When Jesus left His home in heaven, He didn’t come to earth to be a superstar. He came to serve. As His disciples, we’ve been left here on earth to follow His example and serve a lost and hurting world. The story of Zacchaeus shows us some Christlike qualities that we need to develop in order to serve as the Lord did.

Awareness: Although surrounded by a crowd, Jesus stopped and took notice of one particular man perched in a tree. Zacchaeus was hated and rejected because he was a tax collector. Although he was rich, there was something missing in his life, and Christ recognized his need. There are people all around us “hanging in trees”–needy, empty, and searching for hope. But too often, we’re preoccupied with our activities and don’t even notice them.

Availability: Jesus was heading to Jerusalem to carry out the most important act in human history: our redemption. Yet He stopped to have a meal with a spiritually needy man. What could be so important that it keeps you too busy to give others what they need most–your time?

Acceptance: Although Zacchaeus was a notorious sinner, Jesus didn’t say, “Clean up your act, and then I’ll come to your house.” We’re called, not to fix people but to share the transforming gospel of Christ.

How are you doing at serving those around you? Maybe it’s time to slow down and open your spiritual eyes to see all the needy people. God places opportunities all around us, but if we’re not attentive, we’ll miss them. Sometimes you just have to look up to see who’s in the tree.

C.S. Lewis once noted that if we had to choose between reading old books and new books, it should be the old books we choose. “Not because they are better,” he wrote, “but because they contain precisely those truths of which our own age is neglectful.” Lewis was well aware that there were truths spoken through other worldviews that he was blinded from simply because he existed in his own. 

 Our worldviews are no exception. Every thought and experience, every book and idea that crosses one’s path, has been shaped within a very particular worldview. Life is in fact so oriented by this unconscious zeitgeist that blindness is often a difficult concept to accept. 

 But that doesn’t make it less real. Blindness is as natural to humankind as the desire to understand. We are often blind to our own faults, blind to truths we don’t want to hear. It is the cure to such blindness that is important. Noting the interconnectedness of worldview and spirituality, Eugene Peterson writes, “There is widespread interest in living beyond the roles and functions handed to us by our culture. But much of it ends up as a spirituality that is shaped by terms handed out by the same culture.”(1) What do you do to see authentically? What do you do to protect yourself from walking blindly down paths shaped by dangerous ideas, down roads paved with misleading promises? How do you see what is real and not what is just culturally programed?   

 The Christian pilgrim powerfully attests that it is worship that opens our eyes and God’s Word that illumines our path.  A story is told of a man in a country far from his own. The man walked along, his coat buttoned up tightly on a frigid, windy day. As he walked through the crowded street noticing the somber faces that passed him, he was suddenly taken aback by a stranger who plainly stood out. As if in his own world, a man walked by contentedly whistling a tune. Wondering at first how he could even manage to whistle in the cold, the foreigner then noticed the tune that was hitting his ears. It was a fairly uncommon Christian hymn, yet a hymn that happened to be of great comfort to him personally. The words rushed into his mind as if a message from God personally: The Great Physician now is here, the sympathizing Jesus.  

 Catching up with the man, the foreigner joined in the whistling. Immediately, the man’s eyes lit up and they finished the hymn together. Each man spoke excitedly in a language unknown to the other, as they pointed to the heavens, touched their hearts with their hands, and embraced. Waving goodbye, the two men went their separate ways whistling, having experienced the transcending hope of the sympathizing Jesus and the illumining presence of God in a dark and lonely world.     

 It is a simple and true story that conveys the profound mystery of worship and its ability to present a worldview and kingdom beyond our own. Without a word spoken, two worlds were bridged because a tune resounded of a Spirit both hearts knew deeply. If a whistled hymn and a heart for God can unite strangers, imagine what will be when every tribe and nation cries out for God together. The Christian knows Jesus as the transformational hope, the eternal one who stepped into history to transform all of those in time.  As Ravi Zacharias notes, “Thus, worship brings together the divergent areas of our lives and allows us see the composite whole.” The living God is able to bring sight to the blind and meaning to every life’s story because God is the author of all things. Like the prophet Isaiah, eyes are opened in worship because we are suddenly before something bigger than any eye can imagine. 

 Might we stand accordingly with the hymn writer who asked in the illumining presence of God, “Open my eyes that I may see. Open my eyes—illumine me, Spirit Divine!”

 Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

Morning  “Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting.” Daniel 5:27

 It is well frequently to weigh ourselves in the scale of God’s Word. You will

find it a holy exercise to read some psalm of David, and, as you meditate upon

each verse, to ask yourself, “Can I say this? Have I felt as David felt? Has my

heart ever been broken on account of sin, as his was when he penned his

penitential psalms? Has my soul been full of true confidence in the hour of

difficulty as his was when he sang of God’s mercies in the cave of Adullam, or

in the holds of Engedi? Do I take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of

the Lord?” Then turn to the life of Christ, and as you read, ask yourselves how

far you are conformed to his likeness. Endeavour to discover whether you

 have the meekness, the humility, the lovely spirit which he constantly

inculcated and displayed. Take, then, the epistles, and see whether you can go

with the apostle in what he said of his experience. Have you ever cried out as

he did–“O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this

death?” Have you ever felt his self-abasement? Have you seemed to yourself the

chief of sinners, and less than the least of all saints? Have you known anything

of his devotion? Could you join with him and say, “For me to live is Christ, and

to die is gain”? If we thus read God’s Word as a test of our spiritual

condition, we shall have good reason to stop many a time and say, “Lord, I feel

 I have never yet been here, O bring me here! give me true penitence, such as

this I read of. Give me real faith; give me warmer zeal; inflame me with more

fervent love; grant me the grace of meekness; make me more like Jesus. Let me no

longer be found wanting,’ when weighed in the balances of the sanctuary, lest I

be found wanting in the scales of judgment.” “Judge yourselves that ye be not

judged.”

 

Evening  “Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling.”  2 Timothy 1:9

 The apostle uses the perfect tense and says, “Who hath saved us.” Believers in

Christ Jesus are saved. They are not looked upon as persons who are in a hopeful

state, and may ultimately be saved, but they are already saved. Salvation is not

a blessing to be enjoyed upon the dying bed, and to be sung of in a future state

above, but a matter to be obtained, received, promised, and enjoyed now. The

Christian is perfectly saved in God’s purpose; God has ordained him unto

salvation, and that purpose is complete. He is saved also as to the price which

has been paid for him: “It is finished” was the cry of the Saviour ere he died.

The believer is also perfectly saved in his covenant head, for as

 he fell in Adam, so he lives in Christ. This complete salvation is accompanied

by a holy calling. Those whom the Saviour saved upon the cross are in due time

effectually called by the power of God the Holy Spirit unto holiness: they leave

their sins; they endeavour to be like Christ; they choose holiness, not out of

any compulsion, but from the stress of a new nature, which leads them to rejoice

in holiness just as naturally as aforetime they delighted in sin. God neither

chose them nor called them because they were holy, but he called them that they

might be holy, and holiness is the beauty produced by his workmanship in them.

The excellencies which we see in a believer are as much the

 work of God as the atonement itself. Thus is brought out very sweetly the

fulness of the grace of God. Salvation must be of grace, because the Lord is the

author of it: and what motive but grace could move him to save the guilty?

Salvation must be of grace, because the Lord works in such a manner that our

righteousness is forever excluded. Such is the believer’s privilege–a present

salvation; such is the evidence that he is called to it–a holy life.

 

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. . . There he broke the flashing arrows, the shield, the sword, and the weapons of war.  Psalm 76:3

 

Our Redeemer’s glorious cry of “It is finished” was the death-knell of all the adversaries of His people, the breaking of “the weapons of war.” Behold the hero of Golgotha using His cross as an anvil, and His wounds as a hammer, dashing to pieces bundle after bundle of our sins, those poisoned “flashing arrows,” trampling on every indictment and destroying every accusation. What glorious blows the mighty Breaker gives with a hammer far more powerful than the fabled weapon of Thor! How the diabolical darts break in pieces, and the infernal swords are broken like old clay pots! Consider how He draws from its sheath of hellish workmanship the dreadful sword of satanic power! He snaps it across His knee as a man breaks dry sticks and throws it into the fire.

 

Beloved, no sin of a believer can now be an arrow bringing death, no condemnation can now be a sword to kill him, for the punishment of our sin was borne by Christ, and a full atonement was made for all our iniquities by our blessed Substitute and Surety. Who now accuses? Who now condemns? Christ has died, yes, has risen again. Jesus has removed the weapons of hell, has quenched every fiery dart, and has broken the head off every arrow of wrath; the ground is covered with the splinters and relics of the weapons of hell’s warfare, which are only visible to us to remind us of our former danger and of our great deliverance.

 

Sin no longer has dominion over us. Jesus has made an end of it and put it away forever. Our enemy’s destructions have come to a perpetual end. Declare all the wonderful works of the Lord, all you who make mention of His name; do not be silent, neither by day, nor when the sun goes down. Bless the Lord, O my soul.

 

Family Reading Plan

 

    Isaiah 43

 

    Revelation 13

 

No Condemnation

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. . . There he broke the flashing arrows, the shield, the sword, and the weapons of war. Psalm 76:3

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Our Redeemer’s glorious cry of “It is finished” was the death-knell of all the adversaries of His people, the breaking of “the weapons of war.” Behold the hero of Golgotha using His cross as an anvil, and His wounds as a hammer, dashing to pieces bundle after bundle of our sins, those poisoned “flashing arrows,” trampling on every indictment and destroying every accusation. What glorious blows the mighty Breaker gives with a hammer far more powerful than the fabled weapon of Thor! How the diabolical darts break in pieces, and the infernal swords are broken like old clay pots! Consider how He draws from its sheath of hellish workmanship the dreadful sword of satanic power! He snaps it across His knee as a man breaks dry sticks and throws it into the fire. Beloved, no sin of a believer can now be an arrow bringing death, no condemnation can now be a sword to kill him, for the punishment of our sin was borne by Christ, and a full atonement was made for all our iniquities by our blessed Substitute and Surety. Who now accuses? Who now condemns? Christ has died, yes, has risen again. Jesus has removed the weapons of hell, has quenched every fiery dart, and has broken the head off every arrow of wrath; the ground is covered with the splinters and relics of the weapons of hell’s warfare, which are only visible to us to remind us of our former danger and of our great deliverance. Sin no longer has dominion over us. Jesus has made an end of it and put it away forever. Our enemy’s destructions have come to a perpetual end. Declare all the wonderful works of the Lord, all you who make mention of His name; do not be silent, neither by day, nor when the sun goes down. Bless the Lord, O my soul. Today’s Broadcast “The Weakness of Power, Part B” There’s a familiar phrase based on Scripture: “Pride goes before a fall.” Today, Alistair Begg points to a man in the Old Testament who enjoyed all the world had to offer, including a healthy dose of pride. We’ll identify the signs of his downfall as a warning for our own lives. Listen to Truth For Life with Alistair Begg! Image BlockedDownload this series or any of the messages free! Family Reading Plan Isaiah 43 Revelation 13