Matthew 5:45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
As we continue in the festival of Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles), where believers are commanded to rejoice — let’s remember an important principle the Lord laid out for us. The Lord is quoted in this scripture in Matthew. It contains an important precept that believers sometimes tend to overlook. Many believe and even teach that if you’re blessed, your life will be filled with material prosperity and that if you are undergoing extreme trials, it must be because you have sinned or that you lack faith. The Lord says that the sun rises and the rain falls on both the righteous and the unrighteous alike.
A life of good circumstances does not mean that God is with us. And likewise, a life of trial and suffering does not mean that God is not with us! If we base our lives on our circumstances, we are no different than people without God. What makes us different is that we have something far greater than our circumstances! We have a relationship with the Living God!
So this Sukkot season, let’s remember that in His presence is the fullness of joy [Psalm 16:11]. So let’s choose to enter into His presence and learn to rejoice not only in the good times but in the tough times as well — however, hard that may be!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]A new driver for an interstate trucking company was having a difficult time. He found the long cross-country trips extremely tiring. The older driver who traveled with him, however, seemed to thrive on those long trips. He always seemed to look as fresh at the end of the ride as he did at the beginning.
In the Olivet discourse recorded in Matthew 24, Yeshua prophesied that “… nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.” The word “nation” in Greek is the word “ethnos”, from which we get the English word “ethnic”. All of this polarization and ethnic warfare which the media feed upon and incite is the work of the enemy as he stirs up the sinful nature of men.
Several hundred years before Jesus was born, a plague broke out in Athens, Greece. In an effort to stop the plague and appease the ‘gods’, the Athenians sought counsel from a wise man named Epimenides from the island of Crete.
There’s nothing we can do to earn God’s love, however if we want to experience His blessings we need to observe the qualifications that He’s given us in His Word. Psalm 112 details a whole list of blessings, but the key to receiving them is verse 1.
Looking at the relationship between “love and affection” (“chiba” in Hebrew) and “obligation” (“chova” in Hebrew), we find another closely related word, “chaver”, one of the Hebrew words for “friend”. Friends are people with whom we share love and affection and also a sense of obligation. Our God and Father wants us to be His friends, to share love and affection with Him and to carry the sense of responsibility and obligation which friendship requires.
We are called to be servants, are we not? Well, what does a servant do? He (or she) carries out the will of his master. A servant doesn’t tell his master what to do — he performs whatever tasks the master requests of him. A servant doesn’t choose what days or times it’s most convenient to serve his master. A servant’s function is simply to follow and obey his master’s instructions. A servant does not develop a vision for the master either. The master is the one with the vision — and he wants his servants to be ready and available to carry out that vision and bring it to fruition.
This passage in Isaiah contains a poetic play on words which is lost to any reader but one who understands Hebrew. A word for word translation runs something like this: “If not you will believe (lo ta-aminoo), surely not you will be established (lo te-amenoo).” The three letter Hebrew root – “aleph”- “mem”- “nun”, is the same in both words, and the Holy Spirit through the prophet Isaiah is clearly playing on this root to emphasize His point. The same root letters are also used in the spelling for the familiar word “Amen” which literally means “truthfully”.