The Coming Judgment

 

Friday, March 5, 2021

"The oracle that the prophet Habakkuk saw.  O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?  Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble?  Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise.  So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails.  The wicked surround the righteous— therefore judgment comes forth perverted.... Habakkuk 1:1-4
I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint.  Then the Lord answered me and said:  Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it.  For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie.  If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.  Look at the proud!  Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith."  Habakkuk 2:1-4

Habakkuk’s 6^th Century (BC) world was about to come crashing down around him.  It was a prosperous time, and yet disaster was brewing on the horizon.  God was about to empower the people whose ancestors were “God-haters” – Nimrod, Baal-worshiping pagans, idolaters.  These were the worst sinners on record, and God was going to give Jerusalem into their hands, lock, stock, and barrel. 

God was about to use the worst of humanity to punish his own beloved and peculiar nation, Israel, the descendants of Abraham. 

That seems a strange way to treat people you say you love!

And…America is on the same course if we continue to put aside our faith and dependency on God.  That seems a stranger way to treat our own future.

Our world is a lot like Habakkuk’s Israel.  There is violence, wrong-doing, strife, and a sense that justice and judgment are perverted. 

Places like Darfur, Haiti, Iraq, and Afghanistan conjure up immediate dark images of suffering against the backdrop of a world consuming itself in selfishness.  Who wouldn’t want to question God about the fairness of conditions like these?

·       For one, people who are selfishly responsible for the conditions

·       For another, people who have given-up on trusting God

·       For a third, people who’ve decided that cancel culture is the way to end everything that is a perceived injustice.  It’s imagining evil will fade into the darkness if we just get people to stop saying bad stuff.

Habakkuk hadn’t given-up on God.  Like Job, Habakkuk was concerned and anxious that God would act to change things, not just for Habakkuk, personally, but for his nation, Israel.  Habakkuk also didn’t consider, for one minute, turning anywhere else but to God for his answers.  That’s the meaning of “the righteous live by their faith”.  True faith in God understands we are totally dependent on him – and we put him first!

And what was God’s answer?  “Read my lips” – no – READ MY LIPS!   God said, you can write this down, Habakkuk…and use big block letters so even a messenger on the fly passing by can pick it up clearly…set it in stone, Habakkuk…let everyone know these three things:

·       The Kingdom will come

·       The arrogant proud won’t be happy when it happens

·       Those who are on my side will live dependent on me; they won’t look for help in anything or anybody else.

For You Today

What’s stranger about us today is that we don’t seem concerned enough about what’s coming to turn back to God. 

May He forgive us, and help us!

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

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

Truth Waiting for the Hangman

 

Tuesday, November 3, 2020

What can I say about you?  Who has ever seen such sorrow?  O daughter of Jerusalem, to what can I compare your anguish?  O virgin daughter of Zion, how can I comfort you?  For your wound is as deep as the sea.  Who can heal you?  Your prophets have said so many foolish things, false to the core.  They did not save you from exile by pointing out your sins.  Instead, they painted false pictures, filling you with false hope.  All who pass by jeer at you.  They scoff and insult beautiful Jerusalem, saying, “Is this the city called ‘Most Beautiful in All the World’ and ‘Joy of All the Earth’?”  All your enemies mock you.  They scoff and snarl and say, “We have destroyed her at last!  We have long waited for this day, and it is finally here!”  But it is the Lord who did just as he planned.  He has fulfilled the promises of disaster he made long ago.  He has destroyed Jerusalem without mercy.  He has caused her enemies to gloat over her and has given them power over her.  Lamentations 2:13-17

The prophet Jeremiah is generally accepted to be the author of Lamentations.  His is not a message positivity thinkers would appreciate.  Truth be told, Jeremiah had little positive affirmation in his life.  Every time he opened his mouth to speak the Word of God to God’s people, he either developed a new enemy (or a few thousand) or got thrown in prison.  Church tradition suggests he was stoned to death for heresy by Jewish leaders in Egypt.  He spent a lot of time waiting for the hangman.

In that waiting Jeremiah saw clearly what national catastrophe looks like.  In the case of Jerusalem, the prophet predicted, and lived to see the day when that beautiful city of God set on a hill was defeated and destroyed, its citizens reduced to either slavery or starvation, or both.  And what the prophet said about it all must have been like salt rubbed in the wounds.  It wasn’t unfair; it wasn’t God abandoning His covenant, or somehow falling-down on the job.  It was God fulfilling His covenantal promises that, if Israel served God faithfully, His promises were of life, strength, and a never-ending sense of peace and joy.  On the other side of that coin of promise was a warning, that if they served other gods, they would experience the wrath of judgment.  It wasn’t hard for Jeremiah to connect the dots; Israel had wandered into the far country of idolatry and sin.

James Russell Lowell penned the famous words concerning truth and wrong, particularly in public life, and poignant for any nation:

Perhaps Lowell had Jeremiah’s day in mind when he wrote this, but it certainly looms larger over the next four years (or any moment in time) than any appraisal of the economy, international relations, poverty or justice, compared to what God is doing in plain sight to a nation so divided and angry. 

In America we are busy electing our governmental leaders for the next cycle.  As of this writing it’s unclear who will be president or control the Congress.  But one thing is clear – whoever sits in a Senator’s chair, or at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, that person will not be without sin.  The real question is whether the people who are ruled by the elected leaders will take truth off the scaffold and send the hangman to remove wrong from the throne.

Now, I am not suggesting a bloody revolution – indeed, just the opposite.  I am suggesting what another prophet (probably Ezra) wrote about the government of Israel and how they were falling into worshipping other gods, and the only true path the people can take to extricate themselves from impending judgment:

Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land.  2 Chronicles 7:14

For You Today

May I suggest that we spend a lot less time talking about how right (or wrong) the election’s outcome may be?  May we begin the process of placing truth back on the throne by humbling ourselves, praying, seeking God, and weeding out the sins in our own lives?  God responds to what His people do…whether evil or good.

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

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Title image:  via Wikimedia Rembrandt (in public domain)   W   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©

For other posts on 1 Peter 2:13-17 see:  An Honorable Life and Honorable Behavior - Part 2

 

Tell the Exiles

[1]

Tuesday, June 11, 2019

Then this message came to me from the Lord:  “Son of man, the people still left in Jerusalem are talking about you and your relatives and all the people of Israel who are in exile.  They are saying, ‘Those people are far away from the Lord, so now he has given their land to us!’  “Therefore, tell the exiles, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says:  Although I have scattered you in the countries of the world, I will be a sanctuary to you during your time in exile.  I, the Sovereign Lord, will gather you back from the nations where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel once again.’  “When the people return to their homeland, they will remove every trace of their vile images and detestable idols.  And I will give them singleness of heart and put a new spirit within them.  I will take away their stony, stubborn heart and give them a tender, responsive heart, so they will obey my decrees and regulations.  Then they will truly be my people, and I will be their God.  But as for those who long for vile images and detestable idols, I will repay them fully for their sins.  I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken!”  Then the cherubim lifted their wings and rose into the air with their wheels beside them, and the glory of the God of Israel hovered above them.  Then the glory of the Lord went up from the city and stopped above the mountain to the east.  Afterward the Spirit of God carried me back again to Babylonia, to the people in exile there.  And so ended the vision of my visit to Jerusalem.  And I told the exiles everything the Lord had shown me.  Ezekiel 11:14-25

Dateline 594 B.C. – At this point in Israel’s history they are experiencing a second major defeat by hostile neighbors, followed by the humiliation of being dispossessed of their land, and exiled to foreign soil.  This time it is the Babylonian king who has destroyed Jerusalem, looting the temple and carrying-off all the leaders and the strong young people.  What’s left is a land of rubble and disheartened seniors.  They’re only a year or two into what will be a seventy-year prison sentence.  This punishment is for the crime of turning their national backs on God.  Israel hadn’t learned anything from the self-inflicted pain of the consequences of forsaking their God by the Northern kingdom a century earlier; a pattern was painfully emerging of God’s salvation of His people, followed by that peoples’ fading worship of Almighty God and disobedient, petulantly-selfish idolatry, precipitating a weakening of their national identity and another downfall, captivity by a pagan nation, and God having to save them all over again.

Enter Ezekiel.  The vision God gave to the prophet was a message to the captive exiles in Babylon:  I Am will save you; I will bring you back to your land and restore everything.  But this time you’ll have a new spirit.  This lesson will teach you much about who’s in charge in history, the present, and the future.  If you learn the lesson well, what has been lost in the past will be just a shadow compared to everything I’ll give to you…there will be nothing lost, only the passing of your sin under my forgiving covenant.

Almighty God commissions Ezekiel, His prophet, to tell the exiles there is hope!

At the risk of “spiritualizing” Ezekiel’s prophecy to Israel in such a way as to suggest it is a type of what we experience in contemporary life, let me say there is just too strong a resemblance to ignore what is happening in the church (particularly in America), and in American culture.  By the empty churches on Sunday morning, and the startling nature of rejection of godliness and even the façade of holiness, we see a parallel of Israel’s folly unfolding once again.  When a nation, claiming to be blessed from sea to shining sea, praises God in the sanctuary on Sunday and acts like children of Hell the other seven days of the week, it denigrates the forgiveness which birthed its’ freedom.  It also presumes upon the forbearing patience of a holy God.  That is a position that begs a woodshed meeting with the Father.

For You Today

There are exceptions to the disobedience to God’s way we are seeing today; God always has His remnant.  Be part of that remnant people; and tell the exiles you meet to keep honoring God; there IS hope!

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

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[1] Title Image: Pixabay.com  
             Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from The New Living Translation©

Shaped By Human Hands

[i]

Monday, February 11, 2019

Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name goes all the glory for your unfailing love and faithfulness.  Why let the nations say, “Where is their God?”  Our God is in the heavens, and he does as he wishes.  Their idols are merely things of silver and gold, shaped by human hands.   They have mouths but cannot speak, and eyes but cannot see.  They have ears but cannot hear, and noses but cannot smell.  They have hands but cannot feel, and feet but cannot walk, and throats but cannot make a sound.  And those who make idols are just like them, as are all who trust in them.  Psalm 115:1-8(NLT)

I recall a little song we sang in Sunday School and VBS when I was young.  It was filled with be careful. 

·      Be careful little mouth what you say, little eyes what you see, little feet where you go, and be careful little hands what you touch.

It was a memorable song; I’m 71 and still remember it, even if I sang it off key!  Reflecting on the lyrics, there’s a part of me that celebrates teaching little fingers, eyes, hands, and mouths to behave themselves.  Another part of me, deeper inside, wants to say: 

Whatever happened to be careful little heart what you worship?

The little song teaches behavior that someone who believes in Christ ought to observe.  However, that is a matter of enforcing the Ten Commandments, and has little power to save a soul.  As a rule, belief is what shapes behavior, not the other way around.  If a law demands all citizens pay an income tax, I might pay it, but the behavior of paying taxes won’t make me a country-loving patriot.  On the other hand, if I am taught the value of my country, it’s stands on moral issues and the history of freedom as a God-given right, to be protected at all costs…not only will I gladly pay my fair share of the tax, I’d be more disposed to sacrificial service to preserve this nation’s right to survive.  My behavior follows my belief system.

The Psalmist makes the point that idols, when worshipped, offer little more than silence.  They may have mouths, eyes, fingers, and legs if their maker so chooses.  But what good are those physical traits without the actions that go with them?  Legs that won’t carry you anywhere constitute a malfunction.  The same with eyes, fingers, noses and all else.  Belief in a non-seeing, speaking, hearing, or acting idol is a non-starter.

Faith in the One True Living God, however, is so different; He is all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful, and does not just sit idly on a shelf.  God is involved in every moment of His creation’s existence.  Unlike dumb idols, God, Yahweh, knows the hearts, minds, and souls of each person, and His will is working out to perfection every part of his perfect plan for our lives.  The chief evidence for that is the cross.  There is not an idol that has suffered and died for those who trust in them.  And resurrection demands that there was life in the first place; no idol can claim that.

Idols are everywhere in any culture.  They are in shrines of Eastern cultures, tacked to trees in primitive cultures, and show up as portfolio year-end reports in affluent cultures.  We put our idols on the digital screens of all sizes, and even have contests to see which (American) idols are best at entertaining us.  We do a great job of putting faces on what we worship…our idols are self-made. 

But…is something a human makes with his hands, or imagines with his mind, a god that can lift that human out of the human condition of sin? 

No…for that you need a God NOT made with human hands.

For You Today

There is wise advice from the Psalmist…don’t be empty by making a god to worship, crafting one out of precious materials, or your imagination.  You’ll wind up just as worthless as an idol, shaped by humans hands, sitting on a shelf.  Instead, give God the glory He is due.

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

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[i] Title Image:  via Pixabay.com

Counterfeit Gods

[1]

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name goes all the glory for your unfailing love and faithfulness.  Why let the nations say, “Where is their God?”  Our God is in the heavens, and he does as he wishes.  Their idols are merely things of silver and gold, shaped by human hands.  They have mouths but cannot speak, and eyes but cannot see.  They have ears but cannot hear, and noses but cannot smell.  They have hands but cannot feel, and feet but cannot walk, and throats but cannot make a sound.  And those who make idols are just like them, as are all who trust in them.

O Israel, trust the Lord!  He is your helper and your shield.  O priests, descendants of Aaron, trust the Lord!  He is your helper and your shield.  All you who fear the Lord, trust the Lord!  He is your helper and your shield.  The Lord remembers us and will bless us.  He will bless the people of Israel and bless the priests, the descendants of Aaron.  He will bless those who fear the Lord, both great and lowly.

May the Lord richly bless both you and your children.  May you be blessed by the Lord, who made heaven and earth.  The heavens belong to the Lord, but he has given the earth to all humanity.  The dead cannot sing praises to the Lord, for they have gone into the silence of the grave.  But we can praise the Lord both now and forever!  Praise the Lord!  Psalm 115:1-18^(NLT)

Many generations make the mistake of assuming they do not, and will not, make the mistakes their parents made.  There’s a good bit of arrogance in that, along with a truckload of ignorance.

The Psalmist’s words here are a strong caution and pleading that Israel refrain from repeating the mistakes of their ancestors, trusting idols rather than true God, Jehovah.  Yet with clear warning right in front of them, they did it anyway…over and over again!  We’ve heard that doing the same thing over and over, while expecting a different result, is the definition of insanity; in this case it includes the definition of idolatry.

The Psalmist makes his case against worshipping idols of carved wood and stone – unhearing, unfeeling, unknowing, and unspeaking gods; therefore unable and useless gods.  Then his word turns positive, bidding them to call on Jehovah, the one, true living God, who is not only able, but loving and possesses all power to help and provide for the nation.

It’s certainly a puzzle why we humans reject the genuine so often in favor of a countefeit.  Perhaps there is just something about free will that makes us choose the Burger King philosophy over common sense…I’ll have it MY WAY. 

Now, don’t get me wrong…God’s plan was for free will; it’s just that when we take that gift and the first choice we make is to turn away from the Heavenly Giver of the gift -well, it just never turns out well!  Just ask Adam and Eve.

In our Western culture of the 21^st century individualism – going it alone (my choice, my life, my body, my will, step back away from my space) is not much different than the idolatry of Israel.  We have exchanged idols of carved wood, stone, and molded gold for the stupidity of worshipping our own minds and bodies. 

The problem with our choice is we are still missing the target of reality as opposed to counterfeit.  We deny the reality that we are the creation, and Lord, God is the Creator.  We are, as King James would have us remember…beholden, responsible and accountable…to Him!  And He is not an unspeaking, unhearing or unseeing, non-judging idol who knows nothing of our sin. 

For You Today

A dose of reality on a Tuesday morning:

It is incredibly short-sighted to worship a counterfeit.  America must turn to the reality that her idols of economy, pragmatic deal-making, fence-building, and swaggering bluster from the hilltops of past victories are as much a counterfeit idol as the heaping-up of social programs that we cannot possibly sustain.  America’s only hope for the blessing of God is a revival of humility and return to godliness! 

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

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy Pixabay.com

The Land Your God Gives You

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Tuesday, May 8, 2018

“If you carefully obey the commands I am giving you today, and if you love the Lord your God and serve him with all your heart and soul, then he will send the rains in their proper seasons—the early and late rains—so you can bring in your harvests of grain, new wine, and olive oil.  He will give you lush pastureland for your livestock, and you yourselves will have all you want to eat.  “But be careful.  Don’t let your heart be deceived so that you turn away from the Lord and serve and worship other gods.  If you do, the Lord’s anger will burn against you.  He will shut up the sky and hold back the rain, and the ground will fail to produce its harvests.  Then you will quickly die in that good land the Lord is giving you.  Deuteronomy 11:13-17^(NLT)

“Believing your own press reports” is what the preacher called it.  My mother called it:  “being full of yourself”!  Joshua was delivering God’s message to Israel, a warning against imagining all is well, just because you feel content.  The heart that has lost it’s desire to serve God may feel content for a while, but it won’t be long before that heart crosses over from feelings of contentment to the cold storage of arrogance.  It is then that the hammer will fall.  God is truly long-suffering, meaning He will forgive our poor choices and failures.  What God will not tolerate is wanton hearts that blatantly turn away from Him; there are consequences for disobedience!

Sometimes we can make the mistake of reading our circumstances of God’s blessing as if it is simply the state of our having arrived at a level of human accomplishment.  The fact is that all so-called achievement is a matter of God-given strength, ability and His favor.  You don’t have to carve an idol to serve other gods; sometimes idolatry is as close as admiring that fellow in the mirror.

For You Today

If it has been a while since you did this…or if you’ve never done this…take some time to look over the blessings God has given into your life.  (We can call it our Promised Land).  Add it up…all the years, times of deliverance, joys, learning, financial strength, children, promotions in your career…then put it in its’ proper place…build a mental altar and lay all those blessings on top of that altar as a sacrifice.  It is our way of saying, Lord, I have no other God but You!

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

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy Pixabay.com

Idols of the Nations

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Tuesday, April 10, 2018

The idols of the nations are merely things of silver and gold, shaped by human hands.  They have mouths but cannot speak, and eyes but cannot see.  They have ears but cannot hear, and mouths but cannot breathe.  And those who make idols are just like them, as are all who trust in them.  Psalm 135:15-18^(NLT)

Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you.  For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions.  These are not from the Father, but are from this world.  And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave.  But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever.  1 John 2:15-17^(NLT)

Forty years ago rock singer Bob Dylan wrote:

You might be a rock ’n’ roll addict prancing on the stage
You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage
You may be a businessman or some high-degree thief
They may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody[2]

What Bob Dylan understood is how we humans are hard-wired to worship.  And, despite all the choices we have of what to do with our time and energy, the choices are amazingly simple and clear cut; we either worship God or we worship ourselves as god.

What?  Explain that a little, please.

Whether your choice of idol is money, sex, power, personal accomplishments, being a groupee for the next American Idol, or carving-up a tree into a totem pole, the whole idea of a crafted, carved, accumulated, experiential, historically-meaningful idol is still an idolatry.  And an idol does not see, hear, or speak; an idol is lesser than its creator/carver.  So, anytime you encounter an idol in your life, understand that you have created it, and therefore, you are its god.

Simpler translation:  when anything other than God is given greater significance than God in your life you have become an idolater! 

Or, as the apostle John put it, you do not love God, you love this world.

The sad thing about that is this world is passing away; you miss the eternal for something that will fade, fizzle, and disappear.  And that’s a really poor choice.

For You Today

Giving up the world’s stuff in order to serve Jesus is a matter of discarding the idols that cannot see, hear, speak or have the life to breathe…in favor the life offered by He who sees all, hears all, knows all, and will live forever.

Not much of a contest there!

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

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com

[2] Gotta Serve Somebody, Words and Music by Bob Dylan © 1979 by Special Rider Music