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

Category: 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

All Peoples

All Peoples

By |

And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself. 

John 12:32 

Christ saves people from all different times, locations, and cultures throughout history. Salvation is a wide affair. In our text He declares that if He is lifted up, He will draw all peoples unto Himself. The word ‘peoples’ has been supplied by the translators to clarify His reference. We might say, ‘all sorts of people,’ or ‘all types of people.’ That this is a correct understanding of His meaning is clear when we look at the scene John describes in Revelation 7 where he writes, ‘After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands.’ This demonstrates that Christ redeems a wide and varied host of people. John’s description would hardly be more diverse and inclusive. Within the context of our text there is another scene which illustrates what Christ has said. John describes it by saying, ‘Now there were certain Greeks among those who came up to worship at the feast. Then they came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and asked him, saying, Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’ Thus John gives an illustration within the immediate context that shows us how pertinent Christ’s remark was. God is not small and Christ’s redemption is not only for the few. The Holy Spirit is doing a great work to attract many to the altogether lovely Christ.  

Our Great God and our Savior, 
we rejoice that You are doing a great work of redemption. 
We praise You that it extends 
over the course of human history. 

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning
Before Abraham Was

Before Abraham Was

By |

Jesus said to them, Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM. 

John 8:58 

Christ is eternal. As He spoke with His enemies regarding His identity, they challenged Him about His remark, ‘Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.’  They said, ‘You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?’ He replied with the words of our text, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.’ The title He uses, in reference to Himself is the name I AM. This was the name by which He identified Himself in Exodus 3 as He spoke with Moses at the burning bush. It is the name of the Self-Existent One. By logical inference this means He is eternal. Micah, the Old Testament prophet, speaking of Christ said of Him, ‘Whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting.’ At a certain point in history Christ took unto Himself a true body and a reasonable soul, but that was by no means the beginning of His existence. Because He is the Son of God, the Second Member of the Trinity, He is as eternal as the Father and the Spirit. Therefore, when His enemies challenged Him, He could say, ‘Before  Abraham was, I AM.’ The man we call Jesus is the essential, eternal Son of the Living God.  

Our Gracious God and our Savior, 
we rejoice that You are from eternity. 
We praise You that from everlasting to everlasting, 
You are God.  

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning

Free Indeed

Free Indeed

By |

And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. 

John 8:32  

Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. 

John 8:36

How does knowing the truth make us free? The second portion of our text answers that question. As Christ is speaking to the Jews who believed in Him, He says. ‘You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.’ After that, He explains that to commit sin is to be a slave to it and that such a person is not a member of the household of God as a son of the family would be. He follows that explanation with the second portion of our text. Thus He ties knowledge of the truth and freedom to Himself. In the most straightforward manner He links these things together. If we want to know truth, we must know Christ. If we know Christ, Who is the embodiment of truth, we will be free. This is true freedom, and not some delusion. Many people believe that freedom means being able to indulge in what satisfies our natural desires. Christ frees us from the addictive dependency we have on those things. We become no longer slaves to those things. Instead, He makes us free with our knowledge of Him which He equates with our knowledge of the truth. We are then free indeed.  

Gracious God and our Savior, 
we rejoice that You are the Way, the Truth and the Life. 
We praise You that, as we know You, 
You make us truly free.  

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning

Meta