Life's Inanities and Ironies

5: Ancient Near Eastern Myths versus the Biblical Account

2026-10-19T00:30:00.000-04:00

The cultures surrounding Israel produced creation and flood stories—Enuma Elish, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and others. These accounts feature multiple gods in conflict, chaotic matter that already exists, and a flood sent for petty reasons. The biblical account is radically different: one sovereign God who creates by His word out of nothing, a good and ordered creation, a moral reason for the Flood, and a clear promise afterward. Genesis is not a cleaned-up version of pagan myth; it is a polemic against those myths.

Where pagan stories deify the sun, moon, stars, or forces of nature, Genesis 1 places them as created objects on Day 4, serving God’s purposes. Where pagan flood heroes survive by cunning or favor of one god among many, Noah is righteous and walks with the one true God. The genealogies and historical continuity in Genesis tie the events to real people and places, unlike the timeless, cyclical myths of the surrounding nations.

Modern scholars sometimes claim Genesis borrowed from these stories. The evidence runs the other way: the biblical account is earlier in its essentials, theologically superior, and historically grounded. Moses, writing under inspiration, recorded what God had revealed, correcting the distorted memories preserved in other cultures. Our series on ancient gods showed the same pattern—pagan deities are exposed as false when measured against the living God of Scripture.

Call to action: Choose one pagan creation or flood story (Gilgamesh is readily available) and list three clear contrasts with Genesis. Use those contrasts the next time someone claims the Bible is just another ancient myth.

DMMC

10-17-26

4: The Flood and What It Means for Earth History

2026-10-18T00:30:00.000-04:00

Genesis 6–9 describes a global Flood sent as judgment on a wicked world. The language is comprehensive: “all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered,” “all flesh died,” and the waters prevailed for 150 days before receding. The Ark was built to preserve two of every kind of land animal and bird, plus Noah’s family. After the Flood, God established the rainbow covenant promising never again to destroy the earth by water. The New Testament treats the Flood as historical (Matthew 24:37–39; 2 Peter 2:5; 3:5–6).

This event reshaped the earth’s surface. Rapid burial of plants and animals in water-laid layers, fossil graveyards, and marine fossils on high mountains are the expected results of a year-long global catastrophe. The post-Flood Ice Age, triggered by warmer oceans and volcanic activity, accounts for many glacial features without requiring multiple long ice ages over hundreds of thousands of years. Continental sedimentary layers and the fossil order (broadly marine below, then land animals) fit catastrophic deposition far better than slow uniformitarian processes.

The Flood also explains the origin of most fossils and the rapid formation of many geological features. Local-flood theories fail the text: a local flood would not require an Ark the size described, would not cover all high hills, and would not end all flesh. The genealogies after the Flood (Genesis 10–11) show rapid repopulation and the origin of nations and languages at Babel, consistent with a recent global event rather than deep time.

Call to action: Read 2 Peter 3:3–7. Notice how the apostle connects denial of the Flood with denial of the coming judgment. Let that warning sharpen your own readiness to stand on Scripture.

DMMC

10-16-26

3: Humanity’s Unique Place — Image of God versus Evolutionary Narratives

2026-10-17T00:30:00.000-04:00

Genesis 1:26–27 and 2:7 state that man is created in the image and likeness of God, formed from the dust and given the breath of life. This is a direct, special creation, not the end product of animal ancestry. The image of God includes rationality, moral capacity, dominion, relational ability, and the capacity for worship. No animal shares this. Evolutionary narratives that claim humans are highly evolved apes erase this distinction and reduce morality, language, and consciousness to accidental byproducts of survival.

Scripture is clear that Adam was a real historical person, the first man, from whom all humanity descends (Acts 17:26; Romans 5:12–19; 1 Corinthians 15:45–49). Eve was formed from his side; there is no room for a population of pre-Adamites or for death and sin before the Fall. The genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11, Luke 3, and the chronological statements in Scripture place Adam only thousands of years ago, not hundreds of thousands. Attempts to insert long ages or evolutionary development between the creation of Adam and the rest of the human race require rewriting the text.

The implications are practical. Because we are image-bearers, every human life has inherent dignity from conception. Because we are fallen image-bearers, we need redemption through the last Adam, Jesus Christ. Evolutionary thinking that denies a historical Adam also undermines the need for a historical Redeemer. The gospel stands or falls with the historicity of the first chapters of Genesis.

Call to action: Reflect on what it means that you bear God’s image. Then consider one person in your life who needs to hear that their worth comes from the Creator, not from productivity or appearance, and share that truth this week.

DMMC

10-16-26

2: Dinosaurs, Dragons, and the Fossil Record — What Scripture Does and Does Not Require

2026-10-16T00:30:00.000-04:00

Scripture never uses the word “dinosaur,” yet it describes large, powerful land and sea creatures that match what we now call dinosaurs and other extinct animals. Job 40–41 gives detailed portraits of Behemoth (a massive land animal with a tail like a cedar, bones like bronze, and strength that only its Maker can approach) and Leviathan (a formidable sea creature with terrifying teeth, scales that cannot be pierced, and the ability to raise itself and leave a wake). These are not hippos or crocodiles; the descriptions exceed known living animals. Psalm 104:26 and other passages speak of sea monsters in the deep. Dragons appear in several Old Testament texts as real creatures, not mere symbols.

The fossil record shows sudden appearance of complex life forms, stasis within kinds, and widespread burial in water-laid sediment—features consistent with a global Flood (Genesis 6–8) rather than slow accumulation over millions of years. Soft tissue, blood cells, and original biomolecules have been reported in dinosaur remains; such findings are difficult to reconcile with deep-time claims but fit a recent burial. Scripture does not require us to place dinosaurs only in a pre-Flood world or to deny that humans and dinosaurs could have coexisted after the Flood for a time. The post-Flood world was repopulated from the animals on the Ark (Genesis 8:17–19). Extinction of large reptiles is historically attested in many cultures through dragon legends that match the fossil evidence.

What Scripture does not require is acceptance of evolutionary common descent or millions of years of death before Adam. The kinds were created mature and functional. Variation within kinds (what we observe in dogs, cats, or finches) is real and limited; it does not cross the boundaries God established. The fossil record, when read through the lens of the Flood, records catastrophic burial, not gradual transformation.

Call to action: Read Job 40–41 carefully. Note every physical detail that exceeds living animals. Then thank God that the same Creator who made Behemoth and Leviathan also made you and sustains you.

DMMC

10-15-26

Creatures, Creation, and the Creator: A Biblical Look at Origins and the Natural World

2026-10-15T00:30:00.000-04:00

This eight-part series is written for readers who hold the Bible as the inerrant, sufficient, and authoritative Word of God and who take its historical narrative at face value. Each post is self-contained yet builds on the others. The goal is to strengthen confidence in Scripture’s account of origins, to answer common objections with biblical clarity, and to turn our attention from debate to worship of the Creator.

1: The Biblical Framework for Creation — Genesis 1–2 in Its Own Terms

Genesis 1–2 is not poetry in the modern sense, nor is it myth. It is structured historical narrative written in the same style as the rest of the early chapters of Genesis and the genealogies that follow. The text itself defines the days: “And there was evening and there was morning, the first day” (and so on through the sixth day). The Hebrew word yom with a numerical adjective and the evening-morning formula consistently means an ordinary 24-hour day elsewhere in Scripture. God finished His work in six days and rested on the seventh (Exodus 20:11; 31:17). That Sabbath command is grounded in the historical reality of the creation week.

The order is deliberate. Light appears on Day 1 before the sun, moon, and stars on Day 4, showing that God is the source of light and that the heavenly bodies are created servants, not gods. Vegetation appears on Day 3, fully formed and reproducing after its kind, before the sun. Sea creatures and birds appear on Day 5; land animals and man on Day 6. Man is created last, male and female, in the image of God, and given dominion. The repeated phrase “after its kind” sets boundaries that modern evolutionary theory denies. There is no indication of long ages, death before sin, or gradual development from simpler forms.

Genesis 2 focuses on the sixth day from the standpoint of the man and the garden. Adam is formed from the dust, Eve from his side, and both are placed in a perfect environment with one prohibition. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is real, the command is clear, and the consequences are stated before any disobedience occurs. The text leaves no room for a pre-Fall death of animals or humans; death enters later through sin (Romans 5:12).

This framework is not optional for those who claim the whole Bible is true. Jesus treated Genesis 1–2 as history (Matthew 19:4–6). Paul did the same (1 Corinthians 15:45; 1 Timothy 2:13–14). To reinterpret the days as long ages or the account as merely theological rather than historical requires imposing outside ideas onto the text. The God who spoke the universe into existence is the same God who inspired these words. Our starting point must be what He has said, not what current scientific consensus claims.

Call to action: Read Genesis 1–2 aloud this week, noting every time the text specifies a completed, functional creation “after its kind.” Let the plain sense of the words settle the question of the framework before moving to later posts.

DMMC

10-12-26

The Gods That Could Not Save: A Wrap-Up of Israel’s Ancient Idols and the Powers Behind Them

2026-10-14T00:30:00.000-04:00

The gods Israel kept turning to never answered. Across this series we have walked through the idols that pressed in on God’s people from Canaan, Philistia, Moab, and the empires to the east. This wrap-up gathers those threads, sets them beside the One who actually speaks, and names what stood behind the images.

Israel did not invent these gods. She borrowed them. The land was already thick with cults when Joshua crossed the Jordan, and the temptation never stayed outside the camp. High places, household shrines, royal alliances, and fear of the weather kept pulling hearts away from the covenant. The prophets did not treat that drift as a minor taste in religion. They treated it as adultery against the living God, and as fellowship with powers that were not God.

Baal was the storm and fertility lord of Canaan. His name means “master,” and that is how his worship worked: rain, grain, flocks, and children were treated as his to grant or withhold. Elijah’s contest on Carmel was not a debate about symbols. It was a public test of power. The prophets of Baal cut themselves and cried from morning until evening. There was no voice and no answer. Fire fell on the altar of the Lord, and the people said what the evidence demanded: the Lord, He is God. A power that can stir a crowd and still cannot answer prayer is not sovereign. It is a pretender.

Asherah traveled with him. She was honored with wooden poles and sacred trees, often set beside altars that were supposed to belong to the Lord alone. Some in Israel even spoke as if she belonged in Yahweh’s courts. The reformers cut the poles down and burned them. The Lord is not a member of a divine couple. He does not share His glory, and He does not need a consort to give life. The impulse to pair Him with a goddess was not innocent folklore. It was an attempt to pull the Holy One down into the company of lesser powers.

Molech demanded what Baal only promised. Child sacrifice in the fire, especially in the Valley of Hinnom, was condemned by Moses and denounced by the prophets as an abomination the Lord never commanded. Kings such as Ahaz and Manasseh crossed that line. Here the biblical verdict is especially plain. Israel “sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons” (Psalm 106:37). They sacrificed to demons, not to God, to gods they had not known (Deuteronomy 32:17). A cult that requires the death of the innocent is not a misunderstood local custom. It is a fallen power feeding on what God forbids.

Dagon, the Philistine grain god, met the ark in his own temple and fell on his face, head and hands broken off. Chemosh of Moab and Milcom of Ammon received the same prophetic verdict: they could not deliver their peoples in the day of trouble. Ishtar, and her Canaanite face Astarte, offered sex, war, and empire glamour. Marduk of Babylon stood at the head of a vast pantheon and a creation story built on divine violence. When Judah went into exile, those imperial gods looked victorious. Then the exiles returned, and the idols stayed silent. The God of Israel had said He would do it, and He did.

That pattern is the heart of the theory this series can rightly carry. The images were nothing. The worship was not. Paul tells the church that what the nations sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God (1 Corinthians 10:20). The psalmist and Moses had already said the same about Israel’s own compromises. These were not vacant names. They were fallen spiritual powers, rebels from the ranks of the heavenly host, trying to seize the fear, the blood, the harvest, and the praise that belong to the Creator. Whether one traces them through the sons of God who left their proper place, through the gods of the nations judged in Psalm 82, or through the principalities and powers Paul says were disarmed at the cross, the biblical point is the same. They are created beings. They are not eternal. They are not saviors. They want altars.

They promised manageable blessings and delivered bondage. They had images, priests, festivals, and stories. They did not have a covenant kept across centuries, a law that judged kings, or a word that came true after the temple fell. Psalm 115 still stands: they have mouths but do not speak, eyes but do not see, and those who make them become like them. The idol is deaf. The spirit that craves the idol is not neutral.

That is the tie to the present. The names have changed. The claim on worship has not. We still bow to whatever we believe can give us rain in our own fields: security, pleasure, approval, political power, the body, the screen, the self. Modern idolatry does not usually carve a pole or light a pyre in the valley. It still trades the living God for something that can be managed. And behind the loudest of those claims there is still a spiritual contest. We do not wrestle only against flesh and blood. Elijah’s question has not expired: how long will you waver between two opinions?

The series ends where the covenant always stood. The Lord is one. He made the heavens. He brought Israel out of Egypt. He kept His word through judges, kings, exile, and return. He has spoken finally in His Son. At the cross the powers that hid behind Baal, Molech, and the imperial gods were disarmed and put to open shame. The resurrection is the answer no storm god, no mother goddess, and no fallen prince ever gave. False gods fall on their faces. The tomb is empty.

So tear down the high places you have kept in reserve. Stop feeding what cannot save. Hear the God who speaks, repent, and trust the Savior who already bore the fire and broke the claim of every pretender. He alone is worthy of the worship these ancient names counterfeited and could never keep.

DMMC

10/8/26

Ashtoreth: The Goddess Solomon Set on the Hill

2026-10-13T00:30:00.000-04:00

Ashtoreth, also called Ashtaroth in the plural of her shrines, was the goddess of the Zidonians. She belongs to the same family as Ishtar of Mesopotamia and Astarte of the Phoenician coast: a goddess of desire, fertility, and war, the queen men set beside the storm god when they wanted both the rain and the bed. Sidon carried her name. Israel learned it. The Bible never gives her a hymn. It gives her a charge sheet.

The pattern starts as soon as the generation that buried Joshua is gone. They forsook the Lord and served Baal and Ashtaroth (Judges 2:13). In the days of the judges the same pair returns: Baalim and Ashtaroth, the gods of Syria, Zidon, Moab, Ammon, and the Philistines (Judges 10:6). Samuel later stands before the nation and makes the condition of deliverance plain. If you do return unto the Lord with all your hearts, then put away the strange gods and Ashtaroth from among you, and prepare your hearts unto the Lord, and serve him only (1 Samuel 7:3). They did. They put away Baalim and Ashtaroth and served the Lord only, and he delivered them from the Philistines. The revival was not a new feeling. It was the removal of the goddess.

She did not stay removed. Solomon loved many strange women, and when he was old his wives turned his heart. He went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites, and his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God (1 Kings 11:4–5). The high place he built for her stood on the hill east of Jerusalem, the ridge that also received Chemosh and Molech, facing the city of the great King (1 Kings 11:7; 2 Kings 23:13). Josiah, in the reform, defiled that mount of corruption and broke down the high places. Between Samuel’s cleansing and Josiah’s, the goddess had been given a view of the temple.

The Philistines knew her house as well. After Saul fell on Gilboa they put his armor in the house of Ashtaroth and fastened his body to the wall of Beth-shan (1 Samuel 31:10). A king of Israel became a trophy in the goddess’s temple. The same people had already fastened a head in the house of Dagon. The neighboring cults shared the spoils of a fallen anointed.

What she asked for was what her sisters asked for. The female image beside Baal. The high place, the grove, the cake and the offering. Jeremiah’s Queen of Heaven, for whom the children gathered wood and the women kneaded dough, sits in this same family of worship, whether the local name that day was Ashtoreth or another (Jeremiah 7:18). Sex and fertility were the levers. War and national pride were the other face. A man could keep the Lord’s name on the temple and the goddess on the opposite hill, and call the arrangement wisdom. Solomon did. God called it a heart not perfect.

The modern altar is that hill.

Ashtoreth is the goddess added beside a confession that is still spoken. She is the second loyalty in a house that has not yet denied the first. Churches that keep the vocabulary of the Lord and the practices of the age are building Solomon’s ridge: Scripture in the pulpit, the goddess in the marriage, the entertainment, and the unspoken agreement that desire outranks the vow. She is also the trophy room. When the people of God fall, the culture that serves her hangs the armor in her house and calls the display proof that her way won. Samuel’s condition has not been revised. Deliverance waited on putting Ashtaroth away, not on managing her. A heart prepared unto the Lord and a goddess kept in the back room is the heart Solomon died with.

Put her away. Not to the side of the hill, where she can still see the temple. Out of the house. The Lord who answered Samuel when the strange gods were gone does not share his glory with the goddess of Zidon, and he does not accept a high place facing his city.

DMMC

10-8-26

Dagon: The God Who Fell on His Face

2026-10-12T00:30:00.000-04:00

Dagon was the god of the Philistines, and before them a god of the Euphrates lands, known there as Dagan. His name belongs with grain, not with fish. Later readers heard the Hebrew word for fish in his name and pictured a man above the waist and a fish below. That image stuck in commentaries and in Milton. The older evidence points to a god of corn, provision, and the settled city. He was the one a people thanked for bread and for victory. Whole towns carried his name. Ashdod kept his chief house. Gaza had a temple large enough for the lords and for thousands on the roof. When Israel’s enemies wanted a god who could feed them and finish their wars, they went to Dagon.

The Bible shows what that worship looked like when it met the living God.

After the ark was taken at Ebenezer, the Philistines carried it into Dagon’s house at Ashdod and set it beside the idol, the way a victor sets a trophy beside his god (1 Samuel 5:1–2). They went to bed as conquerors. In the morning Dagon had fallen on his face to the earth before the ark of the Lord. They set him back in his place. A god who has to be stood up by his priests is already finished, but they tried. The next morning he had fallen again, and this time his head and the palms of his hands were cut off on the threshold. Only the stump was left. From that day the priests of Dagon, and all who entered the house, would not step on the threshold (1 Samuel 5:3–5). The hand of the Lord was heavy on Ashdod. He struck them, and they learned that the ark was not a captive. They passed it to Gath, then to Ekron, and the cry went up until the lords sent the glory of Israel back where it belonged.

The other scene is Gaza. When Samson was taken, blinded, and bound, the lords gathered to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god, and to rejoice. Our god, they said, has delivered Samson our enemy into our hand (Judges 16:23–24). The house was full of men and women. About three thousand were on the roof. They called for the blind man to make them sport. Samson asked the lad to let him feel the pillars on which the house stood, prayed, and bowed himself with all his might. The house fell on the lords and on all the people in it (Judges 16:25–30). The god who had been thanked for the capture could not hold the roof up. After Saul’s death the Philistines fastened his head in the temple of Dagon, one more trophy in a house that had already lost its own head and hands (1 Chronicles 10:10).

That is the worship. Thank the god for the grain. Thank him for the fallen enemy. Set the holy things of the Lord beside him as proof that he has won. Then discover, two mornings in a row, that he cannot stand in the presence he was supposed to have conquered.

The same three habits are easy to find now.

The grain altar is the worship of provision. Dagon was thanked for the corn that kept the city alive. His heirs are thanked for the harvest of a career, a portfolio, a market, or a standard of living. The prayer is no longer spoken in Ashdod. It is spoken as “our system gave us this,” “the economy delivered,” “we built this.” Bread is received and the Giver is not named. When the field fails, the priests of that altar do what Ashdod did. They set the god back in his place: a new policy, a new expert, a louder promise that the stump can still feed them. A god of provision who must be propped up every morning has already lost his head and his hands. He can neither see the famine nor give the bread.

The victory altar is Gaza’s roof. Dagon was praised because the enemy of the people was blinded and brought out to make sport. The modern house fills the same way whenever the church, the Scripture, or a fallen believer is made the entertainment. Our side has won, the crowd says. Their prophet is a joke. Their book is a trophy. Their shame is content. Three thousand on the roof was only the ancient version of a crowd gathered to watch the people of God humiliated. The lords called it worship. The pillars did not agree. A culture that builds its joy on the collapse of the saints is already standing in a house God knows how to bring down.

The trophy altar is the ark set beside the idol. The Philistines did not destroy the ark at first. They displayed it. Captured holiness, placed next to Dagon, was supposed to prove which god was stronger. That display still runs. The words of Scripture get set beside a cause that hates their Author. The church gets posed as evidence that the age has moved on. The conscience gets kept in the temple as a relic, useful for the photograph, empty of rule. Ashdod’s second morning is the answer. What you set beside the Lord as a trophy will not stay upright, and the hands that arranged the scene will be found on the threshold.

One more habit traveled with them. After the judgment, they would not step on the threshold, and they would not repent. Superstition replaced surrender. People still do this. They avoid the place where God has already spoken, change the subject, blame the method, and leave the stump in the sanctuary. Careful feet are not the same thing as a bowed heart.

Do not fear the house that is full, or the lords who are laughing, or the ark that looks captured. Do not thank Dagon for your bread, and do not join the roof. The Lord does not share a platform with the god of grain and victory. He puts every such god on its face. If he has been set beside an idol in your own life, stand him up no second morning. Bring out the trophy. Receive the harvest from the God who gave it. Step over the threshold toward the One whose hand is heavy, and whose ark was never taken.

DMMC 9-7-26

Chemosh: The God of Moab Who Claims the Nation

2026-10-11T00:30:00.000-04:00

Chemosh was the national god of Moab, the people east of the Dead Sea who came from Lot’s line and lived as Israel’s near neighbor and frequent enemy. His name sits on Moab the way the Lord’s name sits on Israel. Numbers calls them “the people of Chemosh” in the same breath that it sings their ruin (Numbers 21:29). Jeremiah later picks up the line: Chemosh shall go forth into captivity with his priests and his princes together, and Moab shall be ashamed of him as Israel was once ashamed of Bethel (Jeremiah 48:7, 13, 46). A national god does not stay in the shrine. He becomes the explanation of the nation’s wins, the excuse for the nation’s losses, and the owner of the nation’s wars.

The Moabite Stone, cut for King Mesha in the ninth century before Christ, says this in Moab’s own words. Mesha built a high place for Chemosh because the god had delivered him from all kings and let him look down on his enemies. Omri of Israel had oppressed Moab many days, Mesha writes, because Chemosh was angry with his land. Then the anger lifted. Chemosh spoke: Go, take Nebo from Israel. Mesha went by night, fought from dawn until noon, and put the city to the ban of Ashtar-Chemosh. He records that he killed the whole population, men and women, citizens and strangers, as a sacrifice for Chemosh and for Moab, and hauled the captured altar-hearth back before the face of his god. Defeat was the god’s displeasure. Victory was the god’s gift. The slaughtered town was worship.

Scripture tells the same war from the other side of the wall. When Ahab died, Mesha rebelled. Israel, Judah, and Edom went up against him and shut him in Kir-hareseth. Seeing the battle too hard for him, the king of Moab took his eldest son, the one who would have reigned in his place, and offered him for a burnt offering on the wall (2 Kings 3:27). The text does not pause to name the god. It does not need to. The firstborn on the wall is the last coin in Chemosh’s purse. Great wrath followed against Israel, and they departed. Deuteronomy had already named the pattern. The nations do these things for their gods. Every abomination they do, even burning their sons and daughters in the fire, is what the Lord forbade Israel to learn (Deuteronomy 12:29–31).

The high place did not stay in Moab. Solomon, turned by his foreign wives, built one for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, on the hill east of Jerusalem, the same ridge that received Molech (1 Kings 11:7, 33). The god of the neighbor was given a view of the temple. Josiah, centuries later, defiled that high place and filled it with men’s bones (2 Kings 23:13). Jephthah, arguing with Ammon, used the logic the nations already believed: you keep what your god gives you, we keep what the Lord gives us (Judges 11:24). He was right about the Lord. He was borrowing the other side’s map. A people can know the true God and still talk as if the nations’ gods really parcel out the earth.

That is the modern altar.

Chemosh is any god who is really the nation wearing a religious face. He explains a lost war as anger and a won war as favor. He blesses the ban: the enemy may be devoted, destroyed, and called a sacrifice, so long as the country is restored. In extremity he asks for the firstborn on the wall, the next generation spent so the present kingdom does not fall. The shrine may be a party, a flag, a people, or a cause. The liturgy is the same. Our defeat means the god is displeased. Our victory means the god has spoken. The child, the conscience, or the captive is an acceptable offering if the land is saved. Civil loyalty is not the sin. Romans 13 still stands. The sin is the promotion of the nation, or the movement, into the place of the Lord, until Chemosh has a high place facing the church and the people call it patriotism.

Moab’s end is already written. The god went into captivity with the princes. The high place was defiled. The people who trusted him were ashamed. Do not build him a ridge east of your own Jerusalem. The Lord who drove Chemosh from the hill does not share a nation with him, and he does not accept a firstborn on a wall. He gave his own Son, once, outside a different city, and by that offering he ended every altar that asks a father for his seed.

Keywords: Chemosh god of Moab, Mesha Stele, 2 Kings 3:27, Solomon high place, national idolatry, firstborn sacrifice, Jeremiah 48

Marduk: The Lord of Babylon Who Still Wants the Throne

2026-10-10T00:30:00.000-04:00

Marduk began as a local god of Babylon, a storm and fertility power, marked on early monuments by a triangular spade. He did not stay local. In the Babylonian creation epic, the Enuma Elish, the younger gods are terrified of Tiamat, the salt-water chaos. Marduk steps forward with a condition. He will fight if they will make him king, if his word will fix fates, if no other decree will stand against his. They agree. He kills her, splits the carcass, and builds sky and earth from the body. Humanity is fashioned afterward from the blood of a slain rebel god, made so the gods can rest and men can do the labor. Then Marduk is handed fifty names, each one a title taken from some other deity. Babylon shortens the whole claim to one word. Bel. Lord.

His temple was Esagila. Beside it rose Etemenanki, the ziggurat called the house of the foundation of heaven and earth. At the New Year festival, the Akitu, the creation story was recited in his court. The king was stripped of his regalia, struck, made to kneel, and then restored. Chaos was ritually defeated again. The empire’s right to rule was declared fresh for another year. That is the system in a single week. A city-god becomes the god of the state. Order is won by force. The crown is religion. Other gods are absorbed, not answered. Men exist to serve the order the throne has announced.

Scripture stood in that city and refused the claim. Isaiah pictures Bel bowing down and Nebo stooping, their images loaded like freight on weary beasts, unable to save the burden or the bearer (Isaiah 46:1–2). The same prophet laughs at the workman who cuts a tree, burns half, and worships the rest (Isaiah 44:9–20). Daniel lives inside Marduk’s capital and will not eat the king’s portion, will not bow to the golden image, and tells Nebuchadnezzar that the God of heaven rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whomever he will (Daniel 2:37–38; 4:34–37). The tower in Genesis 11 is the same impulse in kiln-fired brick. Let us build a city and a tower whose top may reach heaven, and let us make us a name. God comes down, confuses the language, and scatters the builders. Revelation names the finished version: Babylon the great, drunk on empire, judged in a single hour, while heaven says, Come out of her, my people.

Marduk’s modern shrine is any power that offers to defeat chaos if you will call it lord.

It is the state that promises safety, bread, and meaning in exchange for the conscience. It is the ideology that renames every older loyalty — family, church, Scripture, the created order of male and female — until only one name is left, the way Marduk collected fifty. It is the ruler, the party, or the expert class treated as the restorer of order, renewed on a schedule by ritual praise. It is the tower project in our own materials: we will engineer the world, manage the nations, cure the human problem, and make a name that does not need God. Civil power is lawful in its proper place. It is God’s servant when it punishes evil and praises good (Romans 13:1–4). The sin is the promotion. When the servant takes the throne of the Lord, Bel is back in the sanctuary, whether the building is a ziggurat or a capitol.

The test is the one Daniel used in the king’s hall. Who rules history? Who may name what is true? Who receives the knee when the music plays? If the answer is a city, a program, or a man, the ziggurat is already under construction, however modern the facade. Do not fear Babylon, and do not join its hymn. The God who brought Bel to nothing has set a King on Zion who does not bargain for his crown and does not build the world out of a corpse. Kiss the Son. Refuse the fifty names. The kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever.

Keywords:

Molech: The King Who Asks for the Children

2026-10-09T00:30:00.000-04:00

Molech, also written Molech and Milcom, enters the Bi Molech ble as a name Israel was forbidden to speak over a child. He is called the abomination of the Ammonites. Solomon, old and turned aside by his foreign wives, built him a high place on the hill east of Jerusalem, facing the city of the Lord (1 Kings 11:7). The law had already closed that door. “Thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the Lord” (Leviticus 18:21). The penalty is not a fine. Anyone who gives his seed to Molech is to be put to death. If the people hide their eyes, God says he himself will set his face against that man and against his family, and will cut them off (Leviticus 20:2–5). This is not a private taste. It is a public defilement of the name.

The place became as infamous as the god. In the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, south of the city, stood the Tophet. Ahaz burned his son there. Manasseh made his son pass through the fire (2 Kings 16:3; 21:6). Josiah, in the reform, defiled the Tophet so that no man might make his son or his daughter pass through the fire to Molech (2 Kings 23:10). Jeremiah stood in that valley and said they had built the high places of Baal in order to burn their sons and daughters in the fire, a thing the Lord never commanded, neither came it into his mind (Jeremiah 7:31; 32:35). Ezekiel charges Jerusalem with taking the sons and daughters she had borne to God and sacrificing them to be devoured (Ezekiel 16:20–21). Psalm 106 says they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto demons, and shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and daughters, and the land was polluted.

Some later scholars argue that the Hebrew word marks a kind of offering rather than only a named god, and that not every “passing through the fire” text can be proved from ashes. The Bible’s verdict does not wait on that debate. Children were given to the fire. Kings did it. Parents did it. Prophets called it murder dressed as worship. The logic was always the same. A greater good required a smaller life. The god, the crisis, the fortune of the house, or the favor of heaven outranked the child. The Valley of Hinnom passed into the language of the Lord Jesus as Gehenna, the picture of final loss (Matthew 5:22). The fire was never neutral. It was a sermon about where that altar ends.

The rite did not need a foreign name to survive. It only needed a reason that sounded higher than the child.

That reason is still offered. It is the logic of abortion whenever a child is ended so a career, a reputation, a fear, or an autonomy can live. It is the logic that hands children to an ideology before they can refuse, severs them from the created order of male and female, and calls the damage care. It is the logic that feeds them unfiltered lust through a phone and calls it access. It is every clinic, classroom, court, and parent that decides the adult’s kingdom is worth the child’s body. The invoice is the same one presented at the Tophet. The future of the house requires the seed of the house. Scripture already named the valley. A people can call the offering medicine, freedom, or compassion, and it remains the offering God said never entered his mind.

This is not a license for rage at wounded people. Many who stood at that modern fire were lied to, poor, afraid, or left alone. David was restored after bloodguilt. The woman at the well was not finished. The gospel still speaks to the guilty. But restoration starts where the lie stops. A child is not fuel. The image of God is not raw material for someone else’s freedom. Forgiveness is offered at the cross. The cross does not rename the altar.

Fathers, mothers, pastors: guard the children. Refuse the Tophet even when it invoices you as compassion. Preach protection to the small and pardon to the guilty, in that order of love, never instead of the truth. The King who took children in his arms and blessed them is not Molech (Mark 10:13–16). He laid down his own life. He does not ask for theirs. Come out of the valley. The blood that speaks better things than the blood of Abel is enough for the parent who will turn, and strong enough to say no the next time the old king asks for the seed

DMMC

10-4-26

Baal: The Lord Who Sells Rain

2026-10-08T00:30:00.000-04:00

Baal means lord. In Canaan he was not one quiet statue in a back room. He was the storm, the rider of the clouds, the god who each year went down to struggle with Mot, death itself, and, if the rites worked, came back with the rain. Without him, the story ran, the fields died. With him, grain, wine, oil, flocks, and children followed. His places were the high hills, open to the sky he was supposed to rule: a stone pillar for the god, a wooden Asherah pole for the goddess beside him, an altar, incense, sometimes a grove. Worship was imitative. Sexual acts at the shrine were meant to wake Baal so the earth would conceive. When the rain came, he received the praise. When it failed, the priests cut themselves, shouted louder, and limped about the altar, which is exactly what Elijah watched from morning until the time of the evening sacrifice (1 Kings 18:26–29).

Israel’s besetting sin was not a clean exchange of Yahweh for Baal. It was the blend. Keep the feasts. Keep the name of the Lord. Add the high place for insurance. Hosea said the people did not know that it was the Lord who gave the grain, the new wine, and the oil. They ran after lovers who promised the same gifts, and they used his silver and gold to make the Baal images (Hosea 2:5–8). Gideon tore down his father’s altar at Ophrah and found out how deep the loyalty ran. Jehu struck the prophets of Baal and then walked in the sins of Jeroboam. Josiah defiled the high places, and the next generation built them again. The contest on Carmel was never about which team had more passion. It was about who owns the rain. Elijah soaked the sacrifice, stepped back, and prayed a short prayer. Fire fell. The God who answers does not need to be aroused.

Baal’s modern chapel is any system that will guarantee outcomes if you perform.

The prosperity pulpit that treats God as a vending machine is Baal in a thin Christian coat. Sow the seed. Name the rain. Blame your faith when the sky stays shut. The biblical God sends rain on the just and the unjust, and he also withholds it to call a people back. He is not manipulated by volume, by a formula, or by a ritual. The career high place is the same bargain without a pulpit. Give the marriage, the Sabbath, the children, and the quiet conscience, and the lord of success will open the clouds. Political messiahs do it too. Hand the heart to a party, a strongman, or a movement, and call the surrender faithfulness. Jeremiah would have recognized the syncretism at once: Yahweh on the lips, Baal on the hill.

There is a reason the first commandment stands where it stands. Exclusive worship is not a mood for mature believers. It is the foundation. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” was spoken to people who could see the high place from the door of the tent. Drought in Scripture is never only weather. It is a question. Who are you calling lord when the field fails? Elijah’s generation answered with knives on their own skin. Ours answers with louder conferences, bigger pledges, and a quiet second altar behind the first.

Examine the hills. Where have you added a lord beside the Lord because he seemed better at outcomes? Where has the church borrowed Canaan’s methods and kept Israel’s vocabulary? Tear the high place down even if the crops looked better while it stood. Pray like Elijah, not like the priests who shouted at noon. The God who answers by fire does not share his name, and he does not rent out the rain.

DMMC

10-4-26

A new short series on the gods of old

2026-10-07T00:30:00.000-04:00

Series introduction — Old Altars, New Names

The gods Israel was commanded to tear down did not retire when the prophets fell silent. They changed their clothes. Ishtar still asks for the body. Baal still offers rain in exchange for loyalty. Marduk still wants the throne, the city, and the right to name what is true. The shrines look different. The invoice does not. This series sets each ancient cult beside the modern altar that asks for the same things, and sets both under the Word of God, who does not share his glory

Over the next few days we will look through the lens of scripture at how the gods that plagued Israel have not gone away but changed name and form to plague us today. No matter how things change how much they stay the same.

Ishtar: The Goddess Who Still Asks for the Body

2026-10-07T00:30:00.000-04:00

Before she was Ishtar, she was Inanna of Uruk. The Sumerians sang to her. The Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians carried her name across the river plain and into the courts of kings. Her planet was Venus, the morning star and the evening star, and that double appearing already told the truth about her. She was desire and destruction in one person. Love and war. The bed and the battlefield. Hymns said battle was a feast to her. The same tablets called her the patron of the prostitute. She was not a quiet mother-goddess of hearth and harvest. She was the power men invoked when they wanted pleasure without bond, and victory without mercy.

Her great temple was Eanna in Uruk, and she had houses in nearly every important city from Ur to Nineveh. Daily offerings of food, incense, and flowers went up to keep her favorable. At the New Year the city rehearsed her descent into the underworld and her return, a dying-and-rising drama meant to restart life in the land. The center of that restart was the sacred marriage. The king stood in for Dumuzi, her shepherd-consort. A high priestess stood in for the goddess. Their union was treated as the act that made the fields conceive, legitimized the throne, and purchased another year of abundance. Sex was not received as a gift inside a covenant. It was a lever pulled to make the gods move.

The cult went further than unruled desire. It claimed the power to unmake the man and the woman.

A hymn to Inanna, from the circle of her high priestess Enheduanna, lists her powers without blushing. To turn a man into a woman and a woman into a man are yours, Inanna. To dress women in the clothes of men, and men in the clothes of women. To put the spindle, a woman’s tool, into the hands of men, and to give weapons to women. That was not a poet’s flourish tucked in the margin. It was doctrine. Her cult personnel lived it out. The gala priests of Inanna took female names and sang in the dialect reserved for the speech of goddesses. The assinnu and the kurgarru served in her temple as the embodied proof of her claim. The Epic of Erra says Ishtar turned their masculinity into femininity, for the awe of the people. Men were dressed as women and treated as having become them. Women were armed and clothed as men and treated as having crossed the other way. Some of her functionaries were described as neither male nor female, a third class made, the myths said, by Enki to stand in the gap between the sexes. The blur was not a private struggle brought to the temple. It was the liturgy. To cross the created line was to display the goddess.

Scripture never flatters her. “Male and female created he them” is not a local custom of Israel. It is the word spoken before any nation had a shrine (Genesis 1:27). The law then forbids the very costume her hymn celebrates: the woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment, for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord (Deuteronomy 22:5). When Judah burned cakes to the Queen of Heaven, Jeremiah named the family ritual for what it was. The children gathered the wood, the fathers kindled the fire, the women kneaded dough, and then they blamed their calamity on having stopped (Jeremiah 7:18; 44:17–19). Hosea’s whole book is a marriage turned brothel, because the people had learned the lesson of the high place: stir the body, purchase the rain. Paul, writing to a city thick with Aphrodite’s heirs, puts the Christian answer in one line. The body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body (1 Corinthians 6:13). You were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body.

What changed is the stationery, not the demand.

The cult went further than unruled desire. It claimed the power to unmake the man and the woman.

A hymn to Inanna, from the circle of her high priestess Enheduanna, lists her powers without blushing. To turn a man into a woman and a woman into a man are yours, Inanna. To dress women in the clothes of men, and men in the clothes of women. To put the spindle, a woman’s tool, into the hands of men, and to give weapons to women. That was not a poet’s flourish tucked in the margin. It was doctrine. Her cult personnel lived it out. The gala priests of Inanna took female names and sang in the dialect reserved for the speech of goddesses. The assinnu and the kurgarru served in her temple as the embodied proof of her claim. The Epic of Erra says Ishtar turned their masculinity into femininity, for the awe of the people. Men were dressed as women and treated as having become them. Women were armed and clothed as men and treated as having crossed the other way. The blur was not a private struggle brought to the temple. It was the liturgy. To cross the created line was to display the goddess.

Scripture forbids the rite by name. “The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God” (Deuteronomy 22:5). This is not a note about fabric. It is a law against gender-crossing. The garment was the public act. A man who put on a woman’s garment was presenting himself as her. A woman who put on a man’s garment was presenting herself as him. God calls that abomination, the same word he uses for the practices that defiled the land and drove the Canaanites out. The hymn of Inanna and the statute of Moses cannot both be true. One is the voice of the goddess. The other is the voice of the Lord who made them male and female at the beginning (Genesis 1:27). Israel was not left to decide which costume pleased heaven. The costume itself was the rebellion.

That prohibition still stands. The God who spoke it has not revised it. A man dressing as a woman and calling himself her, a woman dressing as a man and calling herself him, is the old liturgy with a new hymnbook. Deuteronomy 22:5 does not wait for surgery, a new name, or a court ruling. It judges the crossing at the garment. Everything after that is only the rite carried further.

When Judah burned cakes to the Queen of Heaven, Jeremiah named the family ritual for what it was. The children gathered the wood, the fathers kindled the fire, the women kneaded dough, and then they blamed their calamity on having stopped (Jeremiah 7:18; 44:17–19). Hosea’s whole book is a marriage turned brothel, because the people had learned the lesson of the high place: stir the body, purchase the rain. Paul, writing to a city thick with Aphrodite’s heirs, puts the Christian answer in one line. The body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body (1 Corinthians 6:13). You were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body.

The modern shrine does not need a ziggurat. It fits in a pocket, a clinic, and a classroom. Pornography is Ishtar’s temple without the incense. The industry that calls prostitution empowerment is the old sacred sex trade with better lighting. And the hymn has been republished. A culture that tells a man he may dress as a woman and become her, and a woman that she may dress as a man and become him, is reciting Inanna against Deuteronomy 22:5. The spindle is back in the man’s hand. The weapon is back in the woman’s. The created line is treated as an offense, and the crossing of it as a sacrament. Ishtar armed kings and then devoured them. The same spirit now blesses any cause that can drape the unmade body in the language of justice, then turns on the man or woman who will not kneel.

Do not despise the person caught in the lie. Do not soften the verse to spare the age. God made the body, called it good, and fenced it. One man, one woman, in marriage, for life (Genesis 2:24; Hebrews 13:4). Ishtar’s lie is that the fence is the sin and the trespass is the sacrament. She promises a new self and hands back a broken one.

Christian, come out from among them. Name the images, the habits, and any agreement that a man may become a woman or a woman a man by costume, name, or knife. Confess them. The blood of Jesus cleanses what Ishtar only inflames. The Spirit restores what Deuteronomy 22:5 still defends: a man as a man, a woman as a woman, the body yielded to the Lord who bought it, and not to the evening star.

The modern shrine does not need a ziggurat. It fits in a pocket, a clinic, and a classroom. Pornography is Ishtar’s temple without the incense: bodies offered, bonds dissolved, the watcher trained to consume persons as rites. The industry that calls prostitution empowerment is the old sacred sex trade with better lighting and a legal defense. And the hymn has been republished. A culture that tells a man he may dress as a woman and become her, and a woman that she may dress as a man and become him, is not inventing a new mercy. It is reciting Inanna. The spindle is back in the man’s hand. The weapon is back in the woman’s. The created line is treated as an offense, and the crossing of it as a sacrament. The war side never left either. Ishtar armed kings and then devoured them. The same spirit now blesses any cause that can drape the unmade body in the language of justice, then turns on the man or woman who will not kneel.

None of this is a call to despise the body, or to mock the person caught in the lie. God made the body, called it good, and fenced it. One man, one woman, in marriage, for life (Genesis 2:24; Hebrews 13:4). Inside that fence, desire is a gift and fruitfulness a blessing. Outside it, desire becomes a god, and gods always send a bill. Ishtar’s lie is that the fence is the sin and the trespass is the sacrament. She promises freedom and delivers slavery. She promises a new self and hands back a broken one. The prophets already measured the end of that road: emptied cities, quenched fires, and a people who could not understand why the cakes had not saved them.

Christian, come out from among them. Name the images, the habits, the quiet agreements you have made with the old goddess, including any agreement that the body may be rewritten. Confess them, do not manage them. The blood of Jesus cleanses what Ishtar only inflames, and the Spirit gives a power the temple never had: a body yielded, not sold, and a man or a woman restored to the word spoken at creation. Put that body back under the Lord who bought it. Do not let the evening star set the terms of your house.

DMMC

10-5-26

The Man Who Forgot to Remember: The Peril of Spiritual Amnesia

2026-10-06T00:30:00.000-04:00

Scripture Reading: Genesis 40:1–23; Genesis 41:1–14 Key Verse: “Yet did not the chief butler remember Joseph, but forgat him.” — Genesis 40:23 (KJV)

The Silence of Two Full Years

Few things in this fallen world sting quite like being forgotten.

Deep beneath the royal courts of Egypt, in the damp chill of Pharaoh’s state prison, sat young Joseph. He was a man with every earthly reason to be bitter: betrayed by his own flesh and blood, sold as a chattel slave into a foreign land, and falsely accused of a heinous crime he refused to commit out of reverence for God (“How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?” Genesis 39:9).

Yet even in chains, God’s favor rested upon Joseph. When Pharaoh’s chief cupbearer—a high official cast into prison under suspicion of treason—woke troubled by a vivid nocturnal vision, it was Joseph who unraveled the dream under divine inspiration. The message was glorious news for the cupbearer: in three days, Pharaoh would lift up his head and restore him to his royal post.

Knowing his own innocence, Joseph made a single, modest plea:

“But think on me when it shall be well with thee, and shew kindness, I pray thee, unto me, and make mention of me unto Pharaoh, and bring me out of this house: for indeed I was stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews: and here also have I done nothing that they should put me into the dungeon.” (Genesis 40:14–15)

The days passed. The third day was Pharaoh’s birthday. The cupbearer was pardoned, reclothed in fine linen, and returned to stand beside the throne. He placed the royal cup into Pharaoh’s hand once more.

And then Scripture records one of the most heartbreaking lines in the Old Testament:

“Yet did not the chief butler remember Joseph, but forgat him.” (Genesis 40:23)

For two full years (Genesis 41:1), Joseph remained in that pit. Why? Because a man who had tasted mercy walked out into the sunshine, picked up his privileges, and forgot the one who helped him in the dark.

The Anatomy of Spiritual Amnesia

The chief cupbearer did not hate Joseph. He did not issue an order to keep him bound, nor did he slander his name before Pharaoh. His sin was quieter, subtler, and far more common: he simply forgot.

Forgetfulness in Scripture is rarely a benign neurological lapse; it is almost always a moral failure born of ease and prosperity.

When the cupbearer was locked in a cell facing potential execution, his senses were keen, his heart was desperate, and he gladly received truth from a Hebrew slave. But once the crisis evaporated—once the threat was lifted, his position restored, and the wine was flowing in the palace—comfort lulled him into complacency.

Moses warned Israel of this exact spiritual snare on the plains of Moab:

“When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the LORD thy God for the good land which he hath given thee. Beware that thou forget not the LORD thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes... Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein... then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the LORD thy God, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.” (Deuteronomy 8:10–14)

Prosperity is an insidious intoxicant. Adversity drives men to their knees; deliverance often leads them to forget the altar. When trials pass, our flesh naturally drifts toward self-sufficiency. We begin to think our restoration was inevitable, our success earned, and our comfort deserved.

Forgotten by Man, Never Forsaken by God

Imagine Joseph’s heart during those two silent years.

Every time heavy footsteps echoed down the stone corridor of the dungeon, did Joseph look up, thinking, “Is this the royal messenger? Did the cupbearer finally speak for me?” Days stretched into months, and months turned into seasons. The silence must have been agonizing.

Yet here is the profound truth of God’s sovereign providence: man’s unfaithfulness cannot derail God’s timetable.

The cupbearer forgot, but the Sovereign God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob never did. Had the cupbearer remembered Joseph immediately, Pharaoh might have granted a simple pardon, and Joseph might have returned quietly to Canaan as an ordinary shepherd.

God did not merely want Joseph freed; God intended to seat him as governor over the mightiest empire on earth to preserve life during a devastating famine and preserve the lineage through which the Messiah would come.

As the Psalmist later reflected:

“He sent a man before them, even Joseph, who was sold for a servant: Whose feet they hurt with fetters: he was laid in iron: Until the time that his word came: the word of the LORD tried him.” (Psalm 105:17–19)

Those two years were not wasted; they were refining furnace time. Joseph was being forged from a gifted youth into a humble statesman capable of wielding absolute authority without succumbing to pride or vengeance. If you find yourself in a season where people have abandoned or overlooked you, take comfort: God does not rely on the memory of men to fulfill His eternal purposes.

The Awakening of Conscience

For two years, the cupbearer went about his daily routines without a second thought. But God knows how to disturb human peace to accomplish divine will.

In Genesis 41, Pharaoh had two haunting dreams: seven fat cows devoured by seven gaunt cows, and seven plump heads of grain consumed by seven blighted heads. None of the magicians or wise men of Egypt could interpret them. In that sudden royal panic, the Holy Spirit struck the cupbearer’s slumbering conscience.

Standing before the sovereign of Egypt, the cupbearer declared:

“I do remember my faults this day.” (Genesis 41:9)

True conviction brings honest confession. He did not mince words, offer political excuses, or blame a busy schedule. He called it what it was: a fault.

Notice what it took to wake him: a crisis in the palace. God allowed an unsettling crisis at the highest level of government to bring an obscure prisoner out of the dungeon. God will shake thrones and disturb kingdoms to bring His saints to the place He has appointed for them.

The Call to Holy Remembrance

As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we must examine our own hearts. It is easy to look at the Egyptian cupbearer with disdain, but how often are we guilty of the exact same spiritual amnesia?

1. Have we forgotten the human instruments God used to help us?

Think back to the hardest seasons of your life—a time of financial ruin, grief, spiritual confusion, or family trial. Who sat with you in the dungeon? Who prayed for you when you could barely muster words? Who extended financial aid, spoke counsel into your ear, or faithfully taught you the Word of God? Have you reached out to thank them, or have you allowed the busyness of your current comfort to blot out their kindness?

2. Far worse: Have we forgotten the God who redeemed us?

King David commanded his soul:

“Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies.” (Psalm 103:2–4)

Left to ourselves, our default posture is spiritual amnesia. This is why God instituted physical tokens of remembrance throughout redemptive history: the stones of Gilgal, the annual Passover feast, and the Lord’s Table.

When our Savior sat in the Upper Room on the night He was betrayed, He broke bread and poured wine, giving us this enduring command:

“This do in remembrance of me.” (Luke 22:19)

Why did the Lord command us to remember? Because He knew our hearts are prone to wander. He knew that when life is peaceful, we are tempted to forget the cross, forget the scourging, forget the crown of thorns, and forget the empty tomb that delivered us from the eternal dungeon of sin and death.

A Decision to Remember

The story of the cupbearer stands in Holy Scripture as a perpetual mirror for every believer.

Do not allow the blessings of God to crowd out the God of blessings. Do not let the sunshine of your present ease cause you to forget the brothers and sisters still sitting in the dark valleys of affliction.

Today, before you close your eyes, take time to pray:

Confess any area where prosperity has bred indifference.
Send an encouraging word or offer practical support to someone who faithfully served you during a low season.
Bow your head before the Lord and declare: “Father, I remember my faults today—and I praise You for the mercy that delivered my soul from the pit.”

DMMC

9-18-26

Present Your Body: The Daily Walk of a Guided People

2026-10-05T00:30:00.000-04:00

"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice… that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." — Romans 12:1–2

We end where a guided life actually happens: on the altar of ordinary days. Most of the will of God is not found at a crossroads with thunder over it. It is found in a body presented, a mind renewed, and a Tuesday afternoon offered up as reasonable service.

Romans 12 does not begin with techniques for hearing voices. It begins with mercies — the gospel mercies of the eleven chapters before it. Because you have been justified, because there is no condemnation, because nothing shall separate you from the love of God in Christ — therefore present your bodies. Guidance is for living sacrifices, not for consumers shopping for a destiny. A man who will not yield his body will not be able to discern a path.

How do you prove that good and acceptable and perfect will? By refusing conformity to this world and by the renewing of the mind. The world has a mold. A mind renewed in Scripture becomes able to discern. The will of God is proved in a holy life more than it is decoded in a crisis. He trains discernment in the small obediences.

Most of the Lord’s direction is already on the page. Fear God. Keep His commandments. Husbands, love your wives. Fathers, bring your children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Tell the truth. Flee fornication. Assemble with the saints. Preach the gospel. Endure hardness. Forgive. Provide for your own house. These are not placeholders until the “real” will of God arrives. They are the real will of God. A man chasing a calling while neglecting these things is not spiritual. He is disobedient with a suitcase.

When specific choices remain — this city or that, both lawful — use the means already studied. Word as judge. Prayer as surrender. Spirit as holy Interpreter of the Scriptures He wrote. Providence as the unseen hand. Counsel as safety. Peace as servant, not master. Then act in faith. “He that observeth the wind shall not sow” (Ecclesiastes 11:4). There is a piety that never plants because it is waiting for a forecast God has not promised to give.

“The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the LORD upholdeth him with his hand” (Psalm 37:23–24). Ordered steps. Delight. And even falling, not abandonment.

Micah 6:8 still reduces the fog: “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” He hath shewed thee. The complaint that God will not show His will often hides the fact that He already has, and the showing was more moral than geographical.

Thank the Father that He guides with His eye. Thank the Son that He is the Way. Thank the Spirit that He leads the sons of God and never contradicts the Word He inspired. Then rise and walk. You do not need the next fourteen years in advance. You need the next faithful step.

If you are still outside of Christ, the first direction God is giving you is not a career or a city. It is the gospel. Repent and believe. Then the rest of the path will be walked with a Shepherd, not as an orphan.

DMMC

9-20-26

The Early Church: Set Apart and Sent by the Holy Ghost

2026-10-04T00:30:00.000-04:00

"As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them." — Acts 13:2

After the risen Christ ascended, He did not leave His people without direction. He gave the Spirit, the apostolic Word, and a missionary church. Acts is not a catalog of techniques for getting personal messages. It is the record of the church’s founding, and it still teaches a guided people how to live together under that Lord.

Notice the setting. They were ministering to the Lord and fasting. Guidance for world mission was given in worship, not in restlessness. Barnabas and Saul were not sitting in a corner demanding a destiny. They were in the work when the next work was named.

The Spirit’s call was confirmed in the body. The church fasted again, prayed, laid hands on them, and sent them away. Private impressions were not treated as sufficient. That pattern rebukes two kinds of men: the man who will not be sent, and the man who will not be accountable.

When controversy arose about the Gentiles and the law, the apostles and elders gathered at Jerusalem. They heard testimony. They considered the Scriptures. They wrote, “For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us” (Acts 15:28). Word, Spirit, and gathered wisdom stood together. That sentence ought to be nailed to the door of every meeting where a handful of people are about to announce that God has told them something the church may not examine.

Even Paul submitted the gospel he preached to them which were of reputation in Jerusalem, lest he should run in vain (Galatians 2:2). Apostolic authority was not unaccountable impulse.

Read Acts as foundation, not as a hunting license for every modern claim of extra-biblical revelation. The canon is closed. The abiding lesson is that the Lord of the harvest still assigns work and still uses a praying people. You were saved into a body. First Corinthians 12 will not let you be a Christian by yourself.

Some of the Lord’s clearest direction will come as the church sets you apart, or as it lovingly withholds endorsement from a work that is not yours. A call that cannot survive the fasting, praying, and laying on of hands of a sound church should be made to wait. Urgency is not the same thing as anointing.

Today: Read Acts 13:1–5 and Acts 15:1–31. Pray for your pastors by name. Ask whether you are available to be separated unto a work, or only available to be consulted about your preferences.

DMMC

9-19-26

Jesus Christ: The Perfect Son Who Did the Father’s Will

2026-10-03T00:30:00.000-04:00

"For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me." — John 6:38

All lesser examples bow here. The Lord Jesus is not merely our pattern of guidance. He is our Savior, and only the saved can follow Him. You cannot treat the obedient Son as a model while refusing Him as a substitute. Yet once you belong to Him, the Gospels show a human life lived in perfect, glad submission to the Father.

“The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do” (John 5:19). He moved when His hour had come and refused when it had not. At twelve He must be about His Father’s business, and still He went down to Nazareth and was subject unto His parents. In Gethsemane He yielded the cup He naturally shrank from. There is no conflict in Him between the will He came to do and the sorrow He felt while doing it.

This silences two errors. First, that God’s will is always immediate comfort. The will of God sent the Son to the cross. If your definition of “peace” cannot survive Gethsemane, it is not a Christian definition. Second, that obedience is grim slavery. “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work” (John 4:34). Direction was His nourishment. He was the most alive man who ever walked the earth, because He lived every hour toward the Father.

Hebrews 10:7 puts the Psalter on His lips: “Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God.” The volume of the book — not a private impression — marked out His path. If the sinless Son measured His steps by what was written, the sinful church has no liberty to treat the Book as a backup option.

Because He obeyed unto death, there is a gospel. You do not earn guidance by matching His record. You receive a Shepherd because He laid down His life for the sheep. “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27). The written Word is how the church hears the living Christ this side of glory.

Look at the wilderness temptations. Bread without trust. Spectacle without suffering. Kingdoms without the cross. Each offer was a shortcut to something the Father had already promised to give the right way. The devil is still a student of shortcuts.

Today: Read John 6:32–40 and Matthew 26:36–46. Worship the obedient Son before you try to imitate Him. Then pray His prayer with honesty: not my will, but Thine.

DMMC

9-19-26

Jonah: When the Prophet Runs from the Word He Already Has

2026-10-02T00:30:00.000-04:00

"But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD." — Jonah 1:3

Not every crisis of guidance is a lack of information. Sometimes the Lord has already spoken, and we do not like the assignment. The most honest sentence some of us could write is not “I cannot find God’s will,” but “I have found it, and I am booking a fare the other way.”

Jonah is the patron saint of the informed rebel. “Arise, go to Nineveh.” The word was plain. He went down to Joppa, down into the ship, down into sleep, down into the sea. Sin always has a downward grammar. He had theology enough to confess that he feared the Lord which hath made the sea and the dry land. He still ran. Knowledge without surrender is not guidance. It is indictment.

God’s direction includes pursuit. He sent out a great wind. The lot fell upon Jonah. The fish was prepared. You cannot outrun the God who made the sea you are sailing. Psalm 139 asked the question Jonah tried to answer: whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me. The hand that leads can also fetch.

“Salvation is of the LORD” is a confession learned in the belly of a consequence. The Lord loves His servants too much to let them succeed at fleeing. That is not permission to test Him. It is hope for those already in the dark.

When Jonah finally preached, Nineveh repented and Jonah was angry. You can obey outwardly and still resent the heart of God. He knew God was gracious, merciful, slow to anger, of great kindness — and he did not want those things spent on Nineveh. If the Lord’s compassion offends you, your compass is broken. A man may be in the geographical will of God and far from His mind.

Many say they cannot find God’s will while postponing the will they already know: reconcile, leave a hidden sin, tell the truth, stay in a hard calling, go to a hard place. Light refused becomes darkness. You do not need a second word until you have obeyed the first.

The miracle is not only the fish. “And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time” (Jonah 3:1). God restores runaways. That is no license to flee. It is an open door back onto the road.

Today: Read all four chapters of Jonah aloud. Name the Tarshish you have booked. Cancel the ticket. If you are already in the storm, stop sleeping and confess.

DMMC

9-19-28

David: Directed While He Waited for the Throne

2026-10-01T00:30:00.000-04:00

"I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry." — Psalm 40:1

David was anointed long before he was crowned. Between the horn of oil and the throne lay caves, betrayals, and opportunities to seize what God had promised by the wrong means. The most important education of his life was not how to be king. It was how not to take the kingdom.

Twice he could have killed Saul. In the cave at Engedi his men whispered that the Lord had delivered the enemy into his hand. The circumstances looked like providence. David cut the skirt, and then his heart smote him. “The LORD forbid that I should do this thing unto my master, the LORD'S anointed” (1 Samuel 24:6). Not every open door in a cave is from God. Some are tests to see whether you love the promise more than the Promiser.

David inquired of the Lord again and again — at Keilah, after Ziklag burned. He did not treat yesterday’s instruction as today’s automatic answer. First Samuel 30:6–8 is worth hanging in every study: David was greatly distressed, the people spake of stoning him, he encouraged himself in the Lord, and then he inquired. Distress first. Courage in God second. Inquiry third. Action fourth. Many of us reverse the order and wonder why the road collapses.

He also sinned grievously. Bathsheba and Uriah warn us that a man after God’s own heart can still despise the commandment in a moment of lust and pride. Guidance is not a trophy from an early victory over Goliath. It is daily dependence. When Nathan said, “Thou art the man,” David did not blame the rooftop. He said, “I have sinned against the LORD.” Psalm 51 is what a guided man does after he has refused to be guided.

Waiting is not inactivity. David fought when he was sent. He shepherded. He wrote psalms. He refused Saul’s timetable. “Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for him… Fret not thyself in any wise to do evil” (Psalm 37). Many destroy themselves not by denying the promise, but by rushing the date. Saul’s spear looks efficient. It is still Saul’s spear.

Early usefulness is a particular temptation. David had already killed the giant and still would not take the throne. Your last victory does not entitle you to the next one by force.

Today: Read 1 Samuel 24 and Psalm 40. Ask where you are tempted to take by force what God has said He will give in time. If your hand is already on Saul’s robe, put the knife down.

DMMC

9-19-26

Moses: Led Through Wilderness, Not Around It

2026-09-30T00:30:00.000-04:00

"And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light." — Exodus 13:21

Israel did not wander because God lost the map. He refused the near road through Philistia, “lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt” (Exodus 13:17–18). He led them about, through the wilderness of the Red sea. The long road was not a mistake. It was mercy they could not yet recognize.

We want the shortest distance between conversion and ease. God wants a people who know His name in the desert. The pillar meant guidance can be unmistakable and still uncomfortable. Israel did not lack direction. They lacked contentment. Those are different problems.

Moses himself had to be led. Forty years in Pharaoh’s house. Forty years on the backside of the desert. Then the bush that burned and was not consumed. If you are in a hidden season — a small church, a plain job, a long obedience with little applause — it may not be delay. It may be curriculum.

When the people complained, the fault was not the pillar. The fault was the heart. Guidance does not remove the need for faith; it exposes whether faith is real. The same cloud that led them stood between them and Egypt at the sea. The Guide is also the Guard.

Numbers 9:15–23 ought not to be neglected. When the cloud was taken up, they journeyed. When it tarried — two days, a month, or a year — they journeyed not. The people of God do not negotiate the pace. Some of you are exhausted because you are traveling when the cloud is still. Some are stagnant because you have pitched when the cloud has lifted.

Deuteronomy 8 explains the wilderness after the fact: the Lord led thee these forty years to humble thee, to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, and to make thee know that man doth not live by bread only. If your present wilderness feels like abandonment, take that chapter into it.

Christ is greater than Moses. He is the bread from heaven, the smitten rock, the pillar we follow. Do not demand a highway through Philistia because the desert offends your sense of efficiency. The near road is not always the kind road.

Today: Read Exodus 13:17–22, Numbers 9:15–23, and Deuteronomy 8:1–10. Has the cloud lifted, or has it not? Stay without murmuring, or move without demanding to see the whole wilderness. Either way, refuse to remember Egypt as if it were home.

DMMC

9-18-28

Abraham: Called Out When the Destination Was Not Named

2026-09-29T00:30:00.000-04:00

"By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went." — Hebrews 11:8

Genesis 12 is the schoolhouse of guided faith. “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee.” The command was clear. The map was not. God named the leaving before He named the coordinates.

He often gives enough light for obedience, not enough light for control. Abraham had a promise, an altar, and a tent. He did not have a completed itinerary. Faith does not require omniscience. Faith requires a trustworthy Speaker. If you must see the whole road before you will take the first step, you are not asking for guidance. You are asking to stop needing it.

Guidance demanded separation — country, kindred, father’s house. Some paths cannot be walked while you remain entangled with the old life or the approval of people who do not fear God. Luke 14:26–27 is the same call in the mouth of Christ. Guidance will test your loves.

Abraham also stumbled, and the Holy Ghost does not hide it. Egypt. The lie about Sarah. Hagar. Guided people are not flawless people. They keep returning to the Word God has spoken. The covenant held because God held it. That is good news for every believer who has already made an Ishmael. The Lord still leads such a man. He does not bless the shortcut.

Romans 4 says Abraham staggered not at the promise through unbelief. Hebrews 11 says he sojourned as in a strange country, looking for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. The guided life is a pilgrim life. If you need this present world to feel like home before you will obey, you will not obey for long.

If you belong to Christ, you are Abraham’s spiritual seed (Galatians 3:29). The same God still calls men out. The call may not be geographic. It may be the leaving of a sin, a company, a lie, or a future you had already furnished in your mind.

Today: Read Genesis 12:1–9 and Hebrews 11:8–19. Write down what God has already said, and what you are demanding to know before you will move. Then ask which list belongs to a pilgrim.

DMMC

9-18-26

The Peace of God Is Confirmation, Not a Substitute for Truth

2026-09-28T00:30:00.000-04:00

"And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful." — Colossians 3:15

Many have been taught to “let peace be the umpire.” There is a biblical place for that sentence. There is also a ditch on either side of the road.

Colossians 3:15 does not float as a method for choosing a house or a spouse. It sits in a paragraph about putting off the old man, putting on mercy, letting the word of Christ dwell richly, and living as members of one body. The peace in view is not a private shiver of excitement. Even the phrase “in one body” warns us against treating peace as a purely individual sensation.

God can restrain a believer through holy unrest. But Jonah slept in the storm, which proves a quiet conscience is not always a clean one. The flesh can feel peaceful while walking toward disaster. Conversely, obedience can feel costly and still be right. Jesus sweat as it were great drops of blood in Gethsemane and was in the exact center of the Father’s will. If peace-as-feeling had been His compass that night, there would be no cross.

Do not baptize every calm feeling as divine approval, and do not treat every anxiety as a closed door. Anxiety may be unbelief. Restlessness may be conviction. Excitement may be the flesh. Dread may be the cost of discipleship.

When the Word is clear, obey whether you feel peaceful or not. You do not need peace to stop lying or to leave a hidden sin. You need obedience. When Scripture leaves legitimate liberty, a durable peace among a Scripture-shaped conscience, praying saints, and providence is often the Lord’s quiet confirmation. Peace is a witness. It is not the only witness, and it is not the judge.

“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee” (Isaiah 26:3). Peace follows a stayed mind, not a chased sensation. Philippians 4:7 says that peace shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. It is the garrison of a praying, thankful people — not a mystical green light that excuses you from the rest of the Bible.

Some have delayed obedience for years waiting to “feel peace.” You already have a word. The feeling you want is relief from the cost.

Today: Do not hunt a feeling. Read Isaiah 26 and Colossians 3. If the Word has already spoken, stop waiting for your nerves to agree.

DMMC

9-17-28

Godly Counsel: Safety in a Multitude of Counsellors

2026-09-27T00:30:00.000-04:00

"Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety." — Proverbs 11:14

The lone-ranger Christian is not a picture of faith. He is often a picture of pride. God has set believers in local churches under qualified pastors and among mature saints. The man who will not be advised is already announcing that he trusts his own heart, and Jeremiah 17:9 has answered that confidence.

“The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise” (Proverbs 12:15). “Without counsel purposes are disappointed: but in the multitude of counsellors they are established” (Proverbs 15:22). God frequently guides through people who know the Word and know you. That is not a downgrade from “hearing God.” It is one of the ordinary ways He has chosen to be heard.

Choose counselors carefully. The world will counsel you toward comfort. A carnal friend will baptize your flesh in spiritual language. Rehoboam forsook the old men who had stood before Solomon and took the counsel of the young men grown up with him. The kingdom split. Familiarity is not wisdom. Seek men and women who fear God, who will open the Bible in front of you, and who have nothing to gain from flattering you.

Pastors who watch for your soul are a gift (Hebrews 13:17). Older women who teach the younger (Titus 2), brethren who will wound you faithfully (Proverbs 27:6), a spouse who fears God — these are not obstacles to the Lord’s leading. They may be the leading.

If every mature Christian in your life is uneasy, do not dismiss them as unspiritual. Isolated people make dramatic decisions and then call the drama a cross. Often it is only the fruit of refusing to be known.

Bring counselors the actual facts, not the version that makes you look already decided. Ask them to show you Scripture. Then listen without defending yourself for the first ten minutes. If you cannot be quiet that long, you did not come for counsel. You came for applause.

There is a time to stand alone. The prophets did. Luther did. A man should be very slow to place himself in that company. Most of us are not being martyred by cowardly churches. Most of us are being protected by people who love us enough to say no.

Today: Identify two mature believers who will tell you the truth. If you do not have such people, that is danger, not independence. Join a Bible-preaching church and sit still long enough to be known.

DMMC

9-17-26

Providence: Closed Doors, Open Doors, and the Hand You Cannot See

2026-09-26T00:30:00.000-04:00

"A man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps." — Proverbs 16:9

God’s guidance is not only inward. He rules weather, kings, delays, illnesses, unexpected meetings, and the failure of plans we thought were wise. This is providence: His almighty power whereby He upholds and governs all things.

Joseph could not see the purpose of the pit or the prison. Years later he said, “Ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good… to save much people alive” (Genesis 50:20). The Lord was directing steps Joseph did not choose. That does not make the brothers innocent. It means their sin could not outrun the purpose of God.

Paul intended Asia and Bithynia. The Spirit suffered them not. Then came Macedonia, and the gospel entered Europe (Acts 16:6–10). Closed doors are not always the devil. Sometimes they are mercy. An open door is not always the Lord. Sometimes it is bait. First Corinthians 16:9 shows Paul recognizing a great door and many adversaries. Opportunity and opposition often travel together in the will of God.

Do not read every obstacle as Satan and every opening as God. The devil can produce opportunities. God can hedge up a path with thorns for your protection (Hosea 2:6). Some roads you could not find were a gift.

Nor should you sit motionless until a supernatural sign appears. Providence ordinarily meets a diligent believer already obeying known duty. Ruth gleaned, and her “hap” was to light on the field of Boaz (Ruth 2:3). She was working, not waiting for skywriting. The “hap” was the Lord’s. The gleaning was hers.

Romans 8:28 does not say all things are good. It says all things work together for good to them that love God — and the good in view is conformity to the image of His Son. Providence is not a promise that your preferred outcome arrives on schedule. It is a promise that the Father is never absent from the field.

This ought to make you humble and brave. Humble, because your plans are pencil marks. Brave, because you cannot fall out of His hand by a wrong turn He did not already know. You are responsible for obedience. God is responsible for outcome.

Today: List two closed doors from last year and two openings you did not arrange. Ask whether God may have been sparing you in the first and assigning you in the second. Then give thanks for the steps you did not plan.

DMMC

9-18-26