Psalm 11:4

Verse of the Day Devotion: Psalm 11:4

“The LORD is in His holy temple; the LORD’S throne is in heaven; His eyes behold, His eyelids test the sons of men.” – Psalm 11:4   

This verse is a picture of how God watches over us.  This is worded so we, being human and not having a full knowledge of God, can have a reasonable understanding.  This starts off saying that God is in His holy temple.  He is seated in the temple of His holiness, and His throne is in heaven. Isaiah gives us this image.  “Thus says the LORD, “Heaven is My throne and the earth is my footstool. Where then is a house, you could build for Me? And where is a place that I may rest?” Isaiah 66:1. His greatness is exhibited here in that heaven is His throne, the seat by which, as King, He holds His court, where He dispenses His commands and from where He oversees all His work.  Jesus reiterated this thought.  “But I say to you, make no oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is the footstool of His feet, or by Jerusalem, for it is THE CITY OF THE GREAT KING.”  Matthew 5:34-35.  Another verse that truly exemplifies how great God is.  “But will God indeed dwell with mankind on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain You; how much less this house which I have built.”  2 Chronicles 6:18. He fills the known universe and the high heavens.  There is no place anywhere that He is not.

Proceeding to the second part of our focus verse, we see His eyes see everything within His vast empire, which is everything He has created, and also outside of this created universe.  He see all of our needs and all our desires.   God watches over everything; all we do, all we see, all we experience and all the dangers that may be near us. One thought here is that He is protecting us from whatever the enemy may do.  He is keeping us safe from whatever comes against us.  He knows what the enemy is planning long before he himself knew, for He does know the end from the beginning.  The theologian John Gill puts it this way.  “Knowing all this, we may be assured that he will interpose when it is best that he should interpose, and that he will suffer nothing to come upon us which it is not best that he should permit. When evil befalls us, therefore, it does not come because God does not know it, or because he could not prevent it, but because, seeing it all, he judges that it is best that it should thus occur.”  John Gill from his commentary on the Psalms.

And lastly, His eyelids test the sons of men.  In other words, He searches all men’s hearts, into the very depths of our beings, and knows our thoughts, intentions and designs, our wishes and desires.  He knows our emotional state and all that either brings us joy and peace, or sorrow and frustration.  There is nothing we can do to hide anything from Him.  And what does this tell us?  We can trust Him completely in everything.  We are safe in placing ourselves in His care.  In the next verse, the writer of this psalm adds, “The LORD tests the righteous and the wicked, And the one who loves violence His soul hates.”  What is intended here is that He hates the ways of this person and takes account of it.  This we cannot hide either.  He knows if our heart is filled with love or hatred, goodness or wickedness.  There is nothing He does not know about us.

In closing, I want to emphasize the idea that we are safe with Him.  We may not like what He allows us to experience, however, we must trust Him because He would never allow us to endure anything that was not going to have a good result.  “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28. This is one of my favorite verses in the scriptures.

Take comfort in this focus verse.  It tells us that He fills all the heavens, in fact, the heavens are His throne, and He watches over us, not just in what we do, but the why’s and the how’s.  We can be content in knowing that we are safe and that nothing surprises Him.  And nothing can happen to us that He does not allow because of His great love.  Remember this during times of trial; it will help to brings us through.

William Funkhouser MDiv, ThD, Founder and President of True Devotion Ministries, Inc.

Luke 19:45

Verse of the Day Devotion Luke 19:45

“And He entered the temple and began to cast out those who were selling,” – Luke 19:45  

When Jesus arrived in Jerusalem, He entered into the Temple. What He saw angered Him. “And He entered the temple and began to cast out those who were selling,” Luke 19:45. Jesus then cleansed the temple of the moneychangers and sellers of merchandise because of His disgust at what they had made of God’s house of prayer and His zeal to purify it from the abuse of ungodly men. Now, there were two basic areas where the moneychangers in Judea angered Him. 

First was the conversion of money. Judea at this time was under the rule of the Romans, and the money in current use was Roman coin. However, the Jewish law required that every man should pay a tribute to the service of the sanctuary of “half a shekel”, a Jewish coin. This is found in the Book of Exodus.

“The LORD also spoke to Moses, saying, When you take a census of the sons of Israel to number them, then each one of them shall give a ransom for himself to the LORD, when you number them, that there may be no plague among them when you number them. This is what everyone who is numbered shall give: half a shekel according to the shekel of the sanctuary (the shekel is twenty gerahs), half a shekel as a contribution to the LORD. Everyone who is numbered, from twenty years old and over, shall give the contribution to the LORD. The rich shall not pay more, and the poor shall not pay less than the half a shekel when you give the contribution to the LORD to make atonement for yourselves.” Exodus 30:11-15.

It became, therefore, a matter of convenience to have a place where the Roman coin could be exchanged for the Jewish half shekel. The moneychangers provided this convenience but would demand a small sum for the exchange. Because so many thousands of people came up to the great feasts, changing money was a very profitable business and one that resulted in fraud and oppression of the poor.

The second was the selling of the needed sacrifices. According to the Law, at least two doves or pigeons were required to be offered in sacrifice.  

“But if he is poor, and his means are insufficient, then he is to take one male lamb for a guilt offering as a wave offering to make atonement for him, and one-tenth of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil for a grain offering, and a log of oil, and two turtledoves or two young pigeons which are within his means, the one shall be a sin offering and the other a burnt offering.” Leviticus 14:21-22.

It was sometimes difficult to bring these birds from the distant parts of Judea, so a lucrative business selling the birds sprang up, with the sellers gouging the faithful by charging exorbitant prices. There were other merchants selling cattle and sheep for the temple sacrifices, as well as declaring an animal unfit for the sacrifice so they would trade them for a price, then sell them to another later.

Because of these sellers who preyed on the poor and because of His passion for the purity of His Father’s house, Jesus was filled with righteous indignation. As He overturned the tables of the moneychangers, He condemned them by saying, “It is written, My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers.” Luke 19:46.  Now there is an earlier time Jesus dealt with the moneychangers and the sellers.  In the first one, He made a whip to get them to leave. “And He found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the moneychangers seated. And He made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the coins of the moneychangers and overturned their tables; and to those who were selling the doves He said, Take these things away; stop making My Father’s house a house of merchandise.” John 2:14-16. As you can see here, they did not learn but continued to make money off the poor.

The Temple was built for the worship of God, not to make the Jewish leadership wealthy. The same is true of the modern-day church.  Our purpose is to spread the good news of the gospel throughout all the world.  “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20. I have no problem with paying a pastor a good salary. I do have a problem when it takes priority over the Church’s primary goal, or when they flaunt it at the expense of the truth.  Christ is coming back soon, and there are millions who need to be reached.  I pray that the Church realizes this and begins allotting the funds as God intended.     

William Funkhouser MDiv, ThD, Founder and President of True Devotion Ministries.

Matthew 4:5

Verse of the Day Devotion:  Matthew 4:5 

“Then the devil took Him into the holy city; and he had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple.” – Matthew 4:5

Over these three days we will be looking at, in Matthew, the temptation of Jesus.  There were three specifically mentioned in Matthew 4, which we will address. God sent Him out to be tempted. “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” Matthew 4:1. These three testings’ were not for God to see what happens, for God knows all things. Isaiah said the following regarding this idea. “Remember the former things long past, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure.” Isaiah 46:9-10.  God also is showing the contrast between Adam and Eve and the Christ.  Jesus proved Himself by not giving into Satan’s temptation as Adam and Eve did, which was not to God but to the world.  Also showing that temptations itself is not a sin, but our response may be.

The second temptation regards testing God. Jesus had thwarted Satan in the first temptation, so now Satan moves on to another.  In our focus verse we read, “Then the devil took Him into the holy city; and he had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple.” Matthew 4:5.  Jesus is now taken to Jerusalem, the Holy City.  The word pinnacle refers to an architectural ornament originally forming the cap or crown of a buttress or small turret, but afterwards used on parapets at the corners of towers and in many other situations. It  looks like a small spire. Many believe the highest point was the ‘wing’ or ‘portico’, but it is unknown as to the exact place.

Again, Satan uses the conditional statement found in the first temptation. “If You are the Son of God throw Yourself down; for it is written, ‘HE WILL GIVE HIS ANGELS CHARGE CONCERNING YOU’; and ‘ON their HANDS THEY WILL BEAR YOU UP, LEST YOU STRIKE YOUR FOOT AGAINST A STONE.‘” Matthew 4:6.  This time, in using the ‘if you are the Son of God’, Satan is now quoting scripture, just as Jesus had done in the first one.  The scripture quoted is, “For He will give His angels charge concerning you, To guard you in all your ways.” Psalm 91:11.  He misused this scripture in his attempt to mislead Jesus.  The psalm speaks of times when we find ourselves in difficult times, God is there to help us.  This does not mean we should deliberately put ourselves in these situations, but this is what Satan was telling Jesus.  In essence, ‘go ahead and jump off this building, nothing is going to happen to you.’  However, we are not to test God by manufacturing a difficulty, which is what voluntarily jumping off the building would be.  Jesus said this by quoting another verse in Deuteronomy.  “YOU SHALL NOT PUT THE LORD YOUR GOD TO THE TEST.” Matthew 4:7b.  Jesus quoted a verse as well, though His was accurate in His rendering and meaning. 

As the verse in Deuteronomy says, we must not put the Lord our God to the test.  We see this clearly in Exodus. “And he named the place Massah and Meribah because of the quarrel of the sons of Israel, and because they tested the LORD, saying, Is the LORD among us, or not?” Exodus 17:7. We must not go to Him seeking proof from Him via some miraculous sign.  If a miracle is necessary, He will make it happen.  But to do something to make a miracle necessary, such as jumping off the temple, is not good and is simply putting God to the test.

William Funkhouser MDiv, ThD, Founder and President of True Devotion Ministries.