The Living and Enduring Word of God

Daily Reading:  Mark 13

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. (Mark 13.31)

Devotional Thought: Jesus taught his disciples about the end of the Jerusalem and ultimately of the world.  And while the disciples of Jesus were quite interested in what Christ had to say about these things, this teaching about the end of the age has been scoffed at since the times of Jesus himself:

“Knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.’  For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago…” (2 Peter 3.3-5)

Scoffers forget two things:  1) that the world had a beginning and 2) that the world will have an ending.  Science agrees with theology on those points.  One calls it the “Big Bang” and the other calls it “In the beginning God…”  One says that the earth will be swallowed up by the “expansion of the sun” and the other says “the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn” (2 Peter 3.12).  The only difference is that the scoffers put a date on it: about 2.8 billion years from now.  Jesus freely admitted that he didn’t know the date, “but only the Father” knew the time of the end.  So, everybody agrees.  The world will end.  It’s just a matter of timing.  Seems to me that Jesus was right again!  This world – yes even this universe – is not eternal.  It will pass away.  But God's Word will never pass away!

I have fixed my hope on "the living and enduring word of God" (1 Peter 1.23, NIV).

Prayer: Thank you, Lord, that in this decaying and dying universe, there is something eternal on which we can stand - the Word of God!  Help me - as the wise man in the parable - to build my life on this rock.  Amen.

Psalm of the Day: Psalm 8.1-9

1 O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.

2 Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.

3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

4 what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?

5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.

6 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet,

7 all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,

8 the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

9 O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!