Devouring the Sheep

Thursday, June 8, 2023

These people are as useless as dried-up springs or as mist blown away by the wind.  They are doomed to blackest darkness.  They brag about themselves with empty, foolish boasting.  With an appeal to twisted sexual desires, they lure back into sin those who have barely escaped from a lifestyle of deception.  They promise freedom, but they themselves are slaves of sin and corruption.  For you are a slave to whatever controls you.  And when people escape from the wickedness of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and then get tangled up and enslaved by sin again, they are worse off than before.  It would be better if they had never known the way to righteousness than to know it and then reject the command they were given to live a holy life.  They prove the truth of this proverb:  “A dog returns to its vomit.”  And another says, “A washed pig returns to the mud.” 

2 Peter 2:17-22

The backstory on this part of Peter’s letter is the Apostle’s warning about leading people away from God, and into a twisted lifestyle of sin.  It is proclaiming sin as holy, and is the upside-down version of what God desires for each of us.  Peter calls this kind of leader useless – slaves to their own sin; they lead others astray.  The metaphors, dog and pig, are always surrounded by filth.  Dogs cannot ignore what has come up from inside them, and pigs are hopelessly drawn to the mire.

A troublesome reality of the church’s marching orders is Jesus’ command to love.  I don’t disagree with the Lord, just saying:  we mess up what He’s saying.  Loving is not simply embracing everything and everybody.  If a person is a serial killer, we can love them; embracing their lifestyle is altogether a different matter.

Preacher, where did you come up with that notion?  Well, the seeming dichotomy of loving people, but rejecting their lifestyle is the example of God, Himself.  In many passages of Scripture we learn that God is the very essence of love.  Jesus proved that God so-loved everyone, he gave his life on Calvary’s cross.  On the flip-side of that are the many passages pointing to how this loving God will bring judgment for lifestyles that reject Him.  Listen to how another apostle, Paul describes God’s judgment for those who say they love God, but choose to prove just the opposite with their actions, their lifestyle of perversion:

Don’t you realize that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God?  Don’t fool yourselves.  Those who indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality, or are thieves, or greedy people, or drunkards, or are abusive, or cheat people—none of these will inherit the Kingdom of God.  1 Corinthians 6:9-10

Leadership (bishops, and a predominance of clergy) of the tribe in which I have served the past 18 years (United Methodist) have moved closer and closer to accepting homosexuality as a valid lifestyle.  It is proclaimed as loving.  In practice, however, it is elevating perverted sexual desire over self-discipline, and honoring God’s command.  Those who do so are “loving” neither the churches they are leading into disaster, nor the ones who practice their sinful ways.  They are merely heaping up judgment on their own heads.

For You Today 

Question for those second-guessing a church, now in full-blown division/schism:

Is it a right decision to stay “united” and, without words, affirm a sinful lifestyle in rebellion to God’s way…or is it better to stand with God’s Word and separate?

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

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There are about 2,500 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper explore some of these:   Living in Sodom  and  Legacy of Lies and Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fire and                                     He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands 

Title Image:  via Pixabay.com   Images without citation are in public domain.

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

Perfecting the ART of Chaos

Thursday, July 21, 2022

Hear the word of the Lord, O people of Israel!  The Lord has brought charges against you, saying:  “There is no faithfulness, no kindness, no knowledge of God in your land.  You make vows and break them; you kill and steal and commit adultery.  There is violence everywhere—one murder after another.  That is why your land is in mourning, and everyone is wasting away.  Even the wild animals, the birds of the sky, and the fish of the sea are disappearing.  “Don’t point your finger at someone else and try to pass the blame!  My complaint, you priests, is with you.  So you will stumble in broad daylight, and your false prophets will fall with you in the night.  And I will destroy Israel, your mother.  My people are being destroyed because they don’t know me.  Since you priests refuse to know me, I refuse to recognize you as my priests.  Since you have forgotten the laws of your God, I will forget to bless your children.  The more priests there are, the more they sin against me.  They have exchanged the glory of God for the shame of idols.  

Hosea 4:1-7

There can be little denying the words of Hosea, written nearly 2,800 years ago, which describe our generation in agonizingly accurate detail.  There is a lack of truth and integrity, a prevalence of violence, one murder after another.  Climate change is decimating entire species of animals, and, as the prophet lamented over the people, everyone is wasting away.  And then, Hosea, never a prophet of easy times or soft strokes, lays the blame right at the feet of those who won’t tell the truth…false preachers in the business of business as usual.  The uncompromising truth-teller bellows:  Don’t try to pass the blame!

There are Biblical texts that are hard to take, and this is one of them.  I wince each time Hosea opens his mouth, because the ones he says God is going to hold accountable are the false preachers.  I have a commitment to truth – Biblical truth, and personally sticking to telling the truth.  However committed I am to truth, I’m not always right, and sometimes convicted by not being brave enough to speak-up.  It would be untruthful to not accept that mantle of falling short of God’s Glory[1]

Hosea’s most explosive bombardment is the accusation of empty preaching, where priests (clergy) have refused to know God, and therefore have nothing about God to tell the people who are disintegrating without any connection to God.  When you have access to food, and refuse to share it with people who are starving, you’re guilty…there’s no one else to blame.

End of story.

For You Today

If you’re a person who identifies as a Jesus-follower, disciple, or simply a believer in God, you are also a preacher.  We are like beggars who have found bread, and bear a responsibility to tell other beggars where the stash is located.  In the absence of truth-telling, chaos is bound to reign.

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

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts on Rocky Road Devotions. 

To dig deeper into today’s topic or Scripture text:  Stumbling in Broad Daylight 

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

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[1]  See Romans 3:23 and Isaiah 45:21

Stumbling in Broad Daylight

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Hear the word of the Lord, O people of Israel!  The Lord has brought charges against you, saying:  “There is no faithfulness, no kindness, no knowledge of God in your land.  You make vows and break them; you kill and steal and commit adultery.  There is violence everywhere—one murder after another. 
That is why your land is in mourning, and everyone is wasting away.  Even the wild animals, the birds of the sky, and the fish of the sea are disappearing.   “Don’t point your finger at someone else and try to pass the blame!  My complaint, you priests, is with you.
So you will stumble in broad daylight, and your false prophets will fall with you in the night.  And I will destroy Israel, your mother.  My people are being destroyed because they don’t know me.   Hosea 4:1-6a (NLT)

It’s hard to think about something that hits close to home; it’s harder to write about it.  And it’s the pits to preach about it! 

And this is one of those texts.

Hosea announces God’s case against Israel for worshiping falsely – being a spiritual harlot; they don’t live faithfully or kindly.  Among the charges are lying, stealing, adultery, and a general unfaithfulness to being God’s people.

That’s bad enough; but then Hosea blames it on the preachers who should be pointing the way to God – showing every human being who God is and how to serve him. 

Instead, the preachers are heaping the guilt of sin on people so the offerings keep coming in.  The people don’t know God, and the priests (preachers) are keeping them in darkness because it’s good for business.

Reads like today’s headlines, doesn’t it?

Hosea completes God’s indictment against his people by characterizing the whole nation as “drunk”.  They stumble in broad daylight, and the false prophets will sink with them into the dark-hole-morass of character-disintegration, and it’s all first-degree sin – no one else to blame for the punishment!  And God himself would pull the trigger.

Wow!  Just, WOW!

So…what do you do when you stand before a judge and the charges are piled-up like a stack of LEGOS, teetering back and forth; everything is at stake and the building of your life’s history is about to crumble like the Twin Towers? 

And Almighty God is the judge?

Well, if you’re smart you throw yourself open to a guilty plea, appeal to the mercy of the court and await the judge’s call.  But history teaches us God’s people weren’t like that too often. More than not they stoned the messengers – God’s prophets – and then suffered the judgment; not so smart!

These Days

We have the same track record unfolding in 21^st century America.  And we’re prone to responding just as dimly as Israel did so often in her history. 

I believe we have a short-sighted perspective on the dangerous path our country is following.  America has only been a nation for 238 years.  Israel’s history has been unfolding for more than 3,000 years.  We should learn the lesson of Scriptural holiness.

I also believe that nothing short of a sweeping flood of revival in American culture will keep us from suffering the same kind of stumbling in broad daylight Hosea predicted.

It was not pretty in Israel, and it will not be pretty in America.

For You, Today…

Pray for America, our leaders and its government to turn to righteousness.

Pray for the spiritual leaders of our churches; like the priests in Hosea’s day, today there’s a generation at stake who are blind, stumbling in the darkness of broad daylight.  And too many preachers are simply humming lullabies in pulpits, when we should be sounding the alarm.  

God forgive us.

We need God’s revival in the land…and it begins in our hearts…each of us.