VIDEO Counting Your Blessings: Numbers to be Thankful For—1,400

The angel who talked to me held in his hand a gold measuring stick to measure the city, its gates, and its wall. When he measured it, he found it was a square, as wide as it was long. In fact, its length and width and height were each 1400 miles…. (according to the human standard used by the angel). Revelation 21:15-17

During the weekend devotions we’ve been counting our blessings and looking at biblical numbers. Let’s end with 1,400. That’s the cubic mileage of God’s eternal capital city in length, breadth, and height. Just in area coverage, it’s larger than India. But a city rising 1,400 miles into the sky? That calls for a huge planet—a supersized new earth, which God can easily create.

But there is no number large enough for the days, years, or centuries we’ll be there, for they are infinite and eternal.

When you think of heaven, don’t think of a vapory existence. Our resurrection bodies will be modeled after our Lord’s own, and we’ll live with Him in the new heaven, new earth, and His city of New Jerusalem, spending eternity counting our blessings!

Why not start counting your blessings now?

Heaven is a realm of unsurpassed joy, unfading glory, undiminished bliss, unlimited delights, and unending pleasures…. It will be a perfect existence. John MacArthur

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Revelation 21:9-27 • The New Jerusalem

So Beautiful

We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works. Ephesians 2:10

I was very young when I peered through a hospital nursery window and saw a newborn for the first time. In my ignorance, I was dismayed to see a tiny, wrinkly child with a hairless, cone-shaped head. The baby’s mother standing near us, however, couldn’t stop asking everyone, “Isn’t he gorgeous?” I was reminded of that moment when I saw a video of a young dad tenderly singing the song, “You Are So Beautiful” to his baby girl. To her enraptured daddy, the little girl was the most beautiful thing ever created.

Is that how God looks at us? Ephesians 2:10 says that we’re His “handiwork”—His masterpiece. Aware of our own failings, it may be hard for us to accept how much He loves us or to believe that we could ever be of value to Him. But God doesn’t love us because we deserve love (vv. 3–4); He loves us because He is love (1 John 4:8). His love is one of grace, and He showed the depth of it when, through Jesus’ sacrifice, He made us alive in Him when we were dead in our sins (Ephesians 2:5, 8).

God’s love isn’t fickle. It’s constant. He loves the imperfect, the broken, those who are weak and those who mess up. When we fall, He’s there to lift us up. We’re His treasure, and we’re so beautiful to Him.

By:  Cindy Hess Kasper

Reflect & Pray

What does it mean to know that “God is love”? How can you accept the truth of God’s endless love for you when you feel undeserving of it?

Precious Father, thank You for Your love for me.

For further study, read How God Loves Us.

How to Know That You’re Saved

Do you have doubts about your salvation? You can settle the issue today

The most important issue we must settle in this life is our eternal destiny. Throughout history, churches have been composed of both believers and unbelievers, and it’s often difficult to tell the difference. That’s why John wrote his first letter. He wanted to assure the true Christians of their salvation and warn those who professed belief but lacked saving faith. John gives a four-fold test describing the beliefs and practices of genuine believers.

1. Right understanding of Christ and salvation (1 John 2:18-27). To be saved, we must have the true gospel and the right Savior, as described in God’s Word.
2. Right attitude toward sin (1 John 1:5-10; 1 John 2:1-2). True believers hate their sin and are quick to confess and turn from it.
3. Right practice of obedience (1 John 2:3-6). God’s commands are not burdensome to those who belong to Christ. Although they fail at times, their life is primarily characterized by obedience.
4. Right relationship with God’s people (1 John 2:7-11). Christ produces within His followers both a love for fellow believers and a desire to be with them. 

If you have doubts about your salvation, reading the book of 1 John will help you settle the issue. 

Four Commands

“Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king.” (1 Peter 2:17)

Our text today gives four commands for believers to obey, each of which is difficult but nonetheless “is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men” (v. 15). It comes in a lengthy passage (2:11–3:12) that discusses the matter of authority and a Christian’s proper response to it. Ponder each command:

Honor all men. This could be translated “Give honor to all.” While the verb is the same as in the last command, its verb tense is not the same, here indicating a continued, conscious choice to do this, while honoring “the king” indicates the development of a lifestyle of showing respect to civil authority. Evidently our day-to-day encounters with sinful “men” require us to be continually choosing to regard them with honor and dignity. “Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves” (Philippians 2:3).

Love the brotherhood. Our agape love—God’s kind of unselfish, undeserved love—should extend, on a habitual basis as seen in the verb tense, to all believers. “See that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently” (1 Peter 1:22).

Fear God. A lifestyle marked by a reverential fear of God is in mind here. “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7). “Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil” (Proverbs 3:7).

Honor the king. As mentioned above, this is to be a life’s commitment, continually recognizing the God-given authority of human government (1 Peter 2:1-14).

“Having your conversation [i.e., manner of life] honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation” (v. 12). JDM

The Primacy of Desire

Desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby: if so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious. —1 Peter 2:2-3

Before we can be filled with the Spirit the desire to be filled must be all-consuming. It must be for the time the biggest thing in life, so acute, so intrusive as to crowd out everything else.

The degree of fullness in any life accords perfectly with the intensity of true desire. We have as much of God as we actually want. One great hindrance to the Spirit-filled life is the theology of complacency so widely accepted among gospel Christians today.

According to this view acute desire is an evidence of unbelief and proof of lack of knowledge of the Scriptures. A sufficient refutation of this position is afforded by the Word of God itself and by the fact that it always fails to produce real saintliness among those who hold it. POM133

I have met Christians who have been wanting to be filled, in a vague sort of way, for many years. The reason they have not been filled with the Spirit is because they have other things they want more. QTB114

The Dividing Line

After being put to death in the fleshly realm but made alive in the spiritual realm.—1 Peter 3:18

It was the Holy Spirit who transformed the early disciples from timid and disconsolate men into ones who were ablaze and invincible.

If you draw a line through the pages of the New Testament, you will find on one side a good deal of spiritual staleness while on the other an abundance of spiritual freshness. That line runs straight through an upper room where a group of people waited in simple confidence for the promise their Master had made to them to be fulfilled. We read in Acts 2:4: “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit.” That filling was the dividing line in the moral and spiritual development of humanity. It marked a new era—the era of the Holy Spirit.

On the other side of that dividing line, prior to Pentecost, the disciples were spasmodic in their allegiance and achievements. Sometimes they could rejoice that evil spirits were subject to them, and sometimes they had to ask, “Why could we not cast it out?” Sometimes they appeared ready to go to death with Jesus, and sometimes they quarreled over who should have first place in His kingdom. Simon Peter could whip out a sword and cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant and then quail before the gaze of a serving maid.

Then came Pentecost. A divine reinforcement took place. They were new men doing new work—no longer spasmodic, but stable. On which side of that dividing line are you? Are you a pre-Pentecost Christian, spasmodic and intermittent, or a post-Pentecost Christian—dynamic and different?

Prayer

O God, forgive me that so often I am crouching behind closed doors instead of being out on the open road. Make me a post-Pentecost Christian. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Further Study

2Co 3:1-6; Jn 6:63; Rm 8:11

What does the letter of the law do?

What changes this?

God Is with You

The Lord of Hosts says this: “In those days, 10 men from nations of every language will grab the robe of a Jewish man tightly, urging: Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.”—Zechariah 8:23

God’s desire is to fill His people with His Spirit so that others recognize His powerful presence in them. The presence of the Lord in a believer’s life ought to be obvious. When the Spirit of almighty God fills a believer, the believer cannot go on living as before. Others will see God.

God told His people through the prophet Zechariah that His presence ought to make a difference in their lives. If God’s people walked closely with Him, people from every language and every part of the world would hear that they were a people who knew God. People would come from every nation on earth to find the true God among His people. If the people saw a child of God, they would long to be with him or her because in so doing they would be with God. God gave the vivid picture of ten people clinging to one believer, hoping to find God.

Christ’s presence ought to be so evident in your life that the people around you are drawn to you. They should want their children to be with your children because your children are being raised with a godly influence. Employers ought to want you in their workplace; people should seek you for their leader because they know you as someone of integrity before God. Your life and your home ought to be a magnet for people as they sense God’s presence with you and your family. The more you allow Christ to make His presence evident in your life, the more people will draw near you and find Him.

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