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^©   

Wakeup Call

 

Wednesday, June 1, 2022

After seven days the Lord gave me a message.  He said, “Son of man, I have appointed you as a watchman for Israel.  Whenever you receive a message from me, warn people immediately.  If I warn the wicked, saying, ‘You are under the penalty of death,’ but you fail to deliver the warning, they will die in their sins.  And I will hold you responsible for their deaths.  If you warn them and they refuse to repent and keep on sinning, they will die in their sins.  But you will have saved yourself because you obeyed me.  “If righteous people turn away from their righteous behavior and ignore the obstacles I put in their way, they will die.  And if you do not warn them, they will die in their sins.  None of their righteous acts will be remembered, and I will hold you responsible for their deaths.  But if you warn righteous people not to sin and they listen to you and do not sin, they will live, and you will have saved yourself, too.”                Ezekiel 3:16-21

I’m not sure there is anything quite so annoying as the sound of an alarm clock at 5am.  It interrupts dreams, starts the dog barking, and pumps that early morning awareness that the workday beckons, and I’m still tired.  It’s a disturbance of the peace, and I’m not comfortable with that.

Ezekiel was Israel’s early morning alarm clock, the watchman for God’s signal that there was work to do, righteousness that was failing, responsibilities ignored, and the devil to pay for defying God’s holiness.  Ezekiel’s voice may have been the most annoying, irksome, and interfering sound they could hear.  But alarms are not supposed to be comfortable…you don’t want to sleep through it! 

It's impossible to read any of the prophets and not get a little uncomfortable, that is, if you’ve got an ounce of sense in your body.  The message is always disconcerting, particularly for those who have been either fighting God, or trying to ignore Him.  The duty of a prophet/watchman is to be a harbinger of judgment.  Most people don’t want to hear that; they’d rather concentrate on taking that vacation to Disney.  But judgment is at the end of things, just as surely as that sign-then-drive contract at the car dealership means you’ll be paying big time at the end of the month. 

Scripture warns of such, both death, and God’s judgment following death:

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

For we must all stand before Christ to be judged. We will each receive whatever we deserve for the good or evil we have done in this earthly body.  2 Corinthians 5:10

But the sound of voices like Ezekiel, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and all the others, can also be reassuring.  The reminder of judgment also signals the lovingkindness of God, His forgiveness just waiting for us to return to Him.  As a promise, this rates better than five-stars on a hotel at Disney or the Riviera – it’s a pathway right to the throne room in Heaven.

For You Today

The next time your pastor preaches on either judgment or Heaven, remember that BOTH are always present.  If you want one, and not the other, the choice is always available.

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

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

When Time Stops and Judgment Doesn't

 

Tuesday, June 8, 2021

When the thousand years come to an end, Satan will be let out of his prison.  He will go out to deceive the nations—called Gog and Magog—in every corner of the earth.  He will gather them together for battle—a mighty army, as numberless as sand along the seashore.  And I saw them as they went up on the broad plain of the earth and surrounded God’s people and the beloved city.  But fire from heaven came down on the attacking armies and consumed them.  Then the devil, who had deceived them, was thrown into the fiery lake of burning sulfur, joining the beast and the false prophet.  There they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.  And I saw a great white throne and the one sitting on it.  The earth and sky fled from his presence, but they found no place to hide.  I saw the dead, both great and small, standing before God’s throne.  And the books were opened, including the Book of Life.  And the dead were judged according to what they had done, as recorded in the books.  The sea gave up its dead, and death and the grave gave up their dead.  And all were judged according to their deeds.  Then death and the grave were thrown into the lake of fire.  This lake of fire is the second death.  And anyone whose name was not found recorded in the Book of Life was thrown into the lake of fire.  Revelation 20:7-15

The apocalyptic prophecy of God, written in this final book of God’s Word, declares the eventual disposition of evil…forever punishment in the lake of fire, a buring torment, an image that ought to  produce jaw-dropping awe.  

For a human context I immediately recall Sadaam Hussein, a despotic madman visiting unchecked decades of evil on his own people, murder, arrogant imposition of poverty, the work of a man gone insane with absolute power.  Pursued by an army, Sadaam was ferreted out of a hole in the ground, and hanged.

Where this analogy breaks-down is the aftermath.  Sadaam is gone, his body buried in 2006 in a grave not far from where he was born in Tikrit.  In a hundred years most every work of his hand on this earth will be forgotten.  But what of his soul?  What of that part of his being, created in the image of God, which still exists.  And what is that like now?  And what will it be in 100, 1000, or 10-billion years?

The answer is fraught with some grey area, certainly, but God does not leave us without understanding that evil is punished, not simply for a brief season; it is eternal.  And the moment the word “eternal” is uttered, the game clock shatters, stopped by Divine fiat. 

In much the same way as those who live in the grace of God also mirror the image of their Creator, those who choose to reject God live in the image of the chief rejector, Lucifer.  And the fate that awaits their judgment is a shout from Heaven, pronouncing their eternal residence in the lake of fire.  Scripture calls this fate of those who separate themselves from worshipping God The Second Death. 

No human can look into the eyes of another human and declare lostness; that judgment is reserved for God alone.  But, the fact that we cannot judge each other does not negate the reality of that judgment.  Hear the word of God on this:

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

For You Today

Eternal judgment for sin means time stops, but we don’t.  The eternal day of those who live in the light is mirrored by the eternal night of those under judgment.  May we spend our lives pointing others to the light, the joy of Christ, Who is the only escape from the wrath to come.

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

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

Happy Birthday, Elvis

Thursday, January 8, 2015

And just as each person is destined to die once …. Hebrews 9:27a (NLT)

Today is Elvis Presley’s birthday; he would have been 80! 

At times it still seems surreal to me that it was “merely” 59 years ago the gyrating rocker first appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, and all Americans over 30 figured the world had “gone to Hell in a hand basket”. 

Today Elvis and his show wouldn’t raise an eyebrow!

If you study the artist’s picture of what Elvis would look like today, and look at his 1957 photo, you get an idea of what time can do. 

For anyone who lives 7 decades or more there’s no escaping it; want proof?

                                               

For anyone who lives, we have a date with the future; Elvis seemed larger than life, but that’s the whole thing – it isn’t life creeping-up on you; it’s the other!

The writer to the Hebrews said what we all know; we have an appointment with death.

I’m not really obsessed with that date, but with nearly 70 years of mileage on Russell, it’s hard to turn a deaf ear to the bones complaining.  That “creaking” I hear isn’t the floorboards!

So what can you do about it?

Nothing!

I know…there are whole industries devoted to anti-aging in the way you look and feel.  And there are a bunch of hucksters who want to sell you a bottle of something that is “guaranteed” to hold off Father Time.

The answer is still the same; nothing!  Zero, zilch! 

Fifty is still fifty; sixty is sixty, and the door only swings in one direction.

So what do you do?

You make this day count!

You understand that tomorrow isn’t here, and yesterday is gone; today is like cash in hand – you will spend it.  That makes it vitally important to answer the question about HOW you will spend it – wisely….or what?

God says we should be wise by “redeeming the time”:

  Walk in wisdom toward them that are withouth, redeeming the time.  Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.    Colossians 4:5-6 (KJV)

For You Today:

How are you going to account for today? 

Let me encourage you to walk in wisdom – be grace-filled in your actions and words.

You can’t help what the picture of your body will look like 20, 30 or 50 years from now; but you can control the beauty of your soul. 

That is  in your hands!