Saved from…

But this people has a stubborn and rebellious heart; they have turned aside and gone away. They do not say in their hearts, ‘Let us fear the Lord our God, who gives the rain in its season, the autumn rain and the spring rain, and keeps for us the weeks appointed for the harvest.’ Your iniquities have turned these away, and your sins have kept good from you. For wicked men are found among my people; they lurk like fowlers lying in wait. They set a trap; they catch men. Like a cage full of birds, their houses are full of deceit; therefore they have become great and rich; they have grown fat and sleek. They know no bounds in deeds of evil; they judge not with justice the cause of the fatherless, to make it prosper, and they do not defend the rights of the needy. Shall I not punish them for these things? declares the Lord, and shall I not avenge myself on a nation such as this?” An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land: the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule at their direction; my people love to have it so, but what will you do when the end comes? Flee for safety, O people of Benjamin, from the midst of Jerusalem! Blow the trumpet in Tekoa, and raise a signal on Beth-haccherem, for disaster looms out of the north, and great destruction. (Jeremiah 5:23–6:1)

A pastor says we can choose whatever we want, but we cannot choose the consequences. This remark was made to encourage listeners to choose faith in Jesus Christ because sitting on the fence is the same as saying NO to Him and the consequences for doing that are eternal condemnation.

The OT prophets wrote the same message to those with that same attitude and God said, “Shall I not punish them for these things?” He had every right to do so because His law says, “The soul that sins shall die” with death meaning separation from God forever. Very likely this is the consequence referred to by His statement, “But what will you do when the end comes?” Yet the above passage speaks of other consequences, such as withholding rain and other disasters in their lives.

Not all current affairs are the result of the sins of those who suffer in this life, but that final separation from God is certain for those who say NO to Jesus Christ. That is the bad news. The good news is:

Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:6)

And for those who take that seriously, the Word of God says: 

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. (Romans 8:1)

And this is very good news!

Jesus, You don’t promise comfort and a perfect life here as a consequence, but You do promise an abundant life, and the peace that passes understanding, and the assurance of eternal life. You walk with me and hear my prayers. Death is no longer a dreaded separation but a changed life now and assurance of eternity with You. 

Consequences for going my own way . . .

Deuteronomy 12; Psalms 97–98; Isaiah 40; Revelation 9

This morning my little prayer book gave me a request that God would enable me to see this world as He sees it. I prayed this, not really expecting any great vision. However, the Scripture readings for today did offer a thought that deeply saddens my heart. This thought is connected to a promise the Lord made to Abraham.

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1–3)

In the plan of God, this promise extended to all who believe God as Abraham believed, including the Christian church. In other words, God blesses those who bless His people but those who dishonor God’s people put themselves in harm’s way.

However, we are also responsible to listen to God and obey Him, not defy Him by doing whatever we think is right:

“You shall not do according to all that we are doing here today, everyone doing whatever is right in his own eyes, for you have not as yet come to the rest and to the inheritance that the Lord your God is giving you. (Deuteronomy 12:8–9, italics mine)

Doing whatever we think is right is the human problem the Bible calls sin. As the prophet Isaiah says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way” and it is for this that Christ died and “the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:6)

Today this “turning our own way” usually does not involve making wood or metal idols, but back then it did. God condemned this, even ridiculed it. How can a man-made figure do anything? It cannot see or hear or understand as He can. Idols are nothing, yet the New Testament says there is a real danger in idolatry because demonic powers are involved in it.

Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. (1 Corinthians 10:18–21)

The connection is this: idol worship makes people vulnerable to evil powers. The connection is obvious to me, not only by connecting the dots in the Bible but by my experience. When I insist on going my own thing, I’ve opened my mind to the suggestions of evil and will do things that God hates. Some of such sin is subtle yet not always. Consider what it did to the nations in the OT:

“When the Lord your God cuts off before you the nations whom you go in to dispossess, and you dispossess them and dwell in their land, take care that you be not ensnared to follow them, after they have been destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire about their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods?—that I also may do the same.’ You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the Lord hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods. (Deuteronomy 12:29–31)

The bottom line in this passage? Idol worshipers were killing their children because demonic forces were controlling their lives. Before I protest that this does not happen today, what about those who sell their children into the sex trade or those who abort them because having a child would interfere with doing their own thing?

Connecting these thoughts puts the people who honor God and God’s people into a line of blessing, but those who dishonor God and what is right have the power of evil on their side, a power that can lead to death and destruction. This is a profound vision of today’s world and gets Christians persecuted because no one wants to think that their choices to go their own way will result in a slide toward evil and destruction. This is not God’s wrath (yet) as much as the consequences of disobedience. It goes takes us into bad stuff.

APPLY: Weep. Ask God to show His people the danger of doing our own thing, both to ourselves and our nation. Also, seek His face and determine to go His way, not my own, in every area of life. Not only that, how can I show His great mercy and grace to those caught in this destructive trap?

 

 

 

 

Accusing or excusing?

Genesis 30; Esther 6; Mark 1; Romans 1

Today’s readings make interesting connections. In Genesis, Jacob came up with a scheme. For his wages, he asked his father-in-law for the odd colored sheep. Laban removed them all from his flocks and okayed the plan thinking Jacob would not find any of those in his herd. However . . .

Whenever the stronger of the flock were breeding, Jacob would lay the sticks in the troughs before the eyes of the flock, that they might breed among the sticks, but for the feebler of the flock he would not lay them there. So the feebler would be Laban’s, and the stronger Jacob’s. Thus the man increased greatly and had large flocks, female servants and male servants, and camels and donkeys. (Genesis 30:41–43)

Obviously looking at odd-colored sticks would not produce odd-colored lambs, but God’s had was in this result. He promised to bless Jacob and even though Laban tried to foil the plan and Jacob was a schemer and tried to gain by his own ingenuity and superstitions, God was in charge.

The same power of God shows up in Esther’s story. Haman had a plan too but God overrules the schemes of humans. He moves events and circumstances for His good pleasure. Haman’s pagan advisers and his pagan wife unknowingly affirmed that neither Haman nor any other human can possibly stand against God’s chosen people, the Jewish nation. Even though God’s people often disobeyed Him, even though they were often not spiritually or even physically where God wanted them to be, deliverance would come. God would so work in history that He would be vindicated and His people delivered.

God uses the schemes of these and other rebels for His purposes. Yet in all our disobedience and resistance to God we are accountable for our actions. This comes out in the first chapter of Romans.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools. (Romans 1:18–22)

Sin has consequences. No matter how clever we think we are, God rules. In this description, God lets those who dishonor Him go their own way and suffer the consequences. Without going into the details, this verse describes one of the results of refusing to honor God:

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. (Romans 1:26)

Lately I’ve been concerned, even annoyed at the way some people talk about and consider these “dishonorable passions” between both genders to be the worst sin ever. I agree that this behavior is sin, but everyone sins. It seems self-righteous to consider the sin of others (sin that I don’t commit) gives me the right to look down my nose at them.

This morning, I noticed that this is not the only consequence for those whom God has given up because of their rejection of Him . . .

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. (Romans 1:28–32)

Not all of this is about sexual sin. Some of it is other behavior that many would consider disgusting and terribly wrong, like murder, deceit, maliciousness, hating God, inventing evil and heartlessness, yet a lot of people who would condemn these things are engaged in the other sin on this list, such as strife, gossip, slander, insolence, pride, disobedient to parents, faithlessness and ruthlessness. The current acceptance of the sin spoken of in verses 26-28 is no different than the current acceptance of the rest of the list. It shows up in church spats, gossip, haughtiness and even being ruthless in business.

Yes, God can use my foolish and sinful behavior but He isn’t pleased with my disobedience or any thoughts of it being okay. May He convict us deeply to be responsible and accountable to Him, without scheming against others and without judging that their sin is worse than mine.

Yeah, but . . .

My dad used a couple of expressions to describe people. He called some “can’t men” — because they were negative about trying new or difficult things. The other was also for negative people who always made excuses. He called them “yeah, buts” — because they agreed about good ideas but always had a reason for rejecting them.

In the Bible, the word “but” is negative in some passages, yet it is more often positive, a transition between what used to be but now is — describing the way sin once held me in its grasp but next telling I am now set free from its enslavement.

I realize my need to be alert, constantly and consistently listening to God and yielding to Him. This week I’ve been deeply aware of sin’s power and my own weaknesses. Reminders of past sins can yank me back. I know that I’m not taking forgiveness for granted, yet some do that. In any case, this passage from Romans is both a warning to not slide backwards and an encouragement to walk in the freedom of salvation by grace through faith.

What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?

This is not saying my obedience earns righteousness — rather it produces the righteousness of Christ that has already been given to me. I imagine it as a tool handed to a slave. The Master says, “Here, use this. Live by it. It is your new life.” I have the choice of doing just that or trying to accomplish this life by ignoring the means given to me by God and living without Him. Not only is that attitude sinful, so are the results. Sometimes they look good on the outside, but are self-motivated, self-accomplished and self-centered. God says there is another way . . .

But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.

Instead of thinking old thoughts and doing things in my old ways and in my own strength, my Lord and Master makes it possible to say yes to His way. That old way of thinking and acting is not obedience to God at all; it is obedience to sin and lawlessness, leading me deeper into more of the same. Yet obeying God leads to right living, drawing me deeper into a life that is set apart for God. I have that life handed to me as a gift. It is important to use it, to live by it.

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.

This is negative motivation. It tells me the works of the flesh are fruitless, no peace and joy, no eternal reward. Eventually I will be ashamed of them — which is totally true. If I persist, my spiritual life with God becomes deader and deader. Persisting in sin could even lead to physical death if God determined my life was a terrible hindrance to the well-being and advance of His kingdom.

But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, BUT the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:15–23)

This “BUT” is the kicker. But now I am set free from that old life and can live a life set apart for God. I am not trapped into thinking I’ve only one choice, or into picking up the wrong stuff for the task of living. Those ways are costly. Freedom is living by the gift of eternal life, not by any of the old ways, but by the life of Jesus Christ, a life that is eternal, that pleases God and blesses others.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Lord Jesus, Your life not only blesses others but blesses me with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. You also bless me with forgiveness each time I slip and each time I make foolish choices. I am fully aware that I cannot save myself nor fight sin in my own power. Your faithfulness and gracious mercy are overwhelming — an awesome inclusion in that free gift of life eternal.

Today’s thankful list . . .

Sweet time of worship with God’s family.

Encouraging visit with a young woman who knows how to live for Christ.

Sunshine after rain.

Frig full of food so I will not need to cook giving time to help a friend pack to move.

Not getting upset that it took hours to scan a hard-copy document to .pdf, then to Word so I could edit and store it digitally, and that I likely need better software.

Peace in my heart.