Can you imagine
loving a nation, loving the United States, for instance, and hearing the Lord
tell you that judgment was against that nation, disaster was going to overtake
it and destroy it, that foreign nations were coming against it and would lay
waste to it and occupy and rule it? Can
you also then imagine being told not to pray for the nation, not to pray that
God would change His mind, that nothing could avert this future? That is what Jeremiah's life looked
like. The Lord brought charges against
the nation, His chosen people, of apostasy, of deceit, of adultery and Jeremiah
couldn't argue on behalf of the nation, he knew these things were true. His only recourse was to ask for mercy but
mercy was contingent on one thing, repentance, and that was not happening. Sacrifices without repentance don't count with
the Lord who looks at the heart. He
wanted only one thing, that they be obedient to His voice. The church in our day needs to be as
heartbroken as Jeremiah.
How could they
possibly say that they are offspring of Abraham and never been enslaved? That
is the history of the people, they were enslaved and God set them free, it is right
there in the beginning of their constitution, Exodus 20, "I am the Lord
your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of
slavery." Everything else is
predicated on those words. When Jesus
says that they are not Abraham's children but their real father is the devil it
is so offensive we can scarcely imagine.
The father of lies has led them to a false belief system, a false sense
of security, a false knowledge and understanding of themselves, of Jesus, and
of God Himself. I am getting a stronger
sense of this evil and that deception is indeed evil, a false understanding of
Jesus and who He is, is indeed a great evil from the father of lies and we need
to take it more seriously. We must counter
it strongly with truth but perhaps even more we need to pray that the Lord
break through that deception with the power of the Holy Spirit. We must also boldly speak into this lie just
as Jesus does here.
To be set free from
sin is something to rejoice in. Paul
recognizes that there is a mistake that can be made in focusing on eternal life
as the reward for faith. We can easily
become Gnostic in our beliefs and conclude that what the body does is
immaterial to salvation, it is an internal matter of the heart and mind. Sin only serves to prove how great is God's
grace to sinners, so sin all you want, you're saved, grace is wonderful. Only a Marcionist, one who believes there is
one god in the Old Testament and one in the New Testament, could believe such a
thing but there are plenty of those out there.
Paul makes it clear that to go on sinning is antithetical to the Gospel,
it is not consonant with faith.
Justification without sanctification is not possible. Faith, justification, opens our ears to hear
His voice and our hearts to obey it.
Anything else is a lie. Need I say more about that?
No comments:
Post a Comment