Moses warns against false prophets. The false prophets he warns against are those
who come with a vision or a dream that comes to pass, not ones who simply share
their dreams and visions. If, after the
prophecy is tested, has come to pass, that prophet leads the people astray to
follow after other gods, he was to be put to death for teaching rebellion. His prophecy wasn’t false, it came from
somewhere other than Yahweh because it didn’t point the people to Him but,
rather, away from Him. Such a one was to
be purged from the midst of the people, he was a danger the community couldn’t
afford. Even a close family member, a
sibling, a wife, a child, was to be stoned to death if they tried to entice you
away from following the Lord. We don’t
see this penalty being carried out in Israel because life was so sacred. When Jesus talks in the Gospel about hating
your family for His sake, this is the idea, nothing should be allowed to keep
you from Him, that relationship has priority over all else. Where are we allowing people in our lives who
take us away from Him?
Jesus didn’t seem very interested in answering directly
questions concerning the end times did He?
I don’t know if it has always been this way but in my lifetime there has
been an obsessive fixation on this issue.
The success of the Left Behind series and the desire to know and
understand the end has consumed the time and energy of far too many Christians. If we put one tenth of that time and energy
into loving God and one another by Gospeling one another we would have a very
different church in America today. Jesus’
answer was essentially that until the moment came, in Noah’s day and Lot’s day,
people were simply going about their everyday lives when, suddenly, everything
changed. Preparedness isn’t loading up
on ammunition, it is simply being about God’s work in our lives, not knowing
times and interpreting signs. Let us not be led astray from the work we were
given to do by such concerns.
Too often in the church today we don’t understand the
difference between conviction and condemnation.
I hear people who don’t seem to understand that conviction of sin is
incredibly important for it produces what Paul here refers to as godly grief,
repentance. Conviction is a burning in
the soul over sin, an inability to tolerate it for we have seen it and what it
produces, separation from God, for what it is, rebellion and poison, something
that is evil and must be purged from our midst.
That part of us must be put to death which caused us to go astray. With conviction there is hope, with
condemnation, there is none. Conviction
calls me to change, condemnation tells me I am hopeless. Conviction regarding sin is the work of the
Holy Spirit, let us never despise His work.
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