A ten-dollar bill got into circulation and did a lot of good. It helped buy coal for a needy old woman, helped buy medicine for a sick child, and showed up in the collection plate at church one Sunday. Then it fell into the hands of a bank teller who spotted it as a counterfeit. The test is not how many good deeds you claim to your credit, but rather, can you pass inspection in the sight of God?
Devotion of the Day
THE CAUSE AND CURE OF ERROR
Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.
Matthew 22:29
For all our education today, we never had more ignorance and error. The root of it is revealed in this word from our Lord: we do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. For Scripture we substitute our own explanations, and for the power of God we substitute our own experience. God has said something to us in the Scriptures, His written Word, and He has done something for us in His Son, the Living Word; but we refuse both and live in error.
Like the generation of Noah’s day, this age lives eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, and knows not, and will not know until judgment breaks. But God has provided a cure for ignorance. Again and again He says, “I would not have you ignorant” (Rom. 11:25; I Cor. 10:1; 12:1; II Cor. 1:8; I Thess. 4:13; II Pt. 3:8).
The cause of error is plain: ignorance of the Scriptures and of the power of God. The cure is equally plain: knowledge of the Scriptures and of the power of God. The first leads to the second: as we know the Scriptures we may know the power of God. “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”