DISCIPLE

  January 1 “This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you.”  Exodus 12.2 New Year’s resolutions are good but fragile, that is, easily broken. New Year’s prayers are better; they ascend to the throne of God and set answering wheels in motion. As we come to the beginning of another year, we would do well to make the following prayer requests our own: Lord Jesus, I rededicate myself afresh to You today. I want you to take my life this coming year and use it for Your glory. “Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee.” I pray that You will keep me from sin, from anything that will bring dishonor to Your Name. Keep me teachable by the Holy Spirit. I want to move forward for You. Don’t let me settle in a rut. May my motto this year be, “He must increase; I must decrease.” The glory must all be Yours. Help me not to touch it. Teach me to make every decision a matter of prayer. I dread the thought of lean...

“And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD.”   Zechariah 11.12-13 We stagger at the blindness of Israel. Her utter contempt for the Lord Jesus Christ astounds us. Zechariah has shown us many wonderful scenes of the Messiah in His kingly glory and dignity, but now he predicts the time of His rejection. Zezhariah’s message is graphic. He takes on the role of the Messiah and asks, “If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver” (v. 12). Thirty pieces of silver! They knew the contempt of such a price (Ex. 21.32).      Only willful blindness could result in the wicked crime of Judas unknowingly fulfilling this prophecy. Matthew ma...