Scripture of the Week
SCRIPTURE: Psalm 91:9-10 King James Version
9 Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most
High, thy habitation;
10 There shall no evil befall thee,
neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.
1. A decision- not
just mental, but from the heart that produces change)
I have decided to make the Lord my place of refuge and my habitation,
( dwelling place). For in Him we live
and move and have our being. (Acts 17:28a)
Our whole existence and identity is
fully in Christ and we cannot be separated from Him. He and we are a part of
Him and of each other.
John 17: 20 “I am praying not only for these
disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message. 21 I pray that they will
all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in
you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.
22 “I have given them the glory you gave me, so they may be one as we
are one. 23 I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect
unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much
as you love me. 24 Father,
I want these whom you have given me to be with me where I am. Then they can see
all the glory you gave me because you loved me even before the world began!
2. No
evil will befall us (befall-Befall is an old-fashioned or
literary way of saying something happened by chance. Bad luck befalls a
heroine who drops her lucky rabbit foot. Christians live by faith, not by luck
or happenstance. The worldly view outlook is: “Everything happens for a reason”
(and God usually gets the blame).
3. No plague shall come near your dwelling
place (Our home or wherever we live).
Specifically,
the word mastigos (Greek) denoted the act of recurrently
beating a prisoner or victim. Once the person’s wounds had mended, the torturers
would bring them back to the whipping post, where they were struck again and
again and again. These beatings were sporadic but constant, and although they
were not serious enough to kill the victim, it kept them in constant pain and
misery. It was torment and abuse — a scourge that caused great suffering and
prolonged anguish.
It
is an ailment, sickness, or affliction that regularly strikes an individual
again and again. It is a recurring condition that is not serious enough to kill
but that continually keeps the individual sick and miserable. It is a sick, demented, elongated devilish
attack upon an individual’s physical body that causes discomfort and pain.
Thus, this word mastigos,
translated “plague,” would describe chronic conditions such as migraine headaches, rashes, allergic reactions, foot
fungus, and so on. These are conditions that come and go, can last
for years, and rarely permanently respond to medication or the treatment of
physicians.
Bulletin Notes
“Jesus
Christ the same yesterday and today and forever.” Hebrews 13:8
In Hebrews 13 the writer is encouraging readers to conduct
themselves in a way that reflects a recognition of the superiority of Jesus
Christ. The writer has already challenged readers to fix their eyes on Jesus and run the race with perseverance. As
long as believers are fixing their eyes on Him, they can run without losing
heart Believers can be encouraged that He will never forsake them or leave them
and believers should imitate the examples of those who have had faith in Him.
But all this encouragement and direction is only helpful if it is truth that
God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. If God arbitrarily changes His
character, then how can we have confidence that what He has said He will do? If
we can’t rely on Him to do what He has said, then we cannot have confidence and
certainty, and it is impossible to run the race with endurance.
Hebrews 13:8 gives us wonderful assurance
that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. This statement
helps us look backward and forward so that we can know He is reliable today and
that the things He has said are reliable. Jesus wasn’t some trendy preacher who
rose in popularity and then faded into oblivion. Jesus had always existed as God.
He came in the flesh as a man in order to pay the human price owed to God for
sin on behalf of all humanity, and He is in heaven working and interceding
until He returns for His people to take them home. One day He will return in
glory for all to see. He will rule as King, and He will dwell with humanity
forever He has had a consistent plan from the start and has been faithfully
executing that plan, always keeping His word, and always completely
trustworthy. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
The writer of Psalm 102 communicates beautifully
that God existed always, that He created the heavens and the earth, and that,
even though the creation changes, God does not. Because of those universal
truths, the writer can be confident that God will keep His promises. As Samuel
once put it, “The Glory of Israel will not lie or change His mind. He is not a
man that He should change His mind” (1 Samuel 15:29).
Even
when the Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity, became a man, He did not
lie or change His mind about those things that had been spoken. Jesus remained
faithful to His word, even modeling by example that the means to withstand
temptation and testing is by holding fast to the Word of God. This is further
evidence that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Even in passages of Scripture in
which we read that God “changed His mind,”
those
instances do not reflect a change of character or a rewriting of promises. They
typically relate to conditions that changed. In Genesis 6:6–7 God was grieved at what
mankind had become, and, though He would judge humanity through the flood, He
would not violate His promise of redemption, and humanity would subsist. In Exodus 32:10 God tests Moses, saying that
God would destroy Israel and start again with Moses. Moses remembered that God
had promised to work through a specific lineage and that He couldn’t “start
over” with Moses and still keep His word. When Moses appealed to God to “change
His mind,” God did. It was a key lesson in the life of Moses, that God keeps
His word. In Jeremiah 26:13 God would “change His mind” about judging Israel
because their judgment would be complete. In Amos 7:2–6 Amos sees visions in
which God was about to destroy Israel, but God “changed His mind” when Amos
interceded. This was a lesson for Amos that God keeps His word and would not
allow Israel to be completely destroyed. These are a few examples of how God
uses teaching tools and that He “changes His mind” only in agreement with what
He has already committed to.
Being the same yesterday and today
and forever, Jesus Christ is unchanging and unchangeable. No sin, distress, or
complication will cause Him to abandon us. His love is constant and “as strong as
death” (Song of Solomon 8:6).
We can therefore have full confidence that “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to
completion” (Philippians 1:6).