[The Mayor]

January 05, 2025

Today's Scripture

Psalm 139:1-12

Bible in a Year

• Genesis 13-15; Matthew 5:1-26

Today's Insights

Psalm 139 is one of the most intimate of the psalms. Such closeness comes through in David’s extensive use of second- and first-person pronouns. John Stott makes this observation in his book Authentic Christianity: “ Psalm 139 is arguably the most radical statement in the Old Testament of God’s personal relationship to the individual. Personal pronouns and possessives occur in the first person (I, me, my) forty-six times and in the second person (you, yours) thirty-two times.” This intimacy prompts the psalmist’s praise (vv. 14, 17-18) and prayers that consider his and God’s enemies (vv. 19-22) and his desire for deeper communion with Him: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (vv. 23-24).

Today's Devotional

God truly knows all. But according to an article in The Wall Street Journal, the National Security Agency knows a great deal about us as well through our smartphone data trails. Everyone who owns a cell phone creates “metadata” that leaves a “digital trail.” While each individual crumb of data might seem insignificant, when it’s combined and analyzed, it provides “one of the most powerful investigative tools ever devised.” By tracing our metadata, investigators can pinpoint where we’ve been or where we are at any given moment.

Far more superior than the NSA’s digital trail analysis, David said God knows where we are in relation to Him. In Psalm 139, he addresses a prayer to God, the one who alone can search and examine what’s going on inside of us (v. 1). The psalmist wrote, “Search me, God, and know my heart” (v. 23). He knows everything about us (vv. 2-6), is present everywhere (vv. 7-12), and “created [our] inmost being” (vv. 13-16). His thoughts are higher than our human understanding (vv. 17-18), and He’s even with us as we face our enemies (vv. 19-22).  

Because God is all-knowing, ever-present, and all-powerful, He knows exactly where we’ve been, what we’ve been doing, and what we’re made of. But He’s also a loving Father who will help us walk in His ways. Let’s follow Him down the trail of life today.

Reflect & Pray

How does it encourage you to know God truly knows you? How are you walking with Him?

 

Dear God, thank You for loving me even though You know all about me. Please help me to walk well with You.

Discover how God knows and sees all with this video.

[The Mayor]

January 06, 2025 Today's Scripture

Matthew 2:1-11

Bible in a Year

• Genesis 16-17; Matthew 5:27-48

Today's Insights

Matthew’s gospel emphasizes gentile (non-Jewish) inclusion into God’s redemption story. His genealogy, for example, highlights three gentile women—Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth (Matthew 1:3, 5). And Bathsheba, Solomon’s mother, was previously married to a gentile, Uriah the Hittite (v. 6). In Matthew 2, gentiles—the magi (who may have been members of the Persian royal court)—come to worship Jesus (vv. 1-2). By highlighting gentile inclusion in Christ’s story, Matthew leads his readers to the good news that God’s redemption is for all people and His followers are called to “make disciples of all nations” (28:19).

Today's Devotional

Phillips Brooks wrote the lyrics to the beloved carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem” after visiting Bethlehem. Brooks, pastor of a church in the United States, was so moved by his experience that he wrote this to his Sunday school students: “I remember . . . on Christmas Eve, when I was standing in the old church at Bethlehem, close to the spot where Jesus was born, when the whole church was ringing hour after hour with the splendid hymns of praise to God, how again and again it seemed as if I could hear voices that I knew well, telling each other of the ‘Wonderful Night’ of the Savior’s birth.”

In 1868, Brooks put his thoughts into a poem, and his church organist set it to music. The song spoke stillness and peace into the unsettling aftermath of the American Civil War: “O little town of Bethlehem / How still we see thee lie! / . . . The hopes and fears of all the years / Are met in thee tonight.”

Matthew wrote of our Savior’s birth in Bethlehem in Matthew 2. When the “Magi from the east” (v. 1) followed the star to Bethlehem (see Micah 5:2), “they were overjoyed” to find Jesus (Matthew 2:10).

Today, as we celebrate Epiphany, we too need the glorious news of our Savior’s birth. As the hymn reminds us, He came to “cast out our sin and enter in” and “be born in us.” In Him, we find peace.

Reflect & Pray

Where in your life do you need the peace the Savior offers? What aspect of Jesus’ story touches you most?

 

Dear Jesus, thank You for the hope and peace You’ve brought to me.

True peace can only be found in Jesus, learn more by reading The Peace that Jesus Brings.