ESOCS Devotional 20 January 2023
TEXT: ISAIAH 47:10-15
MEMORY VERSE: “You are powerless in spite of the advice you get. Let your astrologers come forward and save you – those people who study the stars, who map out the zones of the heavens and tell you from month to month what is going to happen to you.” Isaiah 47:13 GNB
The heathen nations, such as Babylon, rejected the knowledge of the true God of heaven. They invented for themselves sources of their own wisdom. They acquired their own secret knowledge or insight through magical arts and mediums. Through this, they developed a religion of mysticism that was subject to the reading of the stars and other planetary movements, including divination or second sight, from dead ancestors.
Through the application of magical arts, witchcraft, sorcery, divination and astrology, people attempt to discover more about the future or even control the future. God’s Law doesn’t support any form of magical manipulation. This was a major issue between Elijah and the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:19-40) in the Old Testament times. Christians in the early Church recognized that no one could be a Christian and still practise magic or get involved in sorcery or divination of any sort (Acts 13:8, 19:13-19).
These warnings in the Bible apply to the modern-day interest in the occult, witchcraft, horoscopes, etc. The Bible truly affirms that there is no power or authority that can compete with God. The scriptures call on us all to rely mainly on God for all things.
In our text, God cautioned that those who involved themselves in these forbidden practices had thus wearied themselves with the futility of their search for knowledge from the physical world. This they did, in order to discern or discover matters of the spirit world by physical efforts. God then challenged them to go ahead to consult their normal mediums for wisdom in order to gain an understanding of the calamity that would soon befall them. But these sources of their supposed knowledge would be consumed by the invisible power of the Most-High God.
Recall the predicaments of the wayward sons of Sceva (Acts 19:13-16). What with Simon the sorcerer (Acts 8: 9-13); the magicians of Egypt, in the contest with Moses, the true servant of God. Let’s be careful, for it is not possible to serve the true God side by side with other imaginary gods.
- Those who combine the power of the occult with God’s supreme power have deceived themselves into believing that heaven helps those who help themselves. True or false?
- Lord Jesus, give me the grace to rely only on you for all things and in all cases.
FURTHER READING: Amos 2:6-16; Luke 7:24-35, 1 Corinthians 9:1-14.
Read Yesterday’s ESOCS Devotional here
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ESOCS Devotional 20 January 2023
