Pastor Gary's OYB Devotion Archive for January 21

WHICH KING WILL YOU CHOOSE?

From: January 21, 2024

“At that time Herod the tetrarch heard about the fame of Jesus” (Matthew 14:1 ESV).

This was Herod the “tetrarch” (“ruler of a quarter”), not Herod the Great. He was one of the sons of Herod the Great, and was better known as Herod “Antipas” (“anti + pater” meaning “against the father”). After the death of Herod the Great, his sons went before Tiberius Caesar to plead their case for their father’s throne, for their kingdom was ultimately under Roman rule. Tiberius subdivided Herod’s kingdom into a tetrarchy and gave Antipas rule over Galilee and Perea.

Herod Antipas later divorced his wife and took his brother’s (Herod Philip II) wife, Herodias, as his wife. She was not only his brother’s wife, but also his niece (“Herodias” was Herod the Great’s granddaughter). John the Baptist publicly rebuked Antipas for this sinful union. Antipas, perhaps fearing anarchy in his kingdom from John’s preaching, and at the urging of his wife and her daughter, imprisoned and later beheaded John.

It was this King Herod, Herod Antipas, that now feared that Jesus was in fact John the Baptist raised from the dead. The contrast between this worldly king and the true king is striking. Yet, the choice still remains today for us. Which king will you choose? The world’s king or the One True King, Jesus?

PRAYER: Dear Lord, we have declared You to be our Savior and our Lord, but we are easily distracted by the world’s kingdom. Help us to pull our affections off of our idols and put them on You. We want to worship You fully and first. Lord Jesus, we bow to You afresh this day as our only true Lord and King. In Your precious name we pray, Amen.

LOVE LIFTED ME

From: January 21, 2023

“He reached down from heaven and rescued me; he drew me out of deep waters” (Psalm 18:16 NLT).

David wrote this psalm to the Lord during the time when God had delivered him from the hand of Saul and his enemies. He felt like a drowning man that God had reached down and rescued.

Have you ever felt like David? The circumstances of life so overwhelming as to make you feel like you’re drowning? Why not look up and call out to the One who loves you? His name is Jesus and He is ready to rescue you and set your feet on solid ground.

I grew up singing a song in church that describes how the love of Christ will lift you up. Maybe you’ll recognize it:

“I was sinking deep in sin far from the peaceful shore.
Very deeply stained within, sinking to rise no more.
But the Master of the sea heard my despairing cry.
From the waters lifted me now safe am I.
Love lifted me. Love lifted me.
When nothing else could help. Love lifted me”
(Love Lifted Me, James Rowe, 1912).

PRAYER: Dear Father, thank You for reaching down and saving us. Yet some are still drowning. Strengthen us to show them Your love that they might call out to Jesus for rescue. In Jesus’ name, amen.

‘And they were deeply offended and refused to believe in him. Then Jesus told them, “A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his own family”’ (Matthew 13:57 NLT).

From: January 21, 2022

FAMILIARITY CAN BREED CONTEMPT

The people of Nazareth were offended at the authority of Jesus’ teachings because of their familiarity with him. They knew his family. They had seen him grow up. “Who does he think he is coming back home preaching to us?” They thought.

Two ways we might relate to this passage:

One, we might relate to the Nazarenes. We sometimes respond without respect to Christ because of our familiarity. We’ve been believers for a long time, so we feel we’ve heard it all before. We’ve sung all the songs. Listened to all the sermons. Attended all the holiday events. We lose sight of our “first love.” We become like the people of Nazareth. And we do not see Jesus do mighty works in our lives because of our unbelief. We don’t really know Jesus.

Two, we might relate to Jesus. We sometimes experience rejection from our family and friends when we bring Jesus home with us. We are able to share our testimony of faith with strangers and see them accept Christ, but our own family members and closest friends act offended when we offer the same to them. Like Jesus, we have no honor in our own house.

How do you relate to this passage?

PRAYER: Dear Father, help us not to take for granted our relationship with Jesus. For we sometimes mistake our familiarity Him as a growing relationship with Him. We want to do more than know about Him. We want to grow in truly knowing Him. And Father, help us as we tell our friends and family about Jesus, so that they see Him as He truly is. In Jesus’ name, amen.

“He reached down from heaven and took hold of me; He pulled me out of deep waters” (Psalm 18:16 HCSB).

From: January 21, 2021

LOVE LIFTED ME

David wrote this psalm to the Lord during the time when God had delivered him from the hand of Saul and his enemies. He felt like a drowning man that God had reached down and rescued.

Have you ever felt like David? The circumstances of life so overwhelming as to make you feel like you’re drowning? Why not look up and call out to the One who loves you? His name is Jesus and He is ready to rescue you and set your feet on solid ground.

I grew up singing a song that describes how the love of Christ will lift you up. Maybe you’ll recognize it:

“I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore. Very deeply stained within, sinking to rise no more. But the Master of the sea heard my despairing cry. From the waters lifted me now safe am I. Love lifted me. Love lifted me. When nothing else could help. Love lifted me” (Love Lifted Me, James Rowe, 1912).

PRAYER: Dear Father, thank You for reaching down and saving us. Yet some are still drowning. Strengthen us to show them Your love that they might call out to Jesus for rescue. In Jesus’ name, amen.

“Therefore every scribe instructed concerning the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure things new and old.” (Matthew 13:52 NKJV).

From: January 21, 2020

THE TREASURE FOUND IN BOTH THE OLD AND THE NEW

After Jesus had finished using many parables describing the kingdom of heaven, he asked his disciples whether they understood. They replied that they had understood. Jesus then called them “scribes” who had been instructed in the kingdom. In Jewish life, a scribe was one who was an expert in the Old Testament law as a result of copying it with great care, often one letter at a time to produce a new copy. They were also known as teachers of the law. Jesus told his disciples that they were now like scribes who were instructed in the new teaching of the kingdom, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

As a result of the training that Jesus had given his disciples, he compared them to a “householder,” one who is the owner of a great house, who brings out treasure from both the old and the new. This treasure is the gospel of the kingdom for the best way to understand the Old Testament is through the lens of the New. This understanding is a treasure because it has such value as being the only way to eternal life with God.

The one who would be a teacher of the gospel must bring out the treasure of the good news from the old and the new testaments. For the key to understanding all Scripture is Christ. Do you understand this?

PRAYER: Dear Father, thank You for Your Word and even more, thank You for Jesus, our Living Word. For we study at His feet. It is the Spirit of Christ, Your Holy Spirit, that gives us understanding of Your Word. Thank You for revealing the treasure of the gospel of the kingdom to us. Strengthen us to grow in understanding and to be as scribes, teaching it to others. In Jesus’ name, amen.

“When Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee, heard about Jesus” (Matthew 14:1 NLT).

From: January 21, 2019

WHICH KING WILL YOU CHOOSE?

This was Herod the “Tetrarch” (“ruler of a quarter”), not Herod the Great. He was one of the sons of Herod the Great, and was better known as “Antipas.” After the death of Herod the Great, his sons went before Tiberius Caesar to plea their case for their father’s throne, for their kingdom was ultimately under Roman rule. Tiberius subdivided Herod’s kingdom into a tetrarchy and gave Antipas rule over Galilee and Perea. Herod Antipas later divorced his wife and took his brother’s (Herod Philip II) wife, Herodias, as his wife. She was not only his brother’s wife, but also his niece (“Herodias” was Herod the Great’s granddaughter). John the Baptist publicly rebuked Antipas for this sinful union. Antipas, perhaps fearing anarchy in his kingdom from John’s preaching, and at the urging of his wife and her daughter, imprisoned and later beheaded John.

It was this Herod, Herod Antipas, that now feared that Jesus was in fact John the Baptist raised from the dead. The contrast between this puppet king of the Jews and the true king, Jesus, Son of David, Son of God is striking. Yet, the choice still remains today for us. Which king will you choose? The world’s puppet king or the One True King, Jesus?

PRAYER: Lord, we have declared You to be our Savior and our Lord, but we are easily distracted by the world’s kingdom. Help us to pull our affections off of our idols and put them on You. We want to worship You fully and first. Lord Jesus, we bow to You afresh this day as our only Lord and King. In Your precious name we pray, Amen.

“When Joseph came home, they gave him the gifts they had brought him, then bowed low to the ground before him” (Genesis 43:26 NLT).

From: January 21, 2018

JOSEPH’S BROTHERS BOW BEFORE HIM

Joseph had two similar dreams when he was young. In the first, he saw he and his brothers binding sheaves in a field when his sheave arose and stood up while theirs bowed down to his. In the second dream, he saw the sun, moon, and eleven stars bow down to him (Read Gen. 37:1-11). Now, his double-dream had come true. Here he stood, as the governor of Egypt, with all eleven of his brothers bowing before him.

Joseph is a foreshadowing of Jesus. For Jesus was rejected by His brethren and turned over to the Romans to be crucified. Yet, He arose and is coming again. When he does, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that “Jesus is Lord” (Phil. 2:10-11).

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that was cast into the sea and gathered some of every kind, which, when it was full, they drew to shore; and they sat down and gathered the good into vessels, but threw the bad away” (Matthew 13:47-48 NKJV).

From: January 21, 2017

I don’t know what you believe about heaven and hell, but Jesus taught that they were real places of eternal existence. In this parable of Jesus, He compared the kingdom of heaven to a fishing net that caught both good and bad fish. The good fish represented those who truly believed in Christ as Lord. And the bad represented those who were hypocrites.

The kingdom of heaven is to be populated by those who have made Christ king. However, there are those who pay lip service to Jesus outwardly, yet inwardly their hearts remain unchanged. They still have “self” on the throne. They have not made Christ the Lord of their lives. They are hypocrites. As the gospel “dragnet” gathers people into the church, both the saved and the hypocrite are present. Yet, at the “end of the age” (Matt.13:49), they will be separated. The “just” to everlasting life and the “wicked” to a place of everlasting torment called Hell.

This is why we must continually preach the gospel to the church. For we do not know who there is among us that has yet to truly confess Christ as King. And this is why each of us must examine our own hearts to be sure that we have truly submitted our lives to Jesus. Have you confessed Jesus as Lord and believed that God raised Him from the dead? Are you truly among the redeemed? The end of the age is coming. Are you ready?

“At that time Herod the tetrarch heard about the fame of Jesus” (Matthew 14:1 ESV)

From: January 21, 2016

This was Herod the “Tetrarch” (“ruler of a quarter”), not Herod the Great. He was one of the sons of Herod the Great, and was better known as “Antipas.” After the death of Herod the Great, his sons went before Tiberius Caesar to plea their case for their father’s throne, for their kingdom was ultimately under Roman rule. Tiberius subdivided Herod’s kingdom into a tetrarchy and gave Antipas rule over Galilee and Perea. Herod Antipas later divorced his wife and took his brother’s (Herod Philip II) wife, Herodias, as his wife. She was not only his brother’s wife, but also his niece (“Herodias” was Herod the Great’s granddaughter). John the Baptist publicly rebuked Antipas for this sinful union. Antipas, perhaps fearing anarchy in his kingdom from John’s preaching, and at the urging of his wife and her daughter, imprisoned and later beheaded John. It was this Herod, Herod Antipas, that now feared that Jesus was in fact John the Baptist raised from the dead. The contrast between this puppet king of the Jews and the true king, Jesus, Son of David, Son of God is striking. Yet, the choice still remains today for us. Which king will you choose? The world’s puppet king or the One True King, Jesus?

See this chart to understand the family tree of “Herod the Tetrarch:

“So they were offended at Him. But Jesus said to them, ‘A prophet is not without honor except in his own country and in his own house'” (Matthew 13:57 NKJV)

From: January 21, 2015

The people of Nazareth were offended at the authority of Jesus’ teachings because of their familiarity with him. They knew his family. They had seen him grow up. “Who does he think he is coming back home preaching to us?” They thought.
Two ways we might relate to this passage:
One, we might relate to the Nazarenes. We sometimes respond without respect to Christ because of familiarity. We’ve been believers for a long time, so we feel we’ve heard it all before. We’ve sung all the songs. Listened to all the sermons. Attended all the holiday events. We lose sight of our “first love.” We become like the people of Nazareth. And we do not see Jesus do mighty works in our lives because of our unbelief.
Two, we might relate to Jesus. We sometimes experience rejection from our family and friends when we bring Jesus home with us. We are able to share our testimony of faith with strangers and see them accept Christ, but our own family members act offended when we offer the same to them. Like Jesus, we have no honor in our own house.
How do you relate to this passage?