Is God sovereign over those who reject Him?

I’ve heard said that in our modern world, most people do not consider themselves sinners, but if idolatry is discussed, most will admit that they do rely on some sort of idol, but do not realize the seriousness of it.

Israel did it too. God said to them: “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god. Who is like me? Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and set it before me, since I appointed an ancient people. Let them declare what is to come, and what will happen. Fear not, nor be afraid; have I not told you from of old and declared it? And you are my witnesses! Is there a God besides me? There is no Rock; I know not any.” (Isaiah 44:6–8)

He also said this of idols, those who create them, and the outcome of doing so:

“All who fashion idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit. Their witnesses neither see nor know, that they may be put to shame. Who fashions a god or casts an idol that is profitable for nothing? Behold, all his companions shall be put to shame, and the craftsmen are only human. Let them all assemble, let them stand forth. They shall be terrified; they shall be put to shame together.” (Isaiah 44:9–11)

Almighty God will deal with idolatry, but He also explains the folly of it. He describes how a carpenter shapes a figure like a man to stand up in his house. He picks a regular tree from the forest for the idol, but also takes the same tree and chops it up for firewood to make himself warm, or to make bread or roast meat. But the other part he makes into a god, his idol, and prostrates to it in worships. He prays to it and says, “Deliver me, for you are my god!” (Isaiah 44:13–17)

The interesting part of this passage tells me that no matter the idolatry, Almighty God is still sovereign, even over these who say NO to Him and yes to their idols . . .

“They know not, nor do they discern, for he (God) has shut their eyes, so that they cannot see, and their hearts, so that they cannot understand. No one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, ‘Half of it I burned in the fire; I also baked bread on its coals; I roasted meat and have eaten. And shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?’ He feeds on ashes; a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, ‘Is there not a lie in my right hand?’” (Isaiah 44:18–20)

In our society, the idols are rarely figures made of wood or any other material. If asked, those who reject God will admit to relying on money, achievements, other people, drugs, or a host of other things with a few surprises in the mix. For me, the surprise is that God shuts their eyes to their folly. He blinds them so they cannot understand or admit that they are deluded and lying to themselves. Even those who admit they idolize this or rely on that do not see the folly of it.

Today’s devotional says a false view of God can be an idol. The writer cites those who think that human refusal makes those people more powerful than a God who can save anyone He chooses. He says this infers a weak god that is not the real God. However, this passage says something about the power of God that the devotional misses. If a person decides to worship an idol, and God shuts their mind and locks them into their sin, who then has the greater power?

^^^^^^^

Jesus, I am personally aware of Your ability to open blind eyes and set captives free. I’m also aware that You save all whom the Father gives to You. The mystery is that everyone would reject You; no one would seek You unless You pluck some out for Yourself. You say, “Whosoever will may come” knowing full well that no one will come unless You take off their blinkers. You give no reason for Your choices only to say You will have mercy on those You have mercy. As for those who refuse to believe, You cannot be blamed or called weak. According to this passage, idolaters remain under Your sovereign power.

Faith and 3-D printers

Have you heard about 3-D printers? They are capable of creating many things from plastic objects to human ears. But tell someone who had never seen or heard of even a regular printer. Would they believe it? Without seeing it work, do I believe it? 

Does the average person believe in immortality? Or do most limit themselves to this tiny blip of time on the scale of history? Are eighty plus or minus years all there is? If so, then “eat, drink, for tomorrow we die” makes sense. Get the best out of it, or take a more a noble aim, give the best you have. In either case, there is no need for Jesus Christ or a changed heart for when you die, you die.

I read part of a theological paper yesterday and underlined many statements. One of them is that people don’t know God and don’t know that they don’t know. How can that be? Romans 1 says that what can be known about God is plain because God has revealed it. But then it goes on to say that what was known about Him was not honored. Instead of acknowledging God and being thankful, people deny Him and prefer lesser gods. In doing that, their “hearts are darkened” and they become fools. 

That paper is about the need of our hearts for God to reveal Himself to us. We have dark hearts. Sin blinds us to reality. Even as a Christian, I can sin and be oblivious to what I am doing. My understanding of God depends totally on God’s revelation of Himself. Unless He sheds light into my darkness, I cannot see and will live as my own blindness dictates.

None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. (1 Corinthians 2:8)

Most people today do not give a thought to immortality. All passion and enthusiasm goes into temporary and material things with a measure of certainty that this is all there is and they are doing quite fine without God. Given normal opportunities, they will manage. This talk of sin and a changed heart is a waste of time, even a grand and yet foolish daydream. 

I sometimes feel like that. I know Christ, but also know how my heart is prone to wander from Him. I know I cannot take care of myself. That darkness swirls around me and I find myself in a continual battle. My soul has an enemy that wants to pull me from trusting Jesus and throw me into the same darkness that engulfs the world in sin and godlessness. This enemy dangles before me the same delights that keep others from God. Thankfully, God also holds before me truth that even my frail logic cannot deny.

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other . . . . (Matthew 6:19–24)

This passage goes on to talk about money, but that is not the only treasure that this life offers. If I wanted to live for today and not for eternity, I could spend my time and energies in many ways, which in the long run have no significance except to have kept me from eternal pursuits. 

What really matters in this life? The writer of Ecclesiastes went through every possibility and came to this conclusion . . .  

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil. (Ecclesiastes 12:13–14)

This means that all the stuff that I do will be evaluated, including those things done in dark ignorance that I did not even realize I was doing or see how it was wrong. The secret things will be exposed, both good and evil. It makes sense to me to let God expose them now so that I might be a blessing to others with the good, and that I might confess and forsake the evil. God says that if I do that, He will forgive and cleanse me (1 John 1:9).

In my sense of being needy, of being spiritual helpless without God, I have a hard time understanding that others cannot see that about their own lives. But blindness hits us all, and I must remember about those 3-D printers. Most people in the world do not know they exist, and if they did hear of them, they would not believe it. Even if they could see one working, they would not commit themselves to relying on such a machine. 

Because of 3-D printers, I can get a handle on unbelief. Because of the sin in my own life, I can grasp the idea that no one can save their own self. We all fall short. Our only hope is in God who reveals truth and God who sent a Savior. Most of us don’t need a 3-D printer, but we all need Jesus. 

The blind shall see . . .

Even though my eye doctor says my eyes are healthy and I don’t need new glasses, my vision is sometimes fuzzy. Floaters, fatigue and blurry eyes frighten me because I use them so much. However, even if I could not see at all, I know that spiritual blindness is worse than physical blindness. People without eyes at least know that they cannot see.

From age thirteen to twenty-nine, I read the Bible daily without understanding one word. Oh, I knew what the words themselves meant, like ‘kingdom’ and ‘faith’ but had no idea what God was saying in this book that my mother also read every day. Scripture didn’t make sense and had no impact on my life. I did whatever I thought I should, with no understanding of the ways of God or any inclination to obey Him. How can anyone obey gibberish?

Now I know that I was blind as the proverbial bat, without even a bat’s radar that keeps it from running into things. Not only that, I had no clue about the problem of spiritual blindness or that it was my problem.

I will never forget the day that the lights came on. I was sitting in my living room reading a book about reincarnation. I’d been looking for the answer to a question: What happens to the energy of my life when I die? My father told me energy is not created or destroyed, just changed to a different form. Was this true? If it was, was reincarnation the answer?

That day, in that book, I found a verse from the Bible. I can’t remember which verse it was, perhaps a verse I’d read before, but it was God’s light switch. It seemed the room was suddenly flooded with light. In one glorious moment, I understood that Jesus was God in the flesh and that He came to die for my sin and to forgive me. God “commanded light to shine out of darkness” and shone that light in my heart “to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

Walking in the light is vastly different from going through life with my eyes shut. From that day, I began to see new paths and realized that my old ways were bent and twisted. God showed me how to get through the maze and walk with awareness. He did exactly what He promised in Isaiah 42:16:

I will bring the blind by a way they did not know; I will lead them in paths they have not known. I will make darkness light before them, and crooked places straight. These things I will do for them, and not forsake them.

When I read this verse today, I rejoice in the past power and faithfulness of God. He saw my blindness and how unaware I was of the spiritual world around me. He opened my eyes and let me see, then took my hand to help me walk a new way. I still make mistakes because I let go of His hand, but these are never His fault. He is true to His Word.

I also rejoice in the promise in this verse for the future. As I get older, more forgetful, less steady on my feet and less sure of my ability to make my way, He says that He will guide me just as He has already done, and that He will never forsake me. Psalm 73:26 says, “My heart and my flesh (and even my eyes) may fail; but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”

This is a good way to start the day—remembering the great goodness of God in my past experience and knowing that He will keep on caring for me in my future.

They totally miss it

Monday this week one of my sister’s grandchildren was hit by a truck as he waited for the school bus. After an ambulance ride to a children’s hospital in a nearby city, doctors treated him for a concussion and a broken bone in his foot. He is going to recover.

Before the ambulance came, and while anxious bystanders were trying to keep him talking, this spiritually-minded little boy was softly singing “Jesus loves me.” After arriving home from the hospital yesterday, he does not recall doing that. My sister told him it was because he was “in the spirit” and the Lord was using his own voice to encourage him.

She talked with my brother, the one I wrote about yesterday who belongs to a large cult. She shared with him about this little fellow singing while in great pain as he waited for the ambulance. My brother said, “He is very well trained.”

Both my sister and I shook our heads, but we wanted to shake him. Our brother has no clue about how the Holy Spirit works, and no idea of the grace of God that produces spiritual fruit, even singing, in a young boy who believes in Jesus Christ. We are deeply saddened by our brother’s response; he is denying the power of God.

I’d called him on Monday to let him know about the accident. As we talked, he proudly told me about his grandson who had recently performed his first ‘religious’ service at their assembly. This little boy had to recite Scripture for five minutes. My brother said, “He was really nervous, but he did it flawlessly, without one mistake. By the time he is fifteen, he is going to be simply outstanding.”

As my brother talked, I realized that this child was taught by rote how to ‘perform’ in front of their congregation. What a contrast compared to the little one who spontaneously declared the love of God while prone on the side of the road waiting for an ambulance. One of the two was “well-trained” but my brother totally missed which one.

The Bible (Jude 3-4) tells Christians to “contend earnestly for the faith” because “certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”

When I read that verse I couldn’t help but think about my brother’s total ignorance of the grace of God. Such blindness burdens me, but I’m even more dismayed that the work of God is so grossly misunderstood and misrepresented. Without the power of the Holy Spirit in his life, my brother gives no glory to God and has no power over sin. They discipline themselves to be ‘moral’ but it is not from God. They can be ‘good’ people, but without Jesus they cannot be godly people.

This morning’s newspaper had an interesting article about faithfulness in marriage. It used statistics to show that conservative believers are the least likely to cheat on their spouses. Then it said this, “Non-traditional conservative groups such as Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses display no less likelihood of cheating than people with no religious affiliation.”

The scholar whose work is outlined in that newspaper article said of the above statistical result, “That was a bit surprising, considering you think of these conservative religious groups as having stricter teachings about sexuality.”

I’m not surprised. This statistic backs up what the Bible teaches; those without Jesus have no spiritual power. They might claim to be “Christian” but their teachings are far from biblical and they have “turned the grace of God” into something else.

No matter what form it takes, what rules they follow, or how strictly they enforce their rules, those without the Holy Spirit cannot conquer sin by with legislation or willpower. The Israelites of the Old Testament are strong examples. Their rules were written on stone by God Himself, but no matter how often He reinforced His commands or rebuked and chastened them for disobedience, they still broke them all.

My heart is heavy for my brother and his family. In fear of judgment they submitted themselves to brainwashing by rote teaching from ungodly and false teachers—and have now become false teachers themselves. They are “marked out for this condemnation” and are therefore in grave danger.

"The Secret" --- Phooey!

Oprah is promoting a book and a philosophy that is called “the secret” but it is no secret at all. The idea is that whatever a person thinks and focuses on, that will become true in their lives. If you think positive, positive things will happen. If not, you could get sick, become poor, even die.

This supposedly new philosophy is similar to psycho-cybernetics, a notion that my husband used to believe before we got married. It’s something like ‘the power of positive thinking’ promoted by a church leader a few years before that. But it isn’t the change of name or the different twist that makes this notion not a secret; it is the fact that the human heart has always wanted this much control over their own lives.

I normally do not watch Oprah’s show but happened to catch the first one promoting this idea. A Christian woman from the audience expressed her concerns, and was told that all great Bible leaders thought this way. I was so indignant that I wanted to call the show and tell them how wrong they were. If this so-called “power of attraction” was true, then the only Person who never sinned or thought a bad thought would not have “attracted violence” and been killed at the hands of those who hated Him!

The minds of men do not control the world. The Bible makes that totally clear. Yes, we are supposed to think rightly, have pure thoughts, and so on, but even that we cannot do unless empowered by the Holy Spirit. We are full of selfishness, and determined to go our own way and live our own lives without the help of God, and this so-called ‘secret’ is just another way of doing it.

Christians do have a secret though. We have a ‘hidden’ ability to bear spiritual fruit and to be effective in the world, but it is not through the power of our minds. God gives us the power of the Holy Spirit, who lives in us. That power is available, but not at our command, and not when we feel or want to be strong and invincible. It is only there when we are weak and unable, humbly and totally depending on the Lord. Our strength is “perfected in weakness” not in positive thinking. That is an amazing secret, and not at all easy to live out.

2 Corinthians 4 call the Holy Spirit a treasure, and says, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.”

The problem is the earthen vessel. Christians fight that tendency to do it ourselves, to live without humble dependence on God, to be our own persons. But 2 Corinthians 4 goes on to tell how that treasure is revealed or demonstrated in us. He says, “We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed—always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.”

There is no mention that we live powerful Christian lives through determination, or focusing on the desired results, or through our own strength. The life of Christ stays hidden when we try that. It only shines through us when we “die” to self-effort and yield to God, just as Jesus did when He was taken to the cross at the hands of sinful men. While His death and resurrection have far larger ramifications, they also picture how we must live—dying to all human wisdom and self-effort. That ‘death’ gets us out of the way so God can manifest the life of His son in our human bodies, our earthen vessels.

Human beings have always wanted power. It goes back to Eden when Satan tempted Eve with the idea that she could be “like God” if she ate the forbidden fruit. “The secret” is the same old line: “You can control your life (be like God) without having to rely on God. Just buy the book, do what it says, and blah, blah, blah.”

The god of this age is mentioned earlier in this passage from 2 Corinthians. It says that he blinds the minds of those who do not believe in Christ, preventing “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” from shining on them so they cannot understand and believe the truth. Other Scripture says that when so blinded, these folks will not only fail to turn to God, they will easily be duped by false teaching, falling for lies and missing the truth.

As far as ‘the secret’ goes, it is a secret only to those who do not know the Word of God. To us who do, it is just another spin on the same old baloney that Satan has been trying to feed us for thousands of years. Phooey!