfastness will bring us the ultimate reward, and the evil we have committed will be judged.
The implicit message is that we must do good works out of love for God, and to His glory, rather than for the temporary pride of doing good; and we must not think our evil acts are forgotten, if no punishment follows them. We will come before Christ at the time of His choosing.
Meditation : Prayer : Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!....Amen |
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