An Elephant in the Room Kind of Thing

 

Monday, August 14, 2023

For God did not spare even the angels who sinned.  He threw them into hell, in gloomy pits of darkness, where they are being held until the day of judgment.  And God did not spare the ancient world—except for Noah and the seven others in his family.  Noah warned the world of God’s righteous judgment.  So God protected Noah when he destroyed the world of ungodly people with a vast flood.  Later, God condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and turned them into heaps of ashes.  He made them an example of what will happen to ungodly people.  But God also rescued Lot out of Sodom because he was a righteous man who was sick of the shameful immorality of the wicked people around him.  Yes, Lot was a righteous man who was tormented in his soul by the wickedness he saw and heard day after day.  So you see, the Lord knows how to rescue godly people from their trials, even while keeping the wicked under punishment until the day of final judgment.  He is especially hard on those who follow their own twisted sexual desire, and who despise authority.  These people are proud and arrogant, daring even to scoff at supernatural beings without so much as trembling.  2 Peter 2:2-10

There is a very common, albeit empty-headed trend today, as in the days of Noah:

Whistling in the darkness – imagining that since God is only loving, there can never be judgment for sin.  Scripture, however, answers:

And just as each person is destined to die once and after that comes judgment, Hebrews 9:27

Denying the existence of Hell and judgment, in favor of universal redemption, is (at least) the work of fools, uninitiated as to the eternal consequences of sin!  Denying judgment places one squarely in the crosshairs, a target for Satan’s lies.  If the enemy cannot convince someone that there is no God, the next evil tactic will be to blunt the idea that God would punish sin.  Scripture replies:

For all people are mine to judge—both parents and children alike. And this is my rule:  The person who sins is the one who will die.  Ezekiel 18:4

The Scripture speaks to the spiritual argument, but (for those who lean to the skeptical side) there is also logic.  The logic of punishment speaks to the nature of God, including His love for all He has created.  There are abundant numbers of proofs from logic at this point, but for time’s sake, we consider just this one truth:

Equal, but Opposite

In physical dynamics there is for each action an equal, but opposite reaction.    UP requires (by definition) DOWN, HOT means there must be COLD, and RIGHTEOUSNESS demands we are capable of UNRIGHTEOUSNESS.  Evil and Good cannot coexist without the consequences of either.  For there to be a REWARD (Heaven), there must be RECOMPENSE (Hell).  Evil requires punishment in the same way righteousness deserves reward, or God cannot, in fact, be good.  The corollary then would be:  to avoid death, forgiveness must intervene, or, if God does not step-in, death in its eternal finality must ensue.

For You Today 

Billy Graham once said:  If the Bible is false, then nothing matters, and if the Bible is true, the Bible is all that matters.  And this is what Scripture said about the penalty of sin being death, and how God intervenes:

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.  Romans 6:23

Placing one’s faith in God, through Christ’s substitutionary death on the cross, is the only means of forgiveness for our sins.  It’s free for the repenting and asking!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,600 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library. 

Title Image:  1) Pixabay.com   2) Pixabay.com  (images combined)

Images without citation are in public domain.   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from NLT^©   

Living in Light

 

Tuesday, June 28, 2022

Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children.  Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ.  He loved us and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God.  Let there be no sexual immorality, impurity, or greed among you.  Such sins have no place among God’s people.  Obscene stories, foolish talk, and coarse jokes—these are not for you.  Instead, let there be thankfulness to God.  You can be sure that no immoral, impure, or greedy person will inherit the Kingdom of Christ and of God.  For a greedy person is an idolater, worshiping the things of this world.  Don’t be fooled by those who try to excuse these sins, for the anger of God will fall on all who disobey him.  Don’t participate in the things these people do.  For once you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord.  So live as people of light!  For this light within you produces only what is good and right and true.  Ephesians 5:1-9

Yesterday’s theme “Living in Darkness” made me eager to get to today’s “Living in Light”.  While there are all sorts of shades and degrees of both light and darkness, the character of a person’s life is dominated by one and plagued by the other.  Let me give you an extreme example. 

Dr Billy Graham’s life was lived not only in the light of TV cameras and the public eye, but also the light of Christ.  Adolph Hitler lived in the tormented and twisted darkness.  Light drives darkness away in the same way that darkness can hide the light.

Another “extreme” is assigning light or darkness to the motives of what people choose to do.  It is called judging, and a careful investigation of the meaning of that word, Biblically-speaking, reveals it applies to what’s in the heart of another human being.  And that is God’s purview, not man’s.

In the news currently is the issue of abortion.  Hearing from both sides of this bitter public debate, ongoing for more than half a century, only the naïveté of a child, or an evil agenda could say the issue is clear.  On the one hand, hearing from those who favor allowing abortion at any moment, the ideal of freedom over one’s choices appears preferable, than allowing 9 judges to legislate her choices, when they’ve never even met the woman, nor heard of her circumstances.  On the other hand, a choice to terminate a pregnancy is a choice to kill.  And there are laws against that, with which not many sane persons would disagree.  There are shadows of light and darness, no matter which way we see the dilemma.  And so, we are plagued by either light or darkness in our choices.

To live in the light, as Paul encourages, is not as simple as not telling a joke with coarse filthy language, or being foolish.  The chair I’m sitting on doesn’t do that, but it cannot be called Christian or Godly, simply because it doesn’t tell obscene jokes.  Neither can we be called “Christian” because one attends church.  Living in the light is allowing both heart and hand (allegiance and actions) to be governed by He who has created us.

In short, it is a matter of what we do with that freedom granted us.  Not the freedom of the U.S. Constitution, but the freedom with which Christ opened eternal life to all who will believe.  The true act of living in the light of Christ is the choice of surrendering that freedom in favor of serving He who died for us.

For You Today

Considering the upcoming celebration of our nation’s birth on July 4^th, what determines your highest allegiance…personal freedom, or light?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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For other posts on this topic:  Small Package - Big Message and Subway Sermon

[1] Images:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

After the Fire

 

Wednesday, December 1, 2021

Therefore, the Lord, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the Mighty One of Israel, says, “I will take revenge on my enemies and pay back my foes!  I will raise my fist against you.  I will melt you down and skim off your slag.  I will remove all your impurities.  Then I will give you good judges again and wise counselors like you used to have.  Then Jerusalem will again be called the Home of Justice and the Faithful City.”  Zion will be restored by justice; those who repent will be revived by righteousness.  But rebels and sinners will be completely destroyed, and those who desert the Lord will be consumed.  You will be ashamed of your idol worship in groves of sacred oaks.  You will blush because you worshiped in gardens dedicated to idols.  You will be like a great tree with withered leaves, like a garden without water.  The strongest among you will disappear like straw; their evil deeds will be the spark that sets it on fire.  They and their evil works will burn up together, and no one will be able to put out the fire.  Isaiah 1:24-31

When God starts a fire, no human being can end it before Heaven allows.  To the inhabitants of Jerusalem, Isaiah brought the quintessential Bad News/Good News message.  The moral/spiritual climate of the nation was past reforming; only transforming by the judgment of God would purge the slag from their government. 

That God does such things, moving in judgment on whole nations, is evident in nature; the parallels of God’s merciful hand straightening our crookedness are impossible to ignore. 

When God judges a nation for its sin, the true story (when recorded accurately) also shows the rebirth of justice.  A forest burns thousands of acres until the natural cycle is reborn…out of the ashes.  The forest regrows, in God’s time, and in God’s way.

Lately I’ve been thinking about that cycle. 

When I was a teenager in the early 1960’s my parents looked at the mania that followed the singing group from England, The Beattles, and they imagined the rapture and Apocalypse couldn’t be far behind.  In retrospect the only revolution John, Paul, George, and Ringo started was a fire that would bring deeper moral wickedness, which always accompanies the downfall of (supposedly) great societies. 

Founded on principles of freedom, and the opportunities a level playing field offers to all persons, America has always stood precariously close to the judgment fires God brings to burn off the slag of turpitude.  The great awakenings of American History with Jonathan Edwards, Finney, Whitefield, and, of late, Billy Graham, always held up the image of God’s fire, and the response saw American culture draw-back, like spiders threatened in their web.  In many ways our blessed beginnings have stood in memory sufficiently to avoid the cataclysmic shattering of America on the level of Greece, Rome, or the Third Reich.  But we aren’t (ever) that far removed from the imposing hand of God’s righteous judgment.

Should that judgment come during my lifetime, or after, is entirely a matter for God’s own choosing.  But the falling of judgment is as certain on sinfulness as the sun is hot, and floods sweep away whole landscapes.  Should America keep on the path it now slithers, Isaiah’s prophecy will be revisited from 7^th century BC Jerusalem to these days in Washington, D.C.  May God have mercy on us.

For You Today

No single person moves history (other than what happened at Calvary!).  But each of us has our own part in history.  Like Whitefield, Wesley, and the firebrand preachers of our history, there were men and women who helped…a little here, a lot there…and God gave the increase. 

May the increase be our shedding of the slag before God has to melt us down.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title and Other Images:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

For another post on this topic see Awakening and When the Light Dawns