Thursday, March 26, 2020

What the Angel Said


Thursday, March 26, 2020

From the depths of despair, O Lord, I call for your help.  Hear my cry, O Lord.  Pay attention to my prayer.  Lord, if you kept a record of our sins, who, O Lord, could ever survive?  But you offer forgiveness, that we might learn to fear you.  I am counting on the Lord; yes, I am counting on him.  I have put my hope in his word.                             Psalm 130:1-5

Then I looked and saw a hand reaching out to me.  It held a scroll, which he unrolled.  And I saw that both sides were covered with funeral songs, words of sorrow, and pronouncements of doom.  Ezekiel 2:9-10

In John’s meeting with the angel the message is even more foreboding; for him, once the sweet-as-honey scroll is eaten, it turns his stomach sour:

[the angel] said, “There will be no more delay.  When the seventh angel blows his trumpet, God’s mysterious plan will be fulfilled.  It will happen just as he announced it to his servants the prophets.”  Revelation 10:6b-7

Both the apostle and prophet speak of God’s judgment.  And the Psalm for today connects each of us with that coming judgment; our dilemma is that every person is accountable for our behavior before Almighty God:

Lord, if you kept a record of our sins, who, O Lord, could ever survive?  Psalm 130:3

Who could ever survive God’s judgment?  It’s a very good question; it’s a question with only one answer – nobody survives the holiness CT scan.  
Frankly, if you see a guy on the street corner holding a sign that says REPENT, what do you think; what do you do?  For most of us, you almost don’t see the guy or his sign.  In complacency we shed messages like that and move along to the dental appointment or trip to the mall.  But Isaiah, the Old Testament prophet, as well as Paul, the New Testament apostle, tell us God scans the entirety of our lives, including what we do, say, or even think[1].  Every attitude and action of rebellion against God’s will is written on those scrolls.  Every time God brings a message across the screen of our lives, and we fail to remember, like the Psalmist remembered and repented, that we are imperfect creatures, not perfect Creator, another entry shows up in the log.  No one survives such scrutiny!
But the Psalmist holds the one thread of hope in all that; God offers forgiveness!
Lenten season is a time for that hope’s renewal, a time to remember who we are, and that to which we’re called to be – children of the Most High God.  It is a time to be penitent and be renewed, trusting in God’s promise to save those who reject evil in all its forms, turning to the Christ of the cross in faith.
Repentance is not a popular pill to swallow.  It tastes bitter and goes against the grain of our sin nature to confess we are not God.  But true repentance is unlike Ezekiel and John’s little scrolls – honey to the taste, but when it was all settled into the fabric of a man’s being, it turned their whole existence sour!  True repentance may be a little bitter going down, but it opens up an eternity of health lived in sweet reunion with God.
For You Today
Like addictions of any kind, it is the sweet (but false) promise of the next dose of our sins that keep pride in the way of our repenting, and having a joyful, forgiven, free-to-love and serve life.  Sweet and sour are both on the menu; as always, which one will we choose?
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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Title Image:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
For another post on Romans 3:  see A Light Shines in My Heart or The Scroll


[1] See Isaiah 53:6 and Romans 3:10

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