Daily Devotional

May 7, 2019

Be Honest With Others and With God

You shall have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure, that your days may be lengthened in the land which the Lord your God is giving you. Deuteronomy 25:15, NKJV.

It is best to deal honestly with your fellow beings and with God. You are dependent upon Christ for every favor you enjoy; you are dependent upon Him for the future, immortal life; and you cannot afford to be without respect unto the recompense of reward. Those who realize their dependence upon God will feel that they must be honest with others, and, above all, they must be honest with God, from whom come all the blessings of life. The evasion of the positive commands of God concerning tithes and offerings is registered in the books of heaven as robbery toward Him.

No one who is dishonest with God or with others can truly prosper…. The Lord has bought us with His own precious blood, and it is because of His mercy and grace that we may hope for the great gift of salvation. And we are enjoined to deal justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. Yet the Lord declares, “Ye have robbed me, even this whole nation.” When we deal unjustly with other human beings or with our God, we despise the authority of God and ignore the fact that Christ has purchased us with His own life.

The world is robbing God upon the wholesale plan. The more He imparts of wealth, the more thoroughly do people claim it as their own, to be used as they shall please. But shall the professed followers of Christ follow the customs of the world? Shall we forfeit peace of conscience, communion with God, and fellowship with our brethren and sisters because we fail to devote to His cause the portion He has claimed as His own?

Let those who claim to be Christians bear in mind that they are trading on the capital entrusted them of God, and that they are required to faithfully follow the directions of the Scriptures in regard to its disposal. If your heart is right with God, you will not embezzle your Lord’s goods and invest them in your own selfish enterprises. – The Review and Herald, December 17, 1889.

From Devotional: To Be Like Jesus, p. 166.

Daily Devotional

May 6, 2019

Do Right in Business, Not Just in Church

In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets. Matthew 7:12, NRSV.

Those who truly fear God would rather toil day and night, and eat the bread of poverty, than to indulge a passion for gain which would oppress the widow and the fatherless, or turn strangers from their right. Our Savior sought to impress upon His hearers that the person who would venture to defraud a neighbor in the smallest item would, if the opportunity were favorable, overreach in larger matters. The slightest departure from rectitude breaks down the barriers, and prepares the heart to do greater injustice. By precept and example Christ taught that the strictest integrity should govern our conduct toward our fellow beings. Said the divine Teacher, “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.”

Just to the extent that people would advantage themselves at the disadvantage of others will their souls become insensible to the influence of the Spirit of God. Gain obtained at such a cost is a fearful loss. It is better to want than to lie; better to hunger than to defraud; better to die than to sin. Extravagance, overreaching, extortion indulged by those professing godliness, are corrupting their faith and destroying their spirituality. The church is in a great degree responsible for the sins of its members. It gives countenance to the evil if it fails to lift its voice against it. The influence from which it has most to fear is not that of open opposers, infidels, and blasphemers, but of inconsistent professors of Christ. These are the ones who keep back the blessing of the God of Israel….

The business world does not lie outside the limits of God’s government. True religion is not to be merely paraded on the Sabbath and displayed in the sanctuary; it is for every day and for every place. Its claims must be recognized and obeyed in every act of life. Those who possess the genuine article will in all their business affairs show as clear a perception of right as when offering their supplications at the throne of grace. – The Southern Watchman, May 10, 1904.

From Devotional: To Be Like Jesus, p. 165.

Daily Devotional

May 5, 2019

Be Like Jesus, Not Like the World

You shall not have in your bag differing weights, a heavy and a light. You shall not have in your house differing measures, a large and a small. Deuteronomy 25:13, 14, NKJV.

Those who profess to love and fear God should cherish sympathy and love for one another, and should guard the interests of others as their own. Christians should not regulate their conduct by the world’s standard. In all ages the people of God are as distinct from worldlings as their profession is higher than that of the ungodly. From the beginning to the end of time, God’s people are one body.

The love of money is the root of all evil. In this generation the desire for gain is the absorbing passion. If wealth cannot be secured by honest industry, human beings seek to obtain it by fraud. Widows and orphans are robbed of their scanty pittance, and poor people are made to suffer for the necessaries of life. And all this that the rich may support their extravagance, or indulge their desire to hoard.

The terrible record of crime daily committed for the sake of gain is enough to chill the blood and fill the soul with horror. The fact that even among those who profess godliness the same sins exist to a greater or less extent calls for deep humiliation of soul and earnest action on the part of the followers of Christ. Love of display and love of money have made this world a den of thieves and robbers. But Christians are professedly not dwellers upon the earth; they are in a strange country, stopping, as it were, only for a night. They should not be actuated by the same motives and desires as are those who have their home and treasure here. God designed that our lives should represent the life of our great Pattern: that, like Jesus, we should live to do others good….

Every wrong done to the children of God is done to Christ Himself in the person of His saints. Every attempt to advantage one’s self by the ignorance, weakness, or misfortune of another is registered as fraud in the ledger of heaven. – The Southern Watchman, May 10, 1904.

From Devotional: To Be Like Jesus, p. 164.

Daily Devotional

May 4, 2019

Sabbath Rest and Joy in Eternity

“And it shall come to pass that from one New Moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, all flesh shall come to worship before Me,” says the Lord. Isaiah 66:23, NKJV.

At last Jesus was at rest. The long day of shame and torture was ended. As the last rays of the setting sun ushered in the Sabbath, the Son of God lay in quietude in Joseph’s tomb. His work completed, His hands folded in peace, He rested through the sacred hours of the Sabbath day.

In the beginning the Father and the Son had rested upon the Sabbath after Their work of creation. When “the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them” (Genesis 2:1), the Creator and all heavenly beings rejoiced in contemplation of the glorious scene. “The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy” (Job 38:7).

Now Jesus rested from the work of redemption; and though there was grief among those who loved Him on earth, yet there was joy in heaven. Glorious to the eyes of heavenly beings was the promise of the future….With this scene the day upon which Jesus rested is forever linked. For “his work is perfect” (Deuteronomy 32:4); and “whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever” (Ecclesiastes 3:14). When there shall be a “restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began” (Acts 3:21), the creation Sabbath, the day on which Jesus lay at rest in Joseph’s tomb, will still be a day of rest and rejoicing. Heaven and earth will unite in praise, as “from one sabbath to another” (Isaiah 66:23) the nations of the saved shall bow in joyful worship to God and the Lamb.

In the closing events of the crucifixion day, fresh evidence was given of the fulfillment of prophecy, and new witness borne to Christ’s divinity. When the darkness had lifted from the cross, and the Savior’s dying cry had been uttered, immediately another voice was heard, saying, “Truly this was the Son of God” (Matthew 27:54). – The Desire of Ages, 769, 770.

From Devotional: To Be Like Jesus, p. 162.

Daily Devotional

May 3, 2019

The Sabbath Not Jewish but Christ’s Holy Day

So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. Luke 4:16, NKJV.

How can we account for the observance of the first day of the week by the majority of professed Christians, when the Bible presents no authority for this change either in the precepts or in the example of Christ or His followers? We can account for it in the fact that the world has followed the traditions of human beings instead of a “Thus saith the Lord.” This has been the work that Satan has always sought to accomplish – lead people away from the commandments of God to the veneration and obedience of the traditions of the world. Through human instrumentalities he has cast contempt upon the Sabbath of Jehovah, and has stigmatized it as “the old Jewish Sabbath.”

Thousands have thoughtlessly echoed this reproach, as though it were something to which was attached great weight of argument; but they have lost sight of the fact that the Jewish people were especially chosen of God as the guardians of His truth, the keepers of His law, the depositary of His sacred oracles. They received the lively oracles to give unto us. The Old and New Testaments both came through the Jews to us. Every promise in the Bible, every ray of light which has shone upon us from the Word of God, has come through the Jewish nation.

Christ was the leader of the Hebrews as they marched from Egypt to Canaan. In union with the Father, Christ proclaimed the law amid the thunders of Sinai to the Jews, and when He appeared on earth as a man, He came as a descendant of Abraham. Shall we use the same argument concerning the Bible and Christ, and reject them as Jewish, as is done in rejecting the Sabbath of the Lord our God? The Sabbath institution is as closely identified with the Jews as is the Bible, and there is the same reason for the rejection of one as of the other. But the Sabbath is not Jewish in its origin. It was instituted in Eden before there were such a people known as the Jews. The Sabbath was made for all humanity, and was instituted in Eden before the fall of Adam and Eve. The Creator called it “my holy day.” Christ announced Himself as the “Lord … of the sabbath.” Beginning with creation, it is as old as the human race, and having been made for human beings it will exist as long as they shall exist. – The Signs of the Times, November 12, 1894.

From Devotional: To Be Like Jesus, p. 161.