"Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others." - Ephesians 2:3

PONDER THIS

I read about a missionary who went to the mission field. They showed her where the missionary residence was, and it was a nice little cottage, but the floor was filthy so she decided she would scrub the floor. And she scrubbed the floor, but she couldn’t get the dirt up. She proceeded to put on more water and more suds.

She got down on her hands and knees and kept scrubbing, but it was still dirty. Over and over again she’d scrub but it was still dirty. Finally, somebody said, “Madam, I hate to tell you, but that is a dirt floor.” She was scrubbing a dirt floor, and the more she scrubbed the more dirt came up. You can never take your sinful nature and clean it up because your sinful nature is like that dirt floor.

All people are sinful in their nature. You may think you have not done so many bad things, but God looks at your nature. This is why we all need Jesus.

- When have you tried to clean up your sin in your own strength?
- How does a right understanding of our nature help us understand the Gospel?

PRACTICE THIS

List the ways you have seen God transform you from being a slave to sin to being free in Christ. Pray and ask Him to keep transforming you from the inside out. APR
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I did not write this, it comes from a devotional that is offered as a free email daily by Love Worth Finding.

https://www.lwf.org/daily-devotionals/you-cant-clean-up-what-only-jesus-can-change

“And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called My son.” - Matthew 2:15

What can this gospel writer’s phrase “spoken of the Lord by the prophet” teach us about how to read the Bible? We discover a clear pointer to interpreting Scripture and thus can have confidence that we can correctly understand what God is saying.

The pointer comes from Matthew’s emphasis on the prophet’s words as expressing what the Lord spoke. In today’s text, Matthew did not say that the prophet (Hosea) invented the message or that it merely might have included some divine content. Who said those words—the Lord or Hosea? Apparently, both! Hosea and the rest of the prophets wrote down the exact words the Lord wanted to say.

Fallible humans got to participate in the process of recording infallible words through this miracle of divine inspiration. “For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (II Peter 1:21). Matthew’s confidence that Hosea penned the speech of God Himself can give us the same assurance. Other Bible authors reinforce this.

The prophet Daniel wrote, “In the first year of [Darius’s] reign I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem” (9:2). Here again we see complete confidence that a prophet—in this case Jeremiah—wrote down “the word of the LORD,” not words that any mere man made up.

Rest assured that the prophets who penned their portions of Scripture wrote our Lord’s exact words. BDT
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I did not write this, it comes from a devotional that is offered as a free email daily by the Institute of Creation.

https://www.icr.org/article/16109/

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