Latest / The Daily Word / March 9 – He Is Faithful to His Promises
Transcript
- Cory Barnes: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good wee hours of the night and welcome to the Daily Word podcast from Lakeshore Christian Fellowship. My name is Cory. It's my privilege to lead our Catawba campus. And if you're new to the podcast, Lakeshore as a church is endeavoring to grow together individually and collectively grow. and our relationships with the Lord through daily Bible reading. So as part of that, we are all engaged on the same Bible reading plan. And on this podcast, we're just going through devotions based on the New Testament portion of that day's Bible reading plan. We're using the SOAP method, scripture, observation, application, prayer. It's a model for journaling and recording what the Lord is speaking to us from. So we're gonna go through a devotion today based on Mark chapter 16, which was today's Bible reading plan in the New Testament. And what stood out to me is actually coming from verses one through seven, and I'm reading from the NIV translation. When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James and Salome, brought spices so that they might anoint Jesus's body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb, and they asked each other, who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb? When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. Don't be alarmed, he said. You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene who was crucified. He has risen. He is not here. See the place where they laid him, but go. Tell his disciples and Peter, is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him just as he told you. And I think what really stuck out to me as I was reading through this, this is obviously, if you haven't been following along, this is where Jesus has been laid in the tomb after his death. This is like the moment before he reveals himself and the resurrection. And what stood out to me was, but, Go tell his disciples and Peter he is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him just as he told you. Now, at the beginning of this reading, we see that these ladies who are coming, they were coming with spices. They were coming to do traditional burial ceremonies for Jesus's body. When Jesus was crucified, it was right before ⁓ Passover, a big celebration. for the Jews, so they wouldn't have been able to process his body. They wouldn't have been able, they didn't embalm, but what their equivalent of the embalming process is for us, ⁓ they hadn't been able to do that because it was a holy day in the Sabbath. So they're coming, it's the first day of the week, it's a Sunday, these ladies are coming despite the fact that Jesus had already told them that they would see him again. They're coming to prepare his body to like roll the stone back and just like let it do what bodies do in a tomb, I guess. So they're not coming with any faith that Jesus is going to be able to do what he claimed he would do, what he had promised them that he would do. See, Jesus wasn't hiding the fact leading up to his death that he would rise from the dead. He wasn't. hiding the fact that there was a plan and that he knew he was going to give up his life before he came back. He had shared this with these ladies, obviously, because the angel says just as he told you, he had shared this with his disciples. He had shared this enough that if people had been listening to him and believing him, these ladies likely wouldn't have been bringing spices to care for his body. They would have been coming expecting. to find the stone roadway, but instead they're surprised and they're alarmed. And what really stands out to me from this portion of scripture is I can relate so much to where these ladies are. I can relate to God having made a promise to me, ⁓ spoken something me, and then time passes and... eventually after that time kind of goes by and that promise isn't fulfilled and that promise isn't fulfilled and that promise isn't fulfilled more time goes by I have definitely been guilty of not carrying that promise with faith and just resigning myself to it not coming to pass and just living my life and doing the best that I can with what is in my hands. like these ladies were doing. There was no faith. They were just going to do the best they could to serve Jesus, given the circumstances. They were gonna come and they were going to dress his body for burial. And for me, when I'm thinking about times that I've like walked through this in my own life, you know, when those promises come, there's times where you can tend for them and prayer and you're standing on them, you're making declarations, you're thanking God, you're praising him, but eventually sometimes you stop engaging in all those practices and you just move through life. But then the beautiful part, is that you find yourself doing what you can, making the best out of what you have to work with. And then suddenly, I don't know if you experienced this, you're not contending for anything, but God just shows up and he demonstrates his faithfulness. And I find myself just like these ladies. It's like I'm standing there in an empty tomb, almost afraid to believe that what I'm seeing is true. It just seems too good to be true despite the fact that he had already told me that he was going to do it. So that's our observation that I can definitely see where I have done this before. So how do we take that observation and bring an application, something I can walk away with and do with my life? Remember, scripture, observation, application. Well, one application that I can think of is to examine my heart. What is it that God has asked me to trust him in? Am I trusting him in it? Now, this can be painful sometimes because a lot of the times when we're not thinking of those promises God has made for us, we stop thinking about them because it's painful. We know we're told that hope deferred makes the heart sick. And that's what we often experience when we're holding onto this promise from God, and we're just left questioning, like, God, you said you were gonna do this for me, why hasn't this come to pass? So we just stop thinking about it, we just push it to the back. But let's do the hard things, and let's start looking at those promises. Let's pull out that old journal from 2016, when God first spoke that promise to us, and we jotted, that promise down, let's look at it, let's read it again and let's start declaring those things over our life again so that we're not coming to the tomb to make the best out of a bad situation, but that we are instead contending and accounting him to be faithful to do what he said he would do just like he was faithful to rise from the dead, fulfill what he told Mary Magdalene, marry the mother of Jesus and Salome he would do. because he did meet them in Galilee. Then as long as the promise that we are looking back at is in alignment with God's Word and the character that he demonstrates in his Word, let's bring those promises back to the Lord and talk to him about them because he is faithful. And if he fulfilled the promise to get out of that grave, he will be faithful to do the things that he has promised you. Now let's take all of that, let's wrap it up in a prayer. and let's give that back to the Lord and come into agreement with it through prayer. Father, we thank you that every time we come to you, you open your word to us and you show us things. You show us that you are faithful. You show us that the promises that you have spoken to us were not promised in vain and that you have every intention of fulfilling everything you have spoken to us. Your words do not return to you void, Lord. They aren't spoken out of idleness and they aren't spoken to just fill the air and give us a good feeling. They're spoken because they're promises from the living God and you intend on following through with them. Pray that you would help us to have hope, to have biblical hope for those promises, a faith-filled expectation that you are going to bring them to pass. ⁓ And I thank you, Jesus, for healing our hearts any place that we have suffered wounding because we're waiting for your promise where it's hard to bring that thing and talk to you about it. I pray that you would give us grace to do that again and help us to start believing you for what you said you would do. We love you, Jesus. We thank you that you're a good God who gives promises and follows through on them. We thank you that you came out of the grave. that you shed your blood for us and that the power of sin, death and the grave is broken because of your sacrifice. We love you, Jesus. Amen.