Wisdom International Devotionals

by Seth Davey

  Sabbath Psalm (Revision of John Peterson’s hymn ‘When We All Get Home’)   Though like pilgrims here we wander, It is wonderful to ponder, All the blessings waiting yonder, When we all get home.   There will be no pain nor dying, No more doubt, no more denying, No more sounds of anxious sighing, When we all get home.   Only heaven’s bliss before us, Only glory shining o’er us, Leading angel choirs in chorus, When we all get home.

  The Messiah Complex Deuteronomy 17:14-15 “When you come to the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me; you may indeed set a king over you whom the LORD your God will choose.”   This entire paragraph is glistening in the hues of Providence, every word a prophetic utterance, every noun and verb a promise in the making, every clause another glimpse into the wondrous mystery of God’s sovereign design for human history and of the coming of our Savior-King.   “When you come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, “Moses writes. Not if, but  when . Not ‘might give’ but  is giving . “And (when) you possess it and dwell in it and  then  say, ‘I  will  set a king over me … you may indeed set a king over you whom the LORD your God  will  choose.” In other words, everything Moses just said  will  happe...

  An Out-Pouring Deuteronomy 16:16 “Three times a year all your males shall appear before the LORD your God at the place that he will choose: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, at the Feast of Weeks, and at the Feast of Booths. They shall not appear before the LORD empty-handed.”   The mandate to ‘not come before the LORD empty-handed’ is another paradox of the life of faith. On the one hand, we must come to Christ empty-handed, right? To come with anything more in our hands than His strength and purity and righteousness and virtue is to both bring too much and too little. Before Heaven’s throne, we must decrease until His glory is all that remains upon which to marvel. Think of it: can that tithe you gave on Sunday and that offering you made to a foreign missionary and that expense you perhaps set aside to adopt an orphan atone for your great debt before the Perfect One? Even if we had all the money in the worth to give, even if we gave every last dime to the poor and made our...

  Start with a Song Deuteronomy 16:11 “And you shall rejoice before the LORD your God, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite who is within your towns, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow who are among you, at the place that the LORD your God will choose, to make his name dwell there.”   The call to rejoice in the goodness of the LORD leaves no one out. Gratitude isn’t just for the parents of healthy, well-behaved kids and the happily married couples and the successful entrepreneurs and the locals who’ve made Thanksgiving a tradition and the super spiritual pastors and the tribal leaders like Moses and Joshua and Caleb, but also for the poor and the jobless and the husbandless and the diabetic and the blind and the orphaned and the refugees and the manic depressive. Why? Because just as it’s the nature of faith to see beyond the temporary vail of finite existence, and just as it’s the nature of hope to gaze through th...

  Redeeming the Grinch Heart Deuteronomy 15:11 “For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’”   Do you recall that redemptive scene from Dr. Suess’ beloved classic  How the Grinch Stole Christmas  where the Grinch rescues that sleigh full of gifts from toppling over Mt. Crumpet and his heart grows three sizes as a result? We all applaud the moment when, upon being transformed, he rushes down the mountain to return the gifts to their owners, confesses his crime, gets welcomed and forgiven by the Who’s, and then sits at the seat of honor to cut the roast beast for their communal Christmas feast. Stories like that continue to inspire new adaptations and fresh dramatizations every year because we not only universally agree with the moral of the tale, but because we see in the Grinch’s shriveled-up but still-redeemable heart a representation of our o...

  A Mighty Mirror Deuteronomy 14:1-2 “You are the sons of the LORD your God. You shall not cut yourselves or make any baldness on your foreheads for the dead. For you are a people holy to the LORD your God, and the LORD has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.”   There are many elements of the Mosaic Law that are clearly temporary in nature that I don’t believe God intended to translate over from generation to generation. Laws like, “You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk” (Deuteronomy 14:21b), and, “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother … then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones” (Deut. 21:18a & 21a), and, “If brothers dwell together and one of them dies and has a son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother … shall take her ...

  Sabbath Psalm (Adapted from Fredrick Blom’s hymn ‘He the Pearly Gates Will Open’)   Love divine, so great and wondrous,  Deep and mighty, pure, sublime! Coming from the heart of Jesus— Faithful through the tests of time.   Like a deer when hunted, frightened,  As a wounded fawn was I; Broken-hearted, yet He healed me— He will heed the sinner’s cry.   Love divine, beyond all measure,  All my sins He there forgave! I will sing His praise forever— For His blood, His power to save.   In life’s eventide, at twilight,  At His door I’ll knock and wait; Clinging to the cross of Jesus I will enter heaven’s gate!

  The Substance of Signs Deuteronomy 13:1-3 “If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, ‘Let us go after other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the LORD your God is testing you.”   Let’s get something straight about the gift of prophecy right off the bat, friend: the authenticity of prophetic words, visions, and marvels is not in their precise fulfillment but singularly in their divine source. Think of it like this: if Jesus had claimed, “I am the Resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, though he dies, yet will he live,” yet, afterword, Roman soldiers nailed Him to a cross, Joseph of Arimathea buried him in a garden tomb, and He chose not to reveal Himself to the disciples or Paul or anyone thereafter for two thousand years, our eternal life in Him...

  Righteousness in Ruins Deuteronomy 12:29-31 “When the LORD your God cuts off before you the nations whom you go in to dispossess, … take care that you be not ensnared to follow them, after they have been destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire about their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods?—that I also may do the same.’ You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way.”   When man’s innate tribalism isn’t leading him to disregard other cultures as inferior, thinking his own norms and traditions and wisdom the best of all, it often goes the opposite way, causing him to cynically disregard his own upbringing and seek wisdom elsewhere, believing foreign and more exotic practices to be superior to traditional ones. That’s part of the reason so many Anglo-European politicians have recently identified as Native American or African, and why, every June, during ‘Pride Month,’ a raft of celebrities and influencers ‘come out’ as gay or bisexual or trans...

  The Passion, The Privilege  Deuteronomy 12:5-7 “But you shall seek the place that the LORD your God will choose out of all your tribes to put his name and make his habitation there. There you shall go, and there you shall bring your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the contribution that you present. … And there you shall eat before the LORD your God, and you shall rejoice.”   Megan and I used a USDA loan to buy our first home about five years ago in the rural town of Angier, North Carolina, right before the birth of our little girl, and though we’re extremely grateful to have a home at all in this economy, the weekly commute to our church in Cary has become a somewhat daunting affair, especially with young kids in tote whose favorite travel pastime is finding new ways to argue. We could easily just become members at one of the many Bible-teaching churches up the road from us, but God has clearly called us to serve in ministry at The Shepherds Ch...

  The Same Old Story Deuteronomy 11:26-28 “See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you today, and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the LORD your God …”   Go back in time with me to the beginning of human history to that scene described by Moses in Genesis 2:9 & 16: “ The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil  …  And the LORD God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat of it you will certainly die. ”   That singular choice in Eden set the tone for the entire drama of redemption to come. In fact, that’s why the story of Adam’s fall is bigger than mere history; it’s fable, too. Not in the sense that the story isn’t fact, but in the sense that the facts relay the deepest, mo...

  The Higher Country Deuteronomy 11:10-11 “For the land that you are entering to take possession of is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated it, like a garden of vegetables. But the land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by rain from heaven, a land that the LORD God cares for.”   The life of unbelief isn’t like the life of faith, is it? In many ways, it’s so much smoother and simpler and easier to manage. It’s more level, too, like the difference between spreading seed in already drenched sand with your toes and tilling rocks out of tough ground in the high country. Reflect back on your own testimony, friend. Wasn’t there a mental ease to your ambitions before Christ’s call to take up your cross and follow? Back then, you could do your best to get ahead, to succeed, without needing to worry about putting others first. You could slam the door in an enemy’s face and throw ...

  Sabbath Psalm (Adapted from Samuel Stennett’s hymn, ‘On Jordan’s Stormy Banks’)   On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand and cast a wishful eye To Canaan’s fair and happy land where my possessions lie.   All o’er those wide, extended plains shines one eternal day, There God the Son forever reigns and scatters night away.   No chilling winds nor poisoned breath can reach that blessed shore, Sickness and sorrow, pain and death, are felt and feared no more!   When will I reach that happy place and be forever blest? When will I see my Savior’s face and in His presence rest?   I am bound I am bound I am bound for the Promised Land!

  The Law of Empathy Deuteronomy 10:18-19 “He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.”   There are two components to this singular law here, the first relating to action and the second to attitude. The actionable imperative is to ‘love the sojourner,’ but the attitude in which that action occurs matters just as much: “For you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” Let’s call this the law of empathy. These Israelites will only be able to sacrificially provide for their neighbors’ welfare if they empathize with their neighbor’s plight. Because love  from the heart  comes from suffering shared.    Now, that isn’t to say that sympathy doesn’t lead to great acts of compassion as well. We can’t count how many schools and orphanages and hospitals and birthing clinics and churches have born fruit in the world from sympatheti...

  Top of the List Deuteronomy 10:17 “For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe.”   If Moses had written verse 17 as a fill-in-the-blank at the end, leaving every man to give his own illustration of the phrase, “The great, the mighty, and the awesome God,” allowing us each to pick up the quill and write from our own diary of faith the most significant proofs of God’s unique character, all the scrolls in the world couldn’t contain the whole of them.    But think of it, friend: Moses has already described in Genesis God’s creation of the cosmos, His calling of Abraham, Sarah’s miraculous conception of Isaac, His raising up of Joseph from a slave to a prince, His salvation of Noah’s family during a worldwide flood, and much more. Not to mention the wonders Moses witnessed with his own eyes expressed in Exodus through Numbers, wonders like God speaking through a flaming bush or...

  Uplifting Love Deuteronomy 10:14-15 “Behold, to the LORD your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet the LORD set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day.”   To think that the Creator of the universe, of constellations and mountain ranges and ocean depths, Who painted the Northern Lights and the Grand Canyon and rainbows over Niagara’s bubbling swells, Who taught the Sparrow a morning hymn and gave the eagle her wings and blessed the Cheetah with lightning speed, Who thought up snow falling from an Eastern White Pine in winter and golden Caribbean shorelines in summer and ribbons of fluorescent leaves floating on the breeze in autumn, would look at petty, stubborn, sinful, discontented, disillusioned, disobedient, complaining, rebellious human beings like  us  and whisper through all the choir of created voices, “I love you most!” A saint who sees ...

  Get a Grip Deuteronomy 10:3-4 “So I made an ark of acacia wood, and cut two tablets of stone like the first, and went up the mountain with the two tablets in my hand. And he wrote on the tablets, in the same writing as before, the Ten Commandments that the LORD had spoken to you on the mountain out of the midst of fire on the day of the assembly.”   We’ve discussed the error of process theology before, or ‘progressivism’ as its often called today, but I think it’s worth calling it out again in light of the testament of God’s character that re-emerges here. For brief review, process theology is generally the belief that God changes over time, or, better, that He adapts His providential working to man’s constant state of flux, calibrating His standards to our societal norms. For example, there’s a movement in Evangelical circles right now called the ‘Reformation Project,’ led by so-called Bible-believing, protestant Christians who are calling for LGBTQ inclusion in Christendom...

  A Call to Pray Deuteronomy 9:18-19 “Then I lay prostrate before the LORD as before, for forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all the sin that you had committed. … But the LORD listened to me that time also.”   Don’t overlook the wonderful allusion here to our Lord’s forty-day temptation in the wilderness where He emaciated Himself for our nourishment, thrusting Himself naked as it were against the piercing headwinds of hunger and thirst and demonic oppression so that we could be armored against these mortal foes in our own lives of faith. Gaze upon His passion once again through the vailed threads of this text, friend. See Him lying face down in the sands, in anguished prayer, bereaved of all fleshly comforts, pouring out His heart in mediatorial prayer for our salvation from the very sin that had cast Him there. Oh, how the river plunges into abundant and everlasting currents, drained from the heart of our King Who gave Himself up and...

  Sabbath Psalm (Revision of Franklin Mason North’s hymn, ‘Where Cross the Crowded Ways of Life’)   Where cross the crowded ways of life, Where sound the cries of race and clan, Above the din of selfish strife,  We hear Your voice, O Son of man!   In times of wretchedness and need,  On sorrow’s thresholds drenched in tears, Your crimson words of life we read, Till hope eclipses all our fears.   O Shepherd, on the mountainside,  Keep us from wolves and crooked men, And draw more lost sheep to Your side Till earth is Eden once again!   O wayward hearts receive His love!  And walk the everlasting Way! Let strands of Heaven’s light above  Shine through the darkness of this day. 

  Two Sides of Stubbornness Deuteronomy 9:6-7 “Know, therefore, that the LORD your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people. Remember and do not forget how you provoked the LORD your God to wrath in the wilderness.”   As I ponder this statement from our LORD and walk down the corridors of insight that follow from it, each leading to a different but equally significant opening into a wonderland of theophany, the phrase “for you are a stubborn people” sweeps me up like a gust of divine breath and carries me upward.   What does it mean to be stubborn? We call a child stubborn when she spits out her green beans all over the floor despite threats of punishment and offers of reward. We call a general stubborn for continuing to employ his strategy even when the war is being lost and the casualty count is rising. We call a soccer teammate stubborn when he dribbles down the field and refuses to pass the ball. Yet,...

  Dividing Lines Deuteronomy 9:1 “Hear, O Israel: you are to cross over the Jordan today, to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, cities great and fortified up to heaven.”   When it comes to devotionals, I’m not generally one for word-by-word exposition as my allegorical leanings tend to drive me up a hill to see a wider scope of the terrain, but Deuteronomy 9:1 is rebuffing that impulse remarkably right now. Every word of Moses’ imperative feels exactly that:  imperative . So, let’s look at them together one by one.     “ Hear !” This is the paramount command, isn’t it? Before we can become doers of God’s Word, we must become hearers. Hearing is the starting point.    “O,  Israel !” Get that: not just “you people” or “fellow pilgrims” or “Promised Land seekers” but “God’s chosen nation! A special tribe of earthlings among whom Heaven dwells!”    “ You  are to cross!” That’s right: not just the elite fight...

  A Sacred Affluence  Deuteronomy 8:11-14 “Take care lest you forget the LORD your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God.”   Oh how self-destructive our tendency to become less grateful the more we acquire! We always crave more, and the more we get, the more disconsolate we become in our agitation. In fact, my wife and I have already had a few heart-to-heart conversations this week with our eight-year-old son about this very issue. Micah has such a tender heart and is usually full of gratitude, but recently, probably because he’s been so spoiled by his granddad who buys him gifts every time they go to the store, he’s started demanding things whenever mommy t...

  The Bountiful, The Beautiful Deuteronomy 8:7-9 “For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing.”   In God’s superlative vision for His people, beauty and bounty go hand in hand.    Notice here that the overflow of God’s loving heart satiates all our human longing. All five senses are invigorated in the Promised Land of divine communion. We draw near to Him in our wilderness wandering and find wells of nourishing water. But not  mere  water. Oh no—living water! Rushing water—moving water—bubbling streams where we can dip our feet on a hot day, and towering Niagara-like falls where we can sit for hours on the adjacent boulders in silent awe, refreshed by the cool mist that dan...

  Simple Math Deuteronomy 8:3 “And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.”   Each clause in Deuteronomy 8:3 is like a number in a mathematical equation, the sum of which provides a theological formula for understanding the purpose of suffering in our lives of faith. Look with me at Moses’ statement here in an analytic way, following from premise to premise till we reach his grand conclusion about God’s goal for our spiritual formation together.   Number one—God humbles His people. Why? Because pride goes before a fall. Because we’re so proud by nature, so infatuated with our contributions to the grand scheme of things, so hellishly bent on our own ways and beliefs and attitudes, so puffed up by our self-perception that we can be freefalling spiritually and at the same tim...

  Sabbath Psalm (Revision of Frances R. Havergal’s hymn ‘Another Year is Dawning’)   Another week is dawning O Father, through and through; In working and in waiting, I’ll spend my days with You. Another week of leaning Upon Your loving breast; Another week of trusting, And finding quiet rest.   Another week of mercies, Of faithfulness and grace; Another week of gladness Of light from Heaven’s Face. Another week of progress, Of battles fought and won; Another week of willing ‘Not mine but Yours be done’!   Another week of service, Of witness for Your love; Another week of training For Glory’s work above. Another week is dawning! Dear Father, through and through; On earth, or else in heaven, Another week with You.