March 4, 2021 CAC Living Water Devotional : Topic – GOATS BY NATURE.
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Thursday, March 4, 2021
GOATS BY NATURE.
Read Jeremiah 13:15-23
MEMORISE: Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots? Then may you also do good who are accustomed to do evil (Jeremiah 13:23).
EXPOSITION
Yesterday was this year’s World Wildlife Day. Let us do a biblical analogy from another animal. Goat is a popular domestic animal. It is primarily reared to produce meat for family consumption, especially during festive periods. Modern commercial agriculture however has helped some to adopt goat rearing as a big enterprise. Nevertheless, goat remains a biblical metaphor for disobedience, stubbornness, headiness, haughtiness and naughtiness!.
Some people are just like the typical goat that is unrepentantly resistant to correction and entreaties (Jer. 6:16). The nation, Isreal was God-chosen to showcase the foretaste of God’s mercy and favor the world. However, the great love God lavished and on them, they always disobeyed and disregarded their Creator, and ours.
The first type of leadership was theocracy. God was ruling them Himself through His chosen messengers: firstly through Moses (Exod. 5:1). Joshua succeeded Moses and carried on the mantle (Deut 34:9). After the demise of Joshua and the elders after him, Isreal relapsed into continued apostasy (Jdg. 2:11f). God would always chastise them serially and the consequences of their iniquities were better imagined than experienced. They suffered persistently in the hands of their enemies.
Here we are in our own generation. Do we not behave like goats? Of the livestock, goats remain the most challenging to rear via. No matter the assorted feeds you give them in the pen, they aren’t contented, and prefer grazing outside the pen. Are you like that? God’s transforming power for salvation changes the goat (sinner) to sheep (saint). Having experienced this great salvation, you should not become goat, again! Stop being a goat. It pains God. Remain His sheep to enjoy Him now and through eternity (Matt. 13:29-30).
PRAYER POINTS:
1. I refuse to be a goat, in Jesus’name.
2. God, by Your Word and Spirit, help me to become and remain Your ‘sheep’, tameable, teachable and available.
3. The Church needs Your assistance, O Lord, to know she has the common responsibility of helping people to be roundly renewed. Help her.
EXTRA READING FOR TODAY: Numbers 9:3 – 11:7; Mark 8:9 – 8:30.