Tuesday: The Psalm of the Janitors

Theme: Security in the Lord

In this week’s lessons we are reminded of the need to long after God, who delights in his people as they trust in him.

Scripture: Psalm 84:1-12

As I have read over the various commentaries on this psalm, I sense that the understanding of it that I shared yesterday eliminates a lot of the scholarly barnacles that surround it and opens it up to us in fresh ways.

It is a psalm of people who were present in the temple, who served in God’s house, and who are expressing here how intensely their very souls yearned and even fainted for God. They are saying that their souls yearn for God’s house not because they are separated from it, but because that is where they are and want to be. It is why they are serving.

Think and Act Biblically from James Boice is a devotional of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is supported only by its readers and gracious Christians like you. Please prayerfully consider supporting Think and Act Biblically and the mission of the Alliance.

The Whole Gospel in the Songs of Christmas

When artists record popular versions of carols or when publishers add Christmas sons to hymnals and songbooks, too often they excise the core gospel message in exchange for sentimentalism. As the radio plays Christmas music 24 hours a day, it is not unusual for us to hear altered lyrics or simply the first verse of a carol repeated two or three times instead of the original verses.

The season leading to Christmas is a wonderful time to draw attention some of the all-too-familiar lyrics of some Christmas carols. Some of the best Christmas carols not only speak of Jesus as the child in the manger, but also the gospel reason for why the Christ had to come—the presence of sin that cannot be satisfied but through the peace that comes from the blood of the cross. Jesus did not come to be a sweet child but as the Word made flesh, the bruised and broken sacrifice, the conqueror of death by death, and the ascended Lord at the right hand of the Father.

The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is member supported and operates only by your faithful support. Thank you.

Christward Collective is a conversation of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is supported only by its readers and gracious Christians like you. Please prayerfully consider supporting Christward Collective and the mission of the Alliance.

Monday: The Psalm of the Janitors

Theme: Longing for God’s House

In this week’s lessons we are reminded of the need to long after God, who delights in his people as they trust in him.

Scripture: Psalm 84:1-12

All of the Psalter’s psalms are beautiful, profound and poignant, but some stand out above the rest, and Psalm 84 is one of them. For its high and uplifting sentiment, the simplicity and exquisite beauty of its images and its moving aspirations, it may be unequaled anywhere.

Think and Act Biblically from James Boice is a devotional of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is supported only by its readers and gracious Christians like you. Please prayerfully consider supporting Think and Act Biblically and the mission of the Alliance.

Friday: The Encircling Foe

Theme: Praying for Grace

From this week’s lessons, we see that when we are wrongly attacked, we are not to seek vengeance, but instead are to entrust ourselves and the situation to God.

Scripture: Psalm 83:1-18

The second thing we should notice about the way the psalm handles its desire for judgment on the Jews’ enemies is that it does not speak of them as the Jews’ enemies so much as the enemies of God...This perspective makes a tremendous difference in how one thinks of judgment. If the evil is thought of as being against one’s self, then the call is for revenge. But if it is thought of as being against God, then our response is to leave justice in God’s hands and trust him for whatever he sees fit to do. And we can trust him! God is not indifferent!

Think and Act Biblically from James Boice is a devotional of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is supported only by its readers and gracious Christians like you. Please prayerfully consider supporting Think and Act Biblically and the mission of the Alliance.

A Spiritual Aesthetic

A spiritual aesthetic must be fundamentally theological. This is true not only in the broad sense of the term, where theology means the whole discipline of study concerning religious truth, but particularly in the narrow sense of the term: theology proper, the study of God. God is the supremely beautiful and the fountainhead of all beauty, so Spiritual aesthetics begins with Him.

In this age, the Church is perennially confronted with the challenge of maintaining a kingdom identity in the midst of a fallen world. How do we live as “foreigners and exiles” (1 Pet. 2:11) while remaining in our culture so that we can bear witness to the gospel? How do we “shine among them like stars in the sky” (Php. 2:15) without being corrupted by a pagan society? The fundamental answer of Scripture, seen in these passages and elsewhere, is a firm call to Christian ethics. We must live by the Holy Ghost, not the zeitgeist.

The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is member supported and operates only by your faithful support. Thank you.

Christward Collective is a conversation of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is supported only by its readers and gracious Christians like you. Please prayerfully consider supporting Christward Collective and the mission of the Alliance.

Thursday: The Encircling Foe

Theme: Appealing for God’s Judgment

From this week’s lessons, we see that when we are wrongly attacked, we are not to seek vengeance, but instead are to entrust ourselves and the situation to God.

Scripture: Psalm 83:1-18

We are sometimes bothered by the second part of Psalm 83, which is an appeal to God to overthrow and destroy the people's enemies. What are we to say about this? The first thing is an observation on the psalm itself, and it is that God had destroyed Israel's enemies in this way from time to time in the past. Thus, whatever else the psalmist may be doing, he is at least appealing to an historical precedent. Two of these judgments are referred to in verses 9-12.

Think and Act Biblically from James Boice is a devotional of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is supported only by its readers and gracious Christians like you. Please prayerfully consider supporting Think and Act Biblically and the mission of the Alliance.

Wednesday: The Encircling Foe

Theme: Preservation in the Midst of Persecution

From this week’s lessons, we see that when we are wrongly attacked, we are not to seek vengeance, but instead are to entrust ourselves and the situation to God.

Scripture: Psalm 83:1-18

Why has there been so much hatred?...The ultimate and only full explanation must be found in God's words to the serpent in the Garden of Eden, when he said, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel” (Genesis 3:15). Satan hates the Jews because God promised to send the Messiah through them, which is why he stirred up Pharaoh and his court and why he caused Herod to strike out against the Jewish babies at the time of Christ's birth. 

Think and Act Biblically from James Boice is a devotional of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is supported only by its readers and gracious Christians like you. Please prayerfully consider supporting Think and Act Biblically and the mission of the Alliance.

Tuesday: The Encircling Foe

Theme: Surrounded by Enemies

From this week’s lessons, we see that when we are wrongly attacked, we are not to seek vengeance, but instead are to entrust ourselves and the situation to God.

Scripture: Psalm 83:1-18

What is significant about the specific peoples listed in the ongoing flow of the psalm (vv. 6-11) is that they form an almost complete circle of entrapment around Israel...There was no time in Israel's history, so far as we know, when these precise ten powers were actually arrayed against her. So the listing in verses 6-8 is probably a generalization. It is a way of saying that the Jews always seemed to be surrounded by enemies and in danger of being liquidated.

Think and Act Biblically from James Boice is a devotional of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is supported only by its readers and gracious Christians like you. Please prayerfully consider supporting Think and Act Biblically and the mission of the Alliance.

Monday: The Encircling Foe

Theme: When God Seems to Do Nothing

From this week’s lessons, we see that when we are wrongly attacked, we are not to seek vengeance, but instead are to entrust ourselves and the situation to God.

Scripture: Psalm 83:1-18

But here is an even greater problem. How about when God does nothing? What should we think when he is silent when his people call to him in trouble? This is no small matter. It is a terrible problem, and it is what Psalm 83 is about. It tells God, “Do not keep silent; be not quiet...be not still” when we are surrounded by our enemies.

Think and Act Biblically from James Boice is a devotional of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is supported only by its readers and gracious Christians like you. Please prayerfully consider supporting Think and Act Biblically and the mission of the Alliance.

Friday: A Time to Enjoy and Give Thanks

Theme: Giving Thanks for All Things

This week’s lessons help us to celebrate Thanksgiving properly by impressing upon us the importance of continually expressing genuine thanks to the Lord for all his blessings.

Scripture: Nehemiah 8:10

Above all, thank God for your many spiritual blessings. We are thankful for our material blessings, or should be. But remember to keep them in perspective. A person may possess much and still perish miserably in the end. This is why Jesus asked the piercing question, “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul” (Matt. 16:26)? As wonderful as our material blessings are, they are still far less important that our spiritual treasures.

Think and Act Biblically from James Boice is a devotional of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is supported only by its readers and gracious Christians like you. Please prayerfully consider supporting Think and Act Biblically and the mission of the Alliance.

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