Ollie Mac Devotions
For September 9th 2013Hello Happy September
We are using the book The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller this year.
This is a great study of Luke 15:11-32. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.
Here are notes for Monday the 9th:
Introduction and Chapter One plus Psalm 8
Psalm 8 is sometimes called the creation Psalm. Our glorious Creator called magnificent and covers the heavens with His glory.
After pronouncing His glory in the works of His fingers the Psalm asks a simple question, what is man that You look after him?
The picture of hands fingers working is at once tender and intimate, but the Psalm speaks of the moon and stars which You put in place. A magnificent tender hand sets this creation before us, places us in the creation and then looks after us. Zephaniah 3:17 reminds us that the Lord exults over His people He sings over them, that He is wholly sufficient for our needs, our sins and our troubles that he will quiet us with his love.
Timothy Keller makes the claim that God is the prodigal more so than the either of the lost sons. Prodigal is defined as: spending money or resources freely and recklessly; wastefully extravagant, wasteful, extravagant, spendthrift, profligate, improvident; imprudent having or giving something on a lavish scale, generous, lavish, liberal, unstinting, unsparing.
Keller establishes the two groups of listeners to Jesus as Luke delineates in chapter 15: the tax collectors and sinners, and the Pharisees and teachers of the law. These two types correspond to the the brother that left home and the brother that stayed home in the parable of the Prodigal Son. On page eleven, Timothy Keller calls our attention to the fact that Jesus is actually speaking to the second group, the Pharisees and teachers. The message aims to inform and direct God's priesthood. He goes on to say that the original listeners were not awed to tears by this message but they were thunderstruck. As my sister says, they were "gobsmacked," socked in the face. Both groups of listeners have been wrong about how to connect with God. He states the religiously observant people were offended by Jesus and cites the following Scripture: Luke 7:36-50, John 3-4, Luke 19, and Matthew 21:31.
Keller ends the chapter with this: "If our churches aren't appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we'd like to think."
I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Blessings BEV
