Missing Spirits

Read the following verses, and see if you notice anything missing from them.

Number 5

1. And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying,

2. “Command the children of Israel, that they put out of the camp every leper, and every one that hath an issue, and whosoever is defiled by the dead.

3. Both male and female shall you put out; outside the camp shall you put them, so that they defile not their camps, in the midst of which I dwell.”

4. And the children of Israel did so, and they put them out outside the camp.  As the Lord spake unto Moses, so did the children of Israel.

Leviticus 20

1. And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying,

2. “Again, you shalt say to the children of Israel, ‘Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that gives any of his seed unto Molech, he shall surely be put to death.  The people of the land shall stone him with stones.

. . .

9. Every one that curses his father or his mother shall be surely put to death.  He has cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him.

10. And the man who commits adultery with another man’s wife, even he that commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress, shall surely be put to death.

. . .

13. If a man also lie with mankind, as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination.  They shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”

What is missing in the above verses is the touchy-feely, uber-tolerant spirit of our times.  God did not feel obligated to apologize for His judgments, not even for commanding the death penalty.   He did not give these people, either the defiled people in Numbers or the transgressors in Leviticus, the opportunity to complain about His judgments.  He commanded the lepers to be put out and the wicked to be executed, then He went on to another subject, with no explanation and no apology.  It was irrelevant how the people in these situations felt about His judgments.  Moreover, there was no delay allowed.  God said it, and it was done.  There was no long jail time for the wicked before they were executed.  Executions took place immediately after judgment was pronounced.

This generation is being lied to about what true justice is, and because of that lie, the fear of God’s judgment is being stolen from their heart, and as a result of that, they are becoming beastly in their actions.  “The fear of the Lord is clean,” David said (Ps. 19:9), and it makes those who possess it clean because it makes them hate evil (Prov. 8:13).  But those without the fear of God become more and more wicked because they have no reason not to do so – they think.

It is no wonder that Jesus will be hated by the nations when he returns to rule this world.  His judgments will be swift and severe as he rules earth “with a rod of iron” (Ps. 2:9; Rev. 12:5; 19:15).  His perfect, righteous judgments will be swiftly executed on earth by the saints who reign with him (Rev. 2:27), and those saints will be hated with him – just as they are hated now when they dare to declare the righteous judgments of God in their time.  

When Paul said, “If we suffer with him, we will reign with him” (2Tim. 2:12; Rom. 8:17), he was referring to the suffering that God’s children bring upon themselves by living godly lives in this world.  They have a choice, for if they want to, they can hide their light under a basket, as Jesus said.  But those who will reign with Christ are the ones who make the choice not to hide the light, and they then experience the truth of Paul’s words to Timothy: “All who are willing to live godly in Christ Jesus shall be persecuted” (2Tim. 3:12).

Let the spirits of this age be missing from your judgments, as they are from God’s.  Let your yes be yes and let your no be no, and offer no apologies for the truth of God’s judgments.  Everything that is more than yes or no – all the explanations and the worries about the feelings of the unclean and the wicked when they are judged – comes from evil (Mt. 5:37).