Look inside this book.Where the Bush is Burning: A Daily Devotional by [Thomas Tice]

Category: Devotional
Old And New Commandments

Old And New Commandments

By |

Brethren, I write no new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you heard from the beginning. Again, a new commandment I write to you, which thing is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining. 

I John 2:7-8 

God is love. Christ is God. Love is the fulfillment of the law. Christ came to fulfill the law by His active demonstration of love. He leads us to love as the imitation of Him. When Christ spoke to His disciples on the night before He went to the cross, He summarized all these things by saying, ‘A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.’ The Jewish religionists had turned the word of God into a barren collection of regulations devoid of love. Christ came to bring the law to life by the Spirit. The religionists would have none of it, or Him. Christ reintroduced the true heart of God into the society which had lost it by their excessive insistence on the rules they had superimposed on what God had originally said. As John writes, he picks up the thread of the discussion which Christ had begun. He declares that what he is writing is an old commandment and at the same time a new commandment. It is old as God Himself Who is love and new as Christ was on the scene of time when He appeared as the manifestation of the love of God. Our understanding and experience of Christ leads us to love.  

Our Good and Gracious God, 
we rejoice that You are love. 
We praise You that as You show us Christ, 
You teach us to love. 

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning

Go Therefore

Go Therefore

By |

And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, All authority has even given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Amen. 

Matthew 28:18-20 

Christ has the authority to send His people into the world to bear witness to Him. The context of the verse we have been considering lately is the Great Commission. Christ, having risen from the dead, sends His disciples  into the world with His message. He has the authority to send them. He would later say to them, ‘but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.’ Thus He made the world their parish to preach Christ. While in the narrow sense we can say He was speaking to these few whom we call the Apostles, or sent ones, the work of bearing witness is broader than what these few could do. In the wider context, bearing witness to Christ is for all His people. All of us have some realm of influence. We touch lives every day. Within whatever context God puts us, we have occasions which arise quite naturally when we can point those around us to Christ. We are His witnesses in those situations just as certainly as were the disciples. Christ is worthy of our speaking of Him. He tailor-makes our opportunities by His providence.  

Our Good and Wise God, 
we rejoice that You have given us the privilege of  
speaking of You. 
We praise You that You provide opportunities for us 
to point people to Christ.  

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning

He Waits For Us

He Waits For Us

By |

For it is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom. 

Matthew 26:28-29 

Christ controls His future and ours. On the night before He went to the cross, as He was in the upper room with His disciples, He instituted the communion feast. He took the bread, broke it, and distributed it among the disciples saying, ‘Take, eat; this is my body.’ After that, He took the cup and gave it to them saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you.’ Our text is His next statement. For our purpose today, we are dwelling upon the second portion of the text, ‘but I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom.’ Christ is the Host at His communion feast. He instituted it with an eye to the future. As the perfect host, He has determined to wait until all His guests are gathered together before He participates in the feast again. This shows us the magnanimous nature of our Savior. He will not be wholly satisfied, or willing to enter fully into the celebration of eternity until all the ransomed people of God are saved to sin no more. This is a joyful thought for us who are still journeying through this world. The Master of the Feast waits for us until the appointed hour. 

Our Gracious Master and our God, 
we rejoice that You are preparing all things for our future. 
We look forward to that day, 
when we shall sit with You in the kingdom. 

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning
I Have The Keys

I Have The Keys

By |

I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death. 

Revelation 1:18 

Christ has authority over death and the grave. Our text holds His declaration of this fact. He says, ‘I have the keys of Hades and of Death.’ The holder of the keys to anything is the one who has the authority to use them to open and shut it at will. How is it that Christ has this authority? He has it explicitly because He was dead, is alive from the dead, and is alive forevermore. By His resurrection from the dead Christ has defeated death. Because He has defeated death, He has authority over it and the grave where death holds his prey. Thus when Paul writes of the resurrection, He relates our resurrection to Christ’s. He writes, ‘For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.’ He closes his discussion of the resurrection with the words, ‘O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.’  Therefore when we hear Christ’s words in our text we understand how He can have the keys of death and the grave. This takes away all fear of these things for us. If we are Christ’s, we have an indissoluble union with the One Who owns death and the grave. He is the resurrection and the life. We are safe in Him.  

Our Gracious Master and our God, 
we rejoice that You have all authority. 
We praise You that because You do, 
death and the grave hold no fear for us. 

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning

When He Saw His Glory

When He Saw His Glory

By |

These things Isaiah said when he saw His glory and spoke of Him. 

John 12:41 

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. 

Isaiah 6:1 

Christ appears throughout the Old Testament. As John writes his gospel, he quotes the prophet Isaiah in the passage that precedes our text. Our text, while it seems to be a simple aside, is full of implication. He says Isaiah saw ‘His glory.’ He has been speaking of Christ. In the verses leading up to our text there is no other person in view other than Christ. Therefore, when John says, ‘These things said Isaiah when he saw His glory and spoke of Him,’ he is, of necessity, speaking of Christ. What is even more significant is that Isaiah declares unequivocally that he saw the LORD, which is the name Jehovah, as the Old Testament uses it. Therefore, John is implicitly asserting the deity of Christ. As he will say later, ‘but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.’ The term Son of God is the statement of Christ’s essential, eternal deity. The Jews understood it as such and were prepared to stone Christ for using it in reference to Himself. We are abundantly blessed to have the New Testament writers confirm what the Old Testament writers asserted. Christ is the message of the Scriptures from the beginning to the end.  

Our Great God and our Savior, 
we rejoice that You are Jehovah. 
We praise You that, You being God, 
have come to us in human form. 

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning

Meta