He Is Coming!

“Let the heavens rejoice,
and let the earth be glad!
Let the sea roar, and its fullness!
Let the field be joyful,
and all that is in it!
Then shall all the trees of the wood
rejoice before the Lord, for he is coming!
He is coming to judge the earth;
He will judge the world with righteousness,
and the people with His truth.”
Psalm 96:11-13

Jesus is coming again! He will return to reign on earth with perfect justice for a thousand years. Humans have never experienced such a reign, though Israel experienced brief times of perfect justices whenever one of their kings loved God’s law and carried out its righteous judgments. But that did not happen often, and it never lasted long. But even at that, no king of Israel was as pure in heart as the Son of God, and none of those kings, even Solomon, was nearly as wise. The reign of Christ Jesus will be perfect in every part, and what a relief he will bring to the meek and to the upright in heart! Throughout his thousand-year reign, good people will never be oppressed, and wicked people will never escape their just punishment.

The return of Jesus is the greatest hope of all who truly love God. Every person whose heart and life is pleasing to God feels the yearning for the Lord’s return. If the Spirit of God is alive and well in your soul, then you already feel what I am talking about. In one of the last verses of the Bible, the apostle John wrote, “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!’” (Rev. 22:17). Amen! The holy Ghost in us calls out for Jesus to come, and so do those who are ready for their Bridegroom to come and take them to his wedding feast in the Father’s presence.

The truth of the return of Jesus to rescue us from the governments and cultures of sinful man provides us with great comfort. Listen to what Paul said had been revealed to him by the Lord. He sent this message to the saints in Thessalonica, who were among his most faithful, and most persecuted Gentile converts (1Thess. 4:15-18):

"Now I say this to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are left here alive until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who sleep; for when the command is given, the Lord himself will descend from heaven with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God; and the dead in Christ will rise first. Next, we who are alive and left here will be caught away together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus will we ever be with the Lord. So, ENCOURAGE ONE ANOTHER WITH THESE WORDS."

Amen!

The Testimony of the Lord

“The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.”
Psalm 19:7

“Thy testimonies are very sure.”
Psalm 93:5

During his great revelation of the end times, John was told that the saints overcome the devil by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony (Rev. 12:11). We know what “the blood of the Lamb” is; it is the holy Spirit that cleanses the soul from sin. But what is the word of our testimony?

First of all, a real testimony is not just talk. I have been in many a prayer meeting in which someone just stood up and talked, thinking they were giving a testimony. It is burdensome to listen to such powerless talk. A testimony in the kingdom of God is a living thing; it is a confession of something God has really done, and it brings the spirit of faith and victory into a room. Solomon said that whatever God does lasts forever (Eccl. 3:14), and this is true about a testimony as much as anything else. I know saints who have testified for decades to a miraculous work that God wrought in their lives, and it still lives and convicts and thrills souls. If God really did what you are talking about, it is still alive. It still teaches, warns, convicts, and edifies. It is not just talk.

That is why, along with the blood of Christ, God’s children overcome the devil with their testimonies. The devil has no testimony because he refuses to tell the truth about himself. He would have to testify that he was a deceitful creature when he was in heaven, that he was cast out of heaven when the Son of God ascended into heaven, and that he is still a liar and cannot stop lying because God will not grant him repentance. If he were in a meeting of the saints, and if he were to testify honestly to the work of God in his life, he would have to cry out, “I am damned! I am damned! And there is nothing I can do to change!” That would be a real testimony on his part. That would be a “testimony of the Lord” because it would be a testimony of what the Lord has done. But Satan would not give such a testimony, for he is “a liar and the father of it.”

Now, what is the Lord’s testimony in your life? If you have such a testimony, please use it! It is a powerful weapon against the forces that are now being marshaled against you and against all others around the world who walk in the light of God in Jesus Christ. Your testimony of God’s work in your life is a rock upon which you, and we, can stand forever, for “the testimony of the Lord is sure.”

"You Are Evil"

“If you, being evil, know how
to give good gifts to your children . . .”
Mt. 7:11

“O generation of vipers, how can you,
being evil, speak good things?”
Mt. 12:34

What kind of relationship would you be able to have with someone who told you to your face that you are evil? What would your attitude be toward that person? Jesus told his disciples they were evil, and yet they kept following him. In fact, one day when they asked him who would be saved in the Final Judgment, he told them that they and all other people were so hopelessly evil that there was nothing they could do to escape the coming wrath of God (Mk. 10:26-27). And they still followed him.

Every man sent by God from the foundation of the world has told fallen man that he is evil, and the only people who have ever escaped from their fallen human nature are those who have believed those servants of God and cried out to God for help. If you are too proud to confess your sinfulness, you will never escape it.

Jesus gave Brother Earl a dream a couple of years ago in which he heard his former pastor, now with the Lord, calmly and gently talking to a brother who had done wrong. I will change the name he used, but here is what that man of God spoke to the backslidden brother: “Do you know how to get out of it, Sam?” Then after a short pause, he said very gently, but with authority, “You own up to it.”

We all “have sinned and come short of the glory of God”, and Jesus has made for us a way out of our sin. All we have to do is humbly bow before him and “own up to it.”

A Change in Speakers

“O come! Let us sing unto the Lord!”

“In the wilderness, your fathers tempted me . . . forty long years.”
Psalm 95:1, 9-10a

It is obvious that the speaker at the beginning of Psalm 95 is not the speaker at the end. The speaker from verse one through most of verse seven is a man, perhaps David. He is calling the people to worship. But the speaker throughout the rest of the Psalm is obviously God, for He is speaking of things He dealt with centuries before this Psalm was composed.

My father, an anointed minster of Christ, told me that a man must preach himself into the anointing of God. His point was that God doesn’t draft lazy people into His service. We labor in the Lord and prove ourselves; then, when He will, God takes over our lives in a new way, just as he took complete control over the Psalmist’s voice in the midst of his singing. From the point of God’s taking control our lives for His service, the difference will be as great as is the difference in Psalm 95, beginning near the end of verse seven.

Read it, and marvel at the power of God as it takes control of the Psalmists’s voice. Then, pray that God will take control of the lives of young men everywhere, to deliver them from their own opinions and anoint them to feed His people with genuine heavenly knowledge.

Planted

“Those that be planted in the house of the Lord
shall flourish in the courts of our God.”
Psalm 92:13

“Every plant that my heavenly Father
has not planted shall be rooted up.”
Matthew 15:13

In the Bible, our entrance into the family of God is described in many different ways. It is described as being “born again”, being “adopted”, being “translated into the kingdom of God’s dear Son”, and others. In the Scriptures above, we see both David and Jesus refer to it as being “planted” in God’s house. Isaiah called those whom God chose as His own “trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified” (Isa. 61:3).

But Jesus’ mention of being planted also suggested that some who are in God’s house have not been planted there by God. How this can happen is a mystery, but in his famous Parable of the Tares, Jesus plainly stated that Satan really does plant some souls in the assembly of saints (Mt. 13:24-30, 36-43). Paul, Peter, and Jude spoke of men who “creep into” the assembly (Gal. 2 :4; 2Pet. 2:1; Jude 1:4); so, we have to say that such a thing is a reality. And because it is true, we need, as the ancient philosopher Socrates said, to know ourselves. Or, to say it the way Paul told young Timothy, we need to “make our calling and election sure” and to “lay hold on eternal life.”

Take nothing for granted. Jesus, the righteous judge, is coming, and he knows who is his and who is not.

Two Reactions and Two Results

The first two verses quoted above speak of results of being planted by God as compared to not being planted by God. And the two results differ because the two kinds of plants have different responses to the work of God. If you are a plant that God has planted, you rejoice at whatever He does (directly or through one of His servants) and you bear the fruit of righteousness. This is what David meant by saying that God’s plants “flourish” in His courts. But if you have not been planted by God, though you may play the role of a believer for a while, somewhere down the line, God will do something that you don’t like, and you will be exposed as not belonging among the saints. This is what Jesus meant by a plant being “rooted up”. Something God does will, at some point, displease you, and afterward, you will find yourself no longer a part of the assembly of God. How that removal happens is up to God, but that it happens is a sad fact of spiritual life.

The reason there are different responses to the same works of God is that those who have been planted by God have a different nature from those planted by Satan. God’s plants love all that God does, but Satan’s plants love what God does only so long as it fits into their personal agendas.

A Close Call?

“A thousand shall fall at your side,
and ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you.”
Psalm 91:7

Try to picture the scene described in the above verse from Psalm 91. You are standing somewhere in the midst of eleven thousand people, and suddenly, a plague sweeps through, and every one of them drops dead beside you. Would you think that the pestilence had come near you? Of course you would, if you are a normal person. You would probably run away so that the plague would not kill you, too, and then you would no doubt tell your friends of your narrow escape from death. But the Spirit of God will give us a different perspective of that event because the Spirit teaches us to look at things from God’s point of view.

In God’s world, if God determined that the plague would not touch you, the truth is the plague did not come anywhere near you, even if some who died by it fell against you when they dropped dead. God’s will governs life, not circumstances. Did Noah almost drown in the Flood? Of course not. He was a safe as he was before it even rained, for God determined that Noah and his family would live. Did Jesus almost catch leprosy when he laid hands on lepers and healed them? Or did he almost sin when he stood in the midst of sinners? God’s will for him was that Jesus would not catch leprosy or commit sin, and that was the determining factor in Jesus’ life. Nothing else was relevant, and Jesus trusted his Father to care for him.

No one who knows God will say that Jesus almost condemned Peter, James, and John as being sons of the devil because they were standing nearby when Jesus condemned others for being sons of the devil. Physical proximity to wicked people is irrelevant in determining how close we are, in our hearts, to wickedness. The only thing that matters is our relationship with God; or more specifically, His will for us. If a nuclear bomb is detonated over our heads, and God has determined that it will not harm us, it would be wrong for us even to tell someone that we barely escape the explosion. For if God had decided we would be unharmed, then that nuclear weapon was as irrelevant to us as if it were not even in our universe.

David understood this. Or, at least, he yielded himself to the Spirit that understood it, and it declared the truth. When we yield our carnal thoughts to that same Spirit, we will judge all things from the perspective of faith, and talk of God’s saving power instead of how close we come to harm.

The Most Hopeless

“Though you grind a fool in a bowl with a pestle,
yet will not his foolishness depart from him.”
Proverbs 27:22

Solomon commented often about fools. He didn’t want his sons to become fools, and so, he strongly emphasized to them the great dangers of foolishness. The many comments which Solomon made about fools seemed to make it abundantly clear that fools are hopelessly lost in sin. I have carefully studied Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, and what I have found is that Solomon plainly and consistently implied that there is simply no hope for a fool. He even thought fools to be so worthless and so contrary to a good life that he told his sons that it would be better to run into an angry she-bear than to meet a fool (Prov. 17:12).

That being the case, it is surprising, to say the least, that in Proverbs, Solomon also taught that there are two kinds of people who have less hope than fool! I remember how stunned I was to read those verses in Proverbs, especially after I had studied what Solomon taught about fools. At the time, I wished that I could ask Solomon how such a thing could be, but seeing that was impossible, all I could do was wonder at such wisdom. How can anyone have less hope than someone who has none? Without an answer, the best we can do is just to acknowledge that Solomon was profoundly wise, and then say “amen”, whether we understand it or not.

A Proud Man

The first kind of person who has less hope than a fool is the man who thinks highly of himself; that is, a braggart, or a proud man. Solomon said, in Proverbs 26:11, that even if you manage to separate a fool from his foolishness, he is as sure to return to it as a dog returns to vomit. (Dogs will eat their own vomit, in case some of you don’t know that.) Then, in the very next verse, Solomon added, “Do you see a man wise in his own opinion? There is more hope for a fool than for him.”

A careful reading of Proverbs shows that pride is one of the seven most abhorred things in the eyes of God (Prov. 6:17) and that “every one who is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord” (Prov. 16:5). The extent of divine contempt for the proud cannot be over-emphasized, and the wrath of God upon every proud soul is certain. To sum up all the warnings Solomon gave his son about pride, we can say, as he did, “Pride goes before destruction” (Prov. 16:18) because God loathes pride (Prov. 8:13).

A Hasty Man

The second kind of person who has less hope than a fool is a man who speaks or acts too quickly. This refers to a man who reaches conclusions too quickly, one who speaks before hearing all the evidence. This is how Solomon said it (Prov. 29:20): “Do you see a man who is hasty in his words? There is more hope for a fool than for him.” It is very easy to be moved by someone who tells a sad story; but, if we would refrain from making a judgment until we hear all the facts, our conclusion will almost always be different from what it would have been otherwise.

As Israel’s king, Solomon was given holy wisdom so that he refrained from making any judgment until the accused had the opportunity to speak. He learned from God and from experience that some people know how to make themselves appear to be victims and that those people can move others to feel indignation at their “plight”. But Solomon’s strong desire to be a just judge of God’s people caused him to follow after righteousness and to wait until he knew the whole truth. And by doing that, he escaped many a trap that was laid for him by tearful, lying souls who complained to him of being maltreated.

Solomon warned his son of this trap of clever liars who know how to make themselves appear to be needy victims and who plead for a quick decision. Here are a couple of wise things Solomon taught his son concerning them:

“A hypocrite with his mouth destroys his neighbor,
but through knowledge, the just will be delivered.”
Proverbs 11:9

“He who is first in his own cause seems just,
but his neighbor comes and searches him.”
Prov. 18:17

True Wisdom

I am sure that there is a wise man somewhere who is able to explain why it is true that a proud man and a man who speaks hastily are more hopeless than fools. All that I can do is recognize Solomon’s wisdom to be true, and then humbly pray to God that by His holy Spirit, He keeps me, and all of us, from being either proud, hasty, or foolish.

"Of No Reputation"

“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,
who, existing in God’s form, did not consider equality with God
as a prize to be seized upon, but made himself of no reputation,
assuming the form of a slave, made in the likeness of men.”
Phip. 2:5-7a

Over the years, as I read the King James Bible, I often marveled that Jesus was able to “make himself of no reputation”. And I wondered, since we are to follow Jesus’ example, how we could follow him in this regard. After all, we cannot control what people think, and a reputation is something that is formed in the minds of others. So, I wondered, how did Jesus live so that he had no reputation? And how can I?

As I lay in bed last night, I was thinking about this, and verses from the Bible came to mind which dealt with Jesus and his reputation. There are many of them! Rather than be ”of no reputation”, it seemed to me that opinions of Jesus abounded and that they reflected two extremes. On the one hand, the Bible states plainly that some in Israel thought and said, among other cruel things, that Jesus was demon-possessed (Jn. 7:20). Those Israelites felt certain that Jesus was cursed by God. In their minds, no one could teach the things Jesus taught without having been turned over to Satan. Isaiah foretold of this reputation that Jesus would have among some of God’s people:

Isaiah 53
3. He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and we hid, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised, and we considered him worthless.
4. Surely, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

When people feel this way about you, how can you say that you are “of no reputation”? In fact, those of this opinion would make it so that you have a very big, and bad, reputation!

But at the same time, there were some in Israel who felt just the opposite about Jesus. Among those people, Jesus had the very best reputation that a man can possibly have. At one point (Mt. 16:16), Peter said to Jesus, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!” Later, another follower named Martha said, “You are the Christ, the Son of God who is coming to the world” (Jn. 11:27).

So, when people feel that way about you, how can you say that you are “of no reputation”? Those of this opinion would make it so that you have a very big, and good, reputation!

Then I saw that the phrase “having no reputation” may not mean at all that people hold no opinion about you, but that people hold so many conflicting opinions of you that most of the others can’t figure out what to think.

I believe that every person who truly follows Jesus will not only live the holy life he lived but will experience as well both the pain of outrageous slander from some and the comfort of being greatly loved by others, just as Jesus did. And if so, that is as close as one can come to being “of no reputation”, for there will be so many reputations about that person afloat that most people won’t know what to think.

Translation

I am thankful that the King James Translation of Philippians 2:6 included the phrase, “of no reputation” because it has given me much to think about over the years, and I have benefitted from the thoughts that the King James translation has provoked in me. However, that phrase doesn’t actually appear to belong in that verse. Instead of “made himself of no reputation”, the better translation might be, “he emptied himself”, or even better, “he divested himself”, for in this verse, Paul is speaking of the Son of God in heaven leaving behind his glory, or “divesting himself” of his glorified form to come to earth and take on the form of a man.

But that is a lesson for another day. Right now, I have been enjoying pondering over the question of how in the world Jesus managed to make himself “of no reputation”.

The Flesh, the Spirit, and the City

Glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God!
I will mention Rahab and Babylon to them who know me.
Psalm 87:3-4a

These words from Psalm 87 were spoken by the Spirit of Christ through a prophet. The prophet knew where Rahab and Babylon were located, but he understood nothing about what the Son of God was actually talking about. Nor did that prophet know about the city of God that was revealed to John the apostle in his Revelation.

There are two ways by which man is brought into bondage in this life. He can be enslaved by the lusts of his own fleshly nature, or he can be enslaved by demons. “Rahab” and Babylon” refer to these two evils. In the Old Testament, “Rahab “ is another name for Egypt (e.g., Isa. 51:9-10), and Egypt is a symbol of the fleshly nature of man (as suggested in Ezek. 16:26). “Babylon”, on the other hand, refers to spiritual uncleanness, the place where men are brought into spiritual bondage by “doctrines of demons” rather than by the lusts of the flesh. Jesus speaks of these things to those who know him. That is, he teaches his children wisdom concerning such things, revealing how those enemies of our souls work their craftiness and ensnare the spirits of men. Paul also spoke of these two evils to the saints in Corinth, exhorting them to cleanse themselves of “from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit” (2Cor. 7:1).

At the same time, Jesus and his servants speak of the glory of the city of God, to which we hope to go when this age is ended. It is a city illuminated not by the sun but by the brightness of the presence of the Father and the Son (Rev. 21:23), and through which flows a river of life, bordered on each side with trees whose very leaves heal (Rev. 22:1-2). It is a city whose streets are laid with transparent gold, and where every hope for peace and pleasantness is realized. Jesus speaks of that city “to those who know me”, and he encourages them to be faithful and diligent so that they may overcome the two great evils that oppose them and, so, obtain that eternal life.

The Safest Place

The sparrow has found a house,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young,
even your altars, O Lord of hosts,
my king and my God.
Psalm 84:3

Uncle Joe knew that if God had not stricken him with cancer in 1959, he would not have lived thirty-seven more years. His body was so full of cancer when the doctor operated on him that the doctor gave Uncle Joe six to nine months to live. But the cancer was the chastening of the Lord, and in his room in Veterans Hospital in Durham, NC, Uncle Joe humbled himself and turned from his own way, and God forgave him. Then, he was healed and lived that other thirty seven years.

My father, too, testified of being chastened by the Lord the same way. And after the chastisement of God served its purpose and he “set his house in order” as God demanded he do, he referred to his affliction as ‘that blessed cancer”for the next forty-plus years of his life. He was aware of the fact that, without that harsh discipline of God, he may not even have been saved in the end. God wanted him to be pure, and He made him that way.

We who have been severely chastened of the Lord know the feeling of gratitude for chastisement, even though “for the present, the chastening does not seem pleasant, but grievous. Nevertheless, afterward, it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness.” The “peaceable fruit of righteousness” is what God is after when He puts us through the fire, and when we humble ourselves and yield to Him what He demands, we always end up happy and thankful for whatever process God used to get us there.

For several years, I had prayed and prayed about a certain thing that troubled my conscience, a situation I could not see a way out of. Lots of people are in the same situation, but Jesus was not pleased that I was one of them. It was always there, somewhere in the back of my mind, and it would pop up at any time and bother my thoughts. I wanted to fix it, but I did not know how. Then, out of the blue, a certain man sued me for things I was completely innocent of. Innocent or not, I knew that, in this world, evil sometimes wins, and so, I got alone with God and spread the lawsuit on the floor and asked God to be the Judge in this case and to judge me if I had done anything wrong. From the moment I asked God to judge me, I became focused on making certain that there was nothing in my life that displeased God, for I knew that He is “no respecter of persons”. And there it was; that situation that had troubled my heart for several years, demanding to be dealt with. Full of the fear of God, I went about resolving it as soon as possible, determined to please God. And I did.

The relief was immediate, and great. So much lighter was my conscience that I told the folk here that “God sued me”, and He did it in order to give me the inner strength I needed to take care of a situation that had irritated my spirit for years. He wanted me to have peace. How I love Him for that! It was, in one way, the worst time of my life. I had never been so publicly accused of anything, especially such evils as I was accused of then. But God transformed it, for me, into a most wonderful time of growth in godliness.

The fiery trial is the place where the swallow can safely build her nest and lay her young. David sang, “We are His people, the sheep of His pasture! Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise!” (Ps. 100:3). That sounds so poetic that we often overlook the point. Think about it. Why were sheep brought through the gates of the city of God and into His courts? To be fed? No, the sheep feed on the hillsides, not in the city. They were, and are, brought into God’s court to be slaughtered and laid on the flaming altar of God! Can you enter into God’s court with thanksgiving?

Paul exhorted us to “present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service” (Rom. 12:1). And I assume that he, too, would have wanted us to present ourselves with thanksgiving. James felt the same way. That’s why he wrote to the saints, “My brothers, count it all joy when you fall into various trials” (Jas. 1:2).

It is the fiery altar of God which burns the dross out of our souls. It burns nothing but the things of earth that weigh us down and get in our way. God’s altar is a sacred place where the greatest love of God can be found, yet a place that cannot be found by man; one has to be taken to those flames by the tender mercies of God. It is “the secret place of the Almighty”, where sins are purged and wisdom is learned. It is a place for “the trial of faith”, which Peter said was “more precious than gold” (1Pet. 1:7).

To correct the vexing situation I found myself in proved to be very expensive, but then, what is it worth to have perfect peace with God? Looking at it the right way, we will ask, how expensive will it be in the Judgment to meet God with a conscience not purged by the fire? A great and simple secret of wisdom that I learned in the fire was this: the best way to deal with something that troubles the conscience is simply to do it. Sounds so simple, doesn’t it? And yet, every one of us have suffered through periods (or, are now suffering through a period) of putting off the conviction of the Spirit, until God picked us up and tenderly placed us on His flaming altar.

Ah, the great relief that comes when we stay on the altar and let the fire of God’s holiness burn off the chains that have held us to something that displeased God! Uncle Joe once testified, decades after his healing of cancer, that he longed to be back in that place he was with God when he had cancer. He did not want cancer again; he just wanted to feel once more that wonderful sense of being overshadowed by God, of having (in his case) bitterness and an unforgiving spirit burned away from his heart. On the altar, no man can help you, no matter how much they love you. You are alone in the hands of God. But what better place to be, if we endure the brief chastening of the Lord?

Now, like all my fathers, from Abraham and David to Uncle Joe and my earthly father, I refer to the most painful time in my life as blessed, for the results were what God and I had both wanted for so long. The whole experience, painful as it was, came from the hand of my loving heavenly Father, for my good, and for the good of others. He saw both my desire for freedom and my weakness, and He brought about just the right series of events, measured to my faith and designed for my maximum benefit.

How can we lose, trusting a God like that?

Judging among the Gods

"God stands in the congregation of the mighty; He judges among the gods."

Psalm 82:1

The term “gods” in the verse above refers to God’s people, not to the idols of heathen nations. The Lord said to Israel, a few verses later, “I have said, ‘You are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High’” (Ps. 82:6). Jesus, himself, even quoted that verse to show that God consider His children to be “gods” (Jn. 10:34-36).

Asaph wrote this Psalm. He was a prophet and he was a leader of the Levitical singers in David’s time. In saying that God is the One who judges among the gods, Asaph was saying that only God was capable of making judgments among His people. The world doesn’t understand God’s people. It doesn’t understand their experiences or their feelings, and so, it cannot rightly make judgments of controversies that arise in the family of God.

When Paul heard that a brother in Corinth had taken another brother to court, he was indignant. How could a judge in a human court reach a righteous conclusion concerning controversies within the family of God? He wrote (1Cor. 6:1-8):

1. Does any one of you, having a dispute with another, dare to go to court before the unjust and not before the saints?

2. Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you not competent to judge the smallest matters?

3. Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more then, mundane issues?

4. If then you do have mundane matters to be judged, appoint as judges men who are least esteemed by the congregation.

5. I am saying this to your shame. Is it really this way, that there is not a single wise man among you, one who is able to judge between his brothers?

6. Instead, brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers?

7. But then, there is already a fatal flaw in you, for you are filing lawsuits against each other. Why do you not rather suffer an injustice? Why do you not rather allow yourself to be defrauded?

8. Instead, you do injustice and you defraud – and do that to your brothers.

Paul knew that any child of God who runs to the world to enlist its aid against another brother is doing evil. In everything we are to do things God’s way or not do them at all. The foolish run to the world because they know that if they run to God they’ll find true justice, and that is not what they want. They know that God alone is able to judge among His children because He alone truly knows them, and they turn to the world, hoping that the world never really finds them out.

Talk

A few years ago, I received a phone call from our local newspaper. The reporter told me that she was writing an article about me that the paper would be running the following day, and she wanted some comments from me. She didn’t tell me exactly what was in the article, but she did let me know the names of two of the three people with whom she had spoken, and so I knew, generally, what to expect. But nothing could have prepared me for the shock of seeing the article in the newsstands the next morning – at the top of the front page! I suppose the editor had placed it “above the fold”, as they say, so as to attract as many buyers as possible with its spicy gossip.

When I read what the people in the article said about me, I could hardly believe such worthless gossip would be allowed in print. I knew that if I were an ordinary person reading that article, I probably would not believe all of it, but I would have to think that at least part of it was true. But there was no truth in it at all. And now that it was in the hands of tens of thousands of people, I was helpless to do anything about it. It was the worst day of my life.

Later in the day, I was on my face before God, asking Him how such things could be. Where was the sense of equity and balance that I had always assumed played a part in news reporting? I asked God how anyone could be so callous as to publish such false and humiliating material about somebody without first making sure those things were true. Did the editor of the paper have no feelings for my children or for the children of the wonderful, God-fearing parents associated with me? Those poor kids were now embarrassed to even show up at school. “God,” I pleaded, “How could one human do this to another human being?”

The Lord interrupted my prayer and said to me, kindly but firmly, “ How does it feel, son?”

I could not speak. I knew what the Lord meant. Just as those who would read the newspaper article that day would no doubt reach conclusions about me and the sweet and innocent people here, based on nothing but talk, so had I, in the past, judged others by the same measure. Even though He had just told me that I had done so, I cried out, “O God! Have I done that to others? Have I judged others based on nothing but talk?” Then, I earnestly repented for being influenced by talk, for forming opinions of others based on talk, for reaching conclusions about situations based on talk. It was an extremely humbling, but good, experience.

Still on my face before the Lord, I pleaded with him to help me never again let my heart be moved by talk. And I thanked him for having that slanderous newspaper article published so that I could feel the way I must have made others feel at times by making judgments without having real knowledge. I knew that God put that article in the paper to bring me to my face before Him. It felt at the time that I was reaping a thousandfold for my errors, but knowing the tenderness of God, He was probably being very merciful to limit it to just a few (there were a couple of others) degrading, lie-riddled articles.

But I received more than that from the experience.

When Jesus spoke to me, his words opened my heart to an understanding which I had never possessed. I saw how little anyone on earth really knows about anything, and how much the whole world is moved by talk. Talk-shows on TV, radio, or internet, are extremely influential with people, as are books, magazines, and the like – regardless of the veracity of their content. Men and women who have the ability to speak cleverly enough can earn millions over a lifetime with their mouth, regardless of what they are saying. Politicians who come up with clever, biting “zingers” against their opponents make the headlines, and those “zingers” are played and replayed on television because such crafty talk draws viewers. Eloquent talk sells. It may be that the policies of nations are formed more on the basis of talk than on genuine knowledge. Wars have been initiated on the basis of talk.

In response to this, I wondered to myself, “What does anyone know?” And the Lord showed me that no one knows anything unless the Spirit either reveals it to him or gives him the understanding of something he has seen or heard. No wonder Jesus warned us not to judge! We don’t know anything. Paul reminded his converts in Corinth and Thessalonica that when he came to them, he did not come to them with mere talk but with preaching that was with the power of the holy Ghost (1Cor. 1:4; 2Thess. 1:5). “For”, he told the Corinthians, “the kingdom of God is not in word but in power” (1Cor. 4:20).

The prophet Isaiah said that when Christ came, he would not judge anything by what he saw or heard with his physical eyes and ears (Isa. 11:3), and we are warned to follow Jesus’ example. This is why Paul taught that only those who are led by the Spirit are the sons of God (Rom. 8:14). Wisdom and knowledge come from God alone, and until He gives us understanding, we don’t even know ourselves, much less anyone else. Without God’s help, none of us understands anything we see and hear in this world, but Jesus suffered and died to make that help, the holy Spirit, available to us. The Spirit is a dependable guide for our feelings; it is the perfect judge, and it will save us from the foolishness of reaching conclusions based on talk.

It is a precious gift to have true knowledge, a right understanding, about anyone or anything. But such knowledge comes only from the Spirit, not from ourselves. Jesus is full of that Spirit of truth, and he will freely give it to us if we trust him. And if we walk in the knowledge that Christ gives by the Spirit, we will be among the very few on this earth who are not moved by talk.



Looking for the Answer

There was a man of Benjamin whose name was Kish
And he had a son whose name was Saul.

And the asses of Kish, Saul’s father, were lost.
And Kish said to Saul his son,

"Take now one of the servants with you,
and arise, go seek the asses."
And he passed through Mount Ephraim,

and passed through the land of Shalisha,
but they found them not.

And [Saul’s servant[ said to him,
"Behold now, in the city there is a man of God,
and he is an honorable man;

all that he says surely comes to pass.
Let us now go there.

It may be that he can show us our way that we should go."
Excerpts from 1Samuel 9:1-4, 6

There is a reason Saul and his friend went to Samuel to find the answer to their question. One obvious reason that those two young men went to Samuel for the answer is because of Samuel’s great reputation as a prophet. They didn’t visit the village blacksmith or the local midwife because they didn’t need their services. They needed a prophet. But there is a more fundamental reason than that. It was not because Saul knew Samuel had the answer; rather, it was because Saul really wanted the answer. Those who are sincerely looking for the right answer are always drawn toward the place where the answer really is.

Jesus said that EVERY person whose heart God touched and, so, really wanted eternal life came to him. Every one. Those who are truly hungering and thirsting for God’s righteousness do not go to the Koran because it does not lead people to it. They do not seek to be like Buddha because something in their hearts tells them that to be like JESUS is the answer. They do not feel drawn to a study of philosophy because philosophy is vain. They go to Jesus.

But the same is true of matters other than eternal life. It is true of earthly life, as well. I have seen many people over the years go to the wrong person for counsel, and the reason they went to the wrong person is because they did not really want to hear the truth about their problem. It happens all the time. They may make a show of sincerity by asking for advice, but instead of seeking God’s answer, they are, in fact, running from it. I have seen parents with unruly children, husbands with unfaithful wives (and vice versa), and others with personal problems, visit someone with no anointing from God, for the very purpose of not receiving godly counsel, and yet, at the same time, they congratulate themselves for having done the wise thing in asking for advice. But, you tell me. What’s the point in asking directions from a blind man?

Many years ago, as a young man in Christ, I received an unexpected phone call from a brother who wanted advice, he said, on the purchase of a car. The truth was that he did not want God’s answer; he had already made up his mind to buy the car. He was looking for approval, not advice. In fact, that’s why he called me instead of someone older and wiser in the Lord than both of us. Those elders were available. Why didn’t he call them? You tell me.

This self-willed brother did not realize that Jesus had me under his wing and was teaching me his ways. So, when I gave him the same answer that our elders in the faith (or even sinners with common sense) would have given him, he exploded and yelled at me, "It’s my money, and its my life!", as if I were trying to impose my will on him. I was stunned. He had called me! I didn’t even know that he had been looking for a car. But that’s how it often is with people who are given God’s answer when they’re trying to avoid it. He despised my fellowship with the wisdom of our elders, and in years to come, he would despise me openly for telling him the truth, just as he despised them then, in his young heart.

Until that phone call, long ago now, I had never experienced someone asking for advice but not really wanting any. It was a very bad feeling. Since then, however, I have learned that it is a fairly common occurrence. Be wise, my friends. Do not fall for the flattery of being asked for advice. Always ask yourself, "Why is this person coming to me? Do I have this person’s answer from God?" Those who come to you looking for counsel, but who are in fact running from the truth, may hate you if you surprise them with the answer they are trying to avoid. They may become bitter with disappointment when they learn that you are not quite as foolish and blind as they thought you were.

Do you really want God’s answer? Saul did, and he found it. And he found it because his sincere desire for the right answer led him to the person who had it. And if you sincerely want to know the truth, God will lead you, too, to one of His servants who has it, just as He did young Saul.

It Has Always Been That . . . uh . . .This Way

“As for me, my steps were almost gone;
my steps had well nigh slipped.
For I was envious at the foolish,
when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
. . . These are the ungodly who prosper in the world;
they increase in riches.
Verily, I have cleansed my heart in vain,
and washed my hands in innocency,
for all the day long have I been plagued,
and am chastened every morning.”
Asaph, in Psalm 73:2-3, 12-14

When we think of the reign of king David, we think of deliverance, righteousness and peace. David was a sort of second Moses to Israel. The previous king’s reign had been a tragic disaster. It had left the nation in shambles, spiritually , militarily, and socially. David restored the integrity of the faith to God’s people, and then God restored Israel’s integrity as a nation.

When we think about the time when Moses led Israel out of Egypt and through the wilderness, we think of purity of faith, righteous judgment, and joyful revelation of the true God. Moses boldly led God’s chosen people out of slavery and to the very brink of the Promised Land, as free and holy nation.

I could go on. There are many men and women in the Old and New Testaments whose names stir up thoughts of miraculous events, righteous acts of faith, and feelings of peace and joy. But in the main, that was not the experience of those men and women themselves.

David’s fellow Israelite, Asaph, was a high-ranking Levitical singer, and a prophet. He composed at least eleven of the Psalms, and he, like David, was used by the Son of God to speak mysteries concerning himself before he came to earth (Ps. 78:1-3 with Mt. 13:34-35). It was Asaph, not David, whom God used to reveal that the tribe of Judah had replaced the tribe of Ephraim as the head of all the tribes (Ps. 78:60-72). But Asaph’s psalms also reveal that sin as well as righteousness was prospering in Israel in David’s time. Asaph saw God bless many wicked Israelites, making them rich and happy; consequently, Asaph was discouraged. God wouldn’t let him get by with anything, and He blessed the wicked in spite of anything they did! According to Asaph, God chastened him every morning!

Of course, Asaph recovered himself. He went to the house of God, and something he experienced there opened his eyes again to the reality of the Final Judgment. He sobered up then and considered the eternal destination of the wicked, and the eternal destination of those who humble themselves to receive the chastening of the Lord. But Asaph’s recovery from foolish envy of the wicked is not my point here. My point is that even in the times when the men of greatest faith, like king David, who ruled in Asaph’s time, there was wickedness in Israel.

God said through the prophet Amos that, in their hearts, Israel was not worshiping Him when they followed Moses in the wilderness, but the god Moloch instead (Amos 5:25-26). And even in the days of the apostles, great wickedness existed in the midst of the newly created body of Christ on earth (e.g., Acts 5:1-11 and 1Cor. 5). We understand that the upright have always been in the minority among the nations of earth, but what is often overlooked is the fact that, most of the time, the upright in heart have been the minority even among those who belong to God.

That knowledge will act as a shield for our faith. It should encourage us to make our fellowship with God very personal and gain strength from Him to persevere in righteousness and faith regardless of how others behave. The “wise virgins” are they who are not discouraged by the unfaithful; they understand that ungodliness is among us, seen or not seen, and it will at times raise its ugly head, even in our own midst. All of God’s faithful children have had to deal with it, and they will continue to deal with it until the final purging of the body of Christ which will take place shortly before the second coming of Jesus (Mt. 13:40-43).

“Stammering Lips and Another Language”

“For with stammering lips and another tongue will He speak to this people.
To whom He said, ‘This is the rest with which you may cause the weary to rest,
and this is the refreshing.’ Yet they would not hear.”
Isaiah 28:11-12

God’s prophets understood that no foreign nation could conquer Israel unless God gave those foreign nations the power to do it. But God repeatedly did chasten Israel by giving foreign nations power to subdue them, and God’s prophets always knew that, too. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and every other true prophet who lived during a time when Israel was attacked from beyond its borders warned Israel that those foreign soldiers were God’s messengers and that they were not to be resisted. For advocating surrender to the chastening hand of God, some of God’s prophets were executed. The ones who escaped death suffered great persecution.

The heathen armies God used to chasten His people did not know that they were being used by God to rescue the righteous poor in Israel from their oppressors. Nor did they understand that God was also using them to bring rest to the land, for after Israel was given the promised land of Canaan, they never obeyed the law of Moses as they should have. Moses’ law demanded that the land itself be given a sabbath every seven years, and every fiftieth year, but hardly any in Israel had the faith to refrain from plowing the land during those times. Therefore, the land was pushed hard for personal gain, just as the common people in Israel were abused by the rich and powerful. By God’s design, when foreign conquerors took captives from Israel, they desired most of all the rulers, the upper class, the highly educated, the craftsmen, and the scholars – the very ones who oppressed both the land and the poor for their own gain.

At the end of 2Chronicles, Jerusalem lay desolate and all those of any rank or highly trained in any skill had been carried away into captivity in Babylon. In his description of events, the writer reminds us that God had foretold that this Babylonian captivity would last for seventy years, and that God would do this “in order to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of the prophet Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths, for as long as she lay desolate she kept the sabbath, to fulfill threescore and ten years.” God sent the vast majority of the Israelites away so that the land could at long last rest, as well as to give the poor of the land rest from the oppression of greedy rulers.

The foreigners whom God sent to invade Israel spoke languages that were foreign to the Israelites, and that is what God was referring to when He said through Isaiah, “For with stammering lips and another tongue will He speak to this people.” When Israel heard the words of the Assyrian soldiers, or the Babylonian soldiers, they could not understand what was being said. But it was God speaking to them! He Himself said so. And the consistent message of God’s prophets was that the sound of a language that God’s people could not understand was a warning sign that God was bringing rest to those few who truly loved Him: “To whom He said, ‘This is the rest with which you may cause the weary to rest, and this is the refreshing.’” But Israel, in the main, refused to believe the prophets who spoke the truth, as God said: “Yet they would not hear.”

Paul said that Isaiah’s prophecy of “stammering lips and another tongue” was fulfilled on Pentecost morning when the baptism of the holy Spirit came and God’s chosen few in Israel began to speak in tongues. He told the saints in Corinth that “tongues are for a sign to those who do not believe” (1Cor. 14:22). But for the most part, those who do not believe will not heed the warning. On the other hand, Jesus told his disciples that “speaking in new tongues” is one of the signs that “follow” believers (Mk. 16:17). In other words, the sign of speaking in tongues comes through those who truly believe. So, Paul and Jesus make it clear what our two choices are.

Either you do not believe God and the signs that He gives, or you believe God and are used by Him to produce that chosen sign as a warning to those who do not believe. Which side are you on? Are you among the many who see speaking in tongues as foreign and confusing, an intrusion into your land, something suspicious to be condemned and resisted? Or are you one of the chosen who believe and receive the gift of God, and who are then used by God to produce the warning sound to those who are lost?

“Line Upon Line”

“Whom shall He teach knowledge?
And whom shall he make to understand doctrine?
Them who are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breast.
For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept,
line upon line, line upon line,
here a little, and there a little.”
Isa. 28:9-10

The apostle Paul told Timothy that sound doctrine is something to which Timothy had attained (1Tim. 4:6). This tells us that full knowledge of the truth does not come with conversion, but must be diligently sought after as treasure hunters seek for their treasures. Hebrews 5:14 tells us that true knowledge of good and evil belongs only to the saints of God who are “of full age, to those who by reason of use have exercised their senses to discern good and evil.” This is how Timothy attained to sound doctrine. This is how he escaped the many pitfalls of false teaching that were lying in wait for his soul.

We learn from the book of Acts and from Paul’s two letters to Timothy that Timothy started in the Lord as a young man, and continued to follow the Lord as he traveled with Paul. There is no question but that Timothy faced the same challenges any young man faces in this world, the same temptations, the same persecutions for loving the truth and choosing to do good instead of evil. There is no question but that Timothy paid a price in scorn for loving Paul and sticking close to him. So close to Paul did Timothy grow that Paul called Timothy “my own son in the faith”.

In his travels with Paul, through the labors and trials, the joys and sorrows of the work of God, the tragedies of seeing some make “shipwreck of their faith” and the triumphs of seeing souls won to Christ, Timothy learned, a little here and a little there. In his evening walks with Paul, or in their private conversations as they traveled, Timothy asked questions about this or that line of Scripture, and listened as they were patiently explained. Over time, bit by bit, a little here and a little there, Timothy attained to sound doctrine. His patient pursuit of the truth bore fruit, and he was at last grounded in the faith. In Paul’s old age, Paul judged Timothy worthy of the great responsibility of attempting to salvage the souls of Paul’s converts in Ephesus, souls who were in danger of being led astray by smooth-talking zealots teaching false doctrines. Paul sent Timothy into a fierce battle, unconcerned that false teachers would confuse Timothy because Paul had watched Timothy attain to sound doctrine, line upon line.

If you want a place in the kingdom of God, if you want the honor of being entrusted with responsibility among the saints, do as Timothy did and pursue the truth relentlessly. The knowledge of God will not be attained to in a day, nor even a year, or two. But the reward awaits those who long for it enough to pursue it and to embrace it, regardless of the cost.

Destroyed From

But there were false prophets also among the people,
even as there shall be false teachers among you,
. . . .and they will bring upon themselves swift destruction.
2Peter 2:1

As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things,
in which are some things hard to be understood,
which they that are unlearned and unstable twist,
as they do also the other scriptures,
unto their own destruction.
2Peter 3:16

There is more than one kind of destruction found in the Bible. Of course, physical destruction is mentioned often in regard to cities and nations that were conquered, as well as in regard to this heaven and earth, which will be destroyed and replaced with “a new heaven and a new earth”. That is a physical destruction, by which things cease to exist. But the other kind of destruction is spiritual, and it is a fearful and sobering reality. It is a state of being destroyed, and yet continuing to live.

We all know that to be chosen and given a place in God’s kingdom is a precious blessing. Such a gift is not to be taken lightly, but to be nurtured by giving diligent attention to the word of God. But if a child of God, especially an anointed servant of God, becomes so unruly that the Lord removes him from his place in God’s kingdom, that person has, in a very real and fearsome way, been destroyed. This happened to the creature called Satan. He was “destroyed from” his place in God’s kingdom, which means, of course, he has no hope of recovering his place, his gifts and his anointing. The young prophet Ezekiel told us about that awful event (28:13-16).

First, Ezekiel spoke of the blessings God had freely given to Satan:

“You have been in Eden the garden of God. Every precious stone was your covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold. The workmanship of your timbrels and of your pipes was prepared in you in the day you were created.
"You are the anointed cherub who covers, and I have set you so. You were upon the holy mountain of God. You have walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.”

So, Satan was created with a gift for music (timbrels and pipes), and as Ezekiel would later say, “perfect in beauty and full of wisdom”. He was also anointed to “cover” something in heaven of great importance. He had access to some of the most holy places of God. What precious gifts! But Ezekiel continues:

"You were perfect in your ways from the day that you were created, until iniquity was found in you. By the multitude of your merchandise, they have filled the midst of you with violence, and you have sinned. Therefore, I will cast you, as profane, out of the mountain of God, and I will destroy you, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.”

We are never told what those “stones of fire” are. In his Revelation, John was caught up into heaven and described much of what he saw, but he never mentioned the stones of fire. But whatever the “stones of fire” refers to, it was a special place where Satan often walked, and it was a blessing for Satan to be allowed there. Ezekiel described Satan as “walking up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.” Not everybody in heaven would have been anointed to do that. It was one of Lucifer’s gifts from God. But Satan became proud and lost it all:

"Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom by reason of thy brightness. . . . You have defiled your sanctuaries by the multitude of your iniquities, by the iniquity of your traffic. . . . All they that know you among the people shall be astonished at you. You will be a terror, and never shall you be any more.”

Ezekiel was right. Every one of God’s people who see what God has done to Satan, see it as “a terror”. They are instructed in the fear of God, for they know that once someone has been destroyed from his place, he can never regain it. What a tragedy, to be created to stand in holy places, to be created with understanding, beauty, and an anointing from God, and then to lightly esteem those things and lose it all! That is Satan’s story. He was a fool. But it is not only Satan’s story. Jude warned the saints to remember the example of others who were destroyed from their places in God’s kingdom:

“Now, I want to remind you (though you know this), that the Lord, having once delivered a people out of the land Egypt, later destroyed those who did not believe. And angels who did not keep to their place but forsook their dwelling place, He has kept in eternal chains under darkness until the Judgment of the great day” (vv. 5-6).

Much of the Bible is a record of those who lightly esteemed their calling and their gifts from God, as well as of those who cherished their gifts from God. Jesus referred to the first group as “foolish” and to the second as “wise”. Peter said that the first group were to be destroyed from their place in God’s kingdom (2Pet. 2:12), but Paul described the second group as being “appointed to salvation” (1Thess. 5:9).

Witnesses

After we are converted, if we continue in the Word of God and grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord, it is unavoidable that we witness some who esteem their gifts lightly and who will be destroyed from their place. It is gut-wrenching to see precious children of God honored with a special place in His kingdom, and then to watch them destroyed from it. On the other hand, what a rich blessing it is to see others value the wonderful grace bestowed on them and who guard their gifts as one would guard “a pearl of great price”. Those who are “destroyed” from their place in God’s kingdom may continue to live in this world, and be content, just as the elders as Israel continued living among men after they unjustly condemned and crucified the Lord Jesus. In spite of their continued earthly successes, however, Paul said of them, “wrath has come on them to the uttermost” (1Thess. 2:16). They are destroyed, even though they may be blind to it. They may not come to realize what God has done to them until the moment they die, when their spirits leave their bodies and go down into hell instead of up to be with Christ.

Paul exhorted young Timothy to “lay hold on eternal life”, even though Timothy already had eternal life dwelling in him. But the wise apostle told his beloved Timothy to “lay hold” on the life that he already had because Paul understood that if Timothy lightly esteemed his place in God’s kingdom, he could be destroyed from it. Paul remembered that Lucifer, the fallen angels, Balaam, Esau, Ahithophel, Joash, Judas, and a multitude of other unwise children of God had been destroyed from their places. All of God’s wise children remember this, and tremble. In Psalm 65:4, David said to God, “Blessed is the man whom you choose and cause to approach you, that he may dwell in your courts!” David esteemed God’s call on his life as the most precious thing on earth, and the reward for David loving God’s blessings on his life is that his blessings increased, and he was allowed to keep his blessings and his joys forever.

Have you been called? Have you been chosen to draw near to God through the blood of Jesus Christ? Have you been given wisdom from God? Have you been given a gift, or do you occupy a special place in God’s family? Cherish your blessings. The very worst thing that could happen to you in this life is for you to be destroyed from the place you have been given.

“What Have I Done?”

“I hearkened and heard, but they did not speak rightly.
No man repented him of his wickedness, saying,
‘What have I done?’”
Jeremiah 8:6

What God found among His people in Jeremiah’s time, He found in the times of other prophets. God would send His prophets to the people, telling each one something like what He commanded Isaiah: “Cry aloud! Spare not! Lift up your voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins” (Isa. 58:1). Isaiah did this, but a thoroughly backslidden people cannot see what God sees, especially what He sees about them. As Jeremiah would say in the verse following the one above, “My people do not know the judgment of the Lord” (Jer. 8:7).

At least seven times, God sent Malachi to His people to point out specific sins they were committing, but every time Malachi spoke to them about their sin, they responded to by saying to Malachi, in effect, “Why are you saying such things to us?” Malachi told the people that they were despising the name of the Lord (1:6), that they had polluted God’s altar (1:7, 12), that they had corrupted the priestly covenant (2:8), that they had profaned the holiness of the Lord (2:11), that they had made the Lord “weary” with their false doctrines (2:17), that they needed to repent (3:7), that they had robbed God (3:8), and that their words had been “stout” against the Lord (3:13). Yet, in spite of this very plain talk from God, the response from the people and their priests was that they did not understand how Malachi could say such things about them.

It is amazing that people who were so wrong were not able to see that they were wrong at all. It is almost impossible to believe that people who had fallen so far away from the righteousness of the Law could not understand that they had, indeed, fallen. But such is a real spiritual condition of some who wander out of the right way. David warned his son Solomon that such a blindness to oneself exists. He said to Solomon, “The way of the wicked is as darkness. They know not at what they stumble” (Prov. 4:19). But they “know not” because God refuses to let them know. Remember, all understanding is from God.

One of the reasons that it is a “fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” is that if a man provokes God by stubbornly continuing in wickedness, God has the power to blind him to his sinfulness, so that he cannot repent. This “hardness of heart” is what the Bible calls “God’s curse” (Lam. 3:65). Paul referred to it as “the uttermost wrath” of God (1Thess. 2:16). It is the most dreadful of all spiritual conditions among living men.

If you can see your own fault, you are being loved and called by Jesus. You are being shown grace from God that will lead to forgiveness and salvation if you take advantage of that light given to you by turning from the error of your ways.

“It was not he that hated me”

“It was not an enemy that reproached me;
then, I could have borne it.
Neither was it he that hated me that
did magnify himself against me;
then, I would have hid myself from him.
But it was you, a man my own equal,
my guide, and my acquaintance.
We took sweet counsel together,
and walked unto the house of God in company.”
Psalm 55:12-14

Judas did not hate Jesus.

The Earth

“Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things?
Shall the earth be brought forth in one day?
Or shall a nation be born in one step?”
Isaiah 66:8

Psalm 19 tells us that the heavens already declare the glory of God. But, in Revelation 12, we are told that before the end of this age, God will use the heavens to proclaim the story of His Son as never before. The Father’s use of the heavens to proclaim the gospel of His Son to all mankind was foretold by Jesus. In Matthew 24:30, he said that shortly before he would return to earth, all people would see “the sign of the Son of man” in heaven. He said in Luke 21:25 that there will be “signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars” just before his return. This is what John saw in Revelation 12.

God will arrange the starry host in such a way that men around the world will see a woman “clothed with the sun” (Israel) give birth to a child “who is to rule all nations with an iron rod” (Jesus). Then men will see in the sky a fierce beast (Satan) attempt to destroy the child, but the child ascends into heaven (Jesus’ ascension to the Father in Acts 1). The story that the Father will tell in the sky will continue to show that the devil grew so angry and full of hatred against the Son that he determined to kill the woman (destroy Israel) because through her, the Messiah came. John described the devil’s attempt to destroy the woman with these words:

15. Then the serpent spewed out of his mouth water like a river after the woman, to sweep her away with the flood,
16. but the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the river that the dragon spewed out of his mouth.

Now, in Revelation, the “peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and languages” are represented by the sea (Rev. 17:15). On the other hand, God’s people are referred to as “the earth”. This is “the earth” that “opened its mouth and swallowed up the river that the dragon spewed out”. In other words, what has prevented the “peoples, and multitudes, and nations” of this world from destroying Israel is the influence of God’s New Testament saints on the world, with their prayers and their love for Israel, through whom the Savior came. As this world continues in its downward moral and spiritual spiral, it will become increasingly hostile against the nation of Israel, in spite of the presence of the saints, but to date, that little, besieged nation has survived because the people who love Jesus are still here, praying for her.

The Second Beast

Another prophetic significant mention of “the earth”in reference to the saints of God has to do with the figure in Revelation called “the second beast”, or, the “false prophet”, the man who will work with “the Beast”, that great world ruler who will gather all the nations of the world against Israel (Rev. 16:13-14, 16). We are told that this Beast is a man who arises out of the sea (Rev. 13:1). That means that the Beast will be a man who does not belong to God’s family. He will simply be a man of the world. However, the False Prophet does not come from the sea; he does not come from the “peoples, and multitudes, and nations” of this world. Rather, he comes from “the earth” (Rev. 13:11). In other words, he is a child of God, and obviously one who had been, at some point in his life, chosen and anointed with power by Christ. In other words, the character called “the False Prophet” will be a backslidden, Spirit baptized servant of Jesus Christ.

Brought Forth

The “earth” which rescues Israel with its prayers and influence, and out of which will come that second beast called the “False Prophet”, is the earth which Isaiah prophesied would be “brought forth in one day”. And that “one day” in which “the earth” of believers was brought forth was the day of Pentecost, in Acts 2. The Hebrew word for “brought forth” in that verse from Isaiah refers to the suffering of birth pangs by an expectant mother. Here is the whole verse again:

Isaiah 66
8. Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Shall the earth be brought forth in one day? Or shall a nation be born in one step?

We are imagining nothing in saying that this verse refers to the new birth which the followers of Jesus experienced on the day of Pentecost. Isaiah 66 is filled with clear references to the New Testament people of God, including the holy Ghost being given to men.

The Parables

Many of God’s parables in both the Old and New Testaments refer to God’s people being expected to “produce fruit” or some such thing. In Isaiah 5, God’s saints are His vineyard; in Matthew 13, God’s saints are His wheatfield. Hosea pleads with God’s people to “Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy. Break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord, until He come and rain righteousness upon you” (Hos. 10:12). In Hebrews 6:7-8, the man of God warns all the saints that although God’s rain falls on all His people, not all of His people are the same kind of soil and that, while some produce fruit to His glory, others bear thorns, “whose end is to be burned”:

Hebrews 6
7 For the earth which drinks in the rain that comes often upon it, and produces usable herbs for them by whom it is dressed, receives blessing from God:
8 But that which bears thorns and briers is rejected, and is close to being cursed; whose end is to be burned.

Finally, in the parable which Jesus said must be understood before any other parable can be understood, Jesus said that, concerning the kingdom of God, there are four kinds of soil. Each one of us, spiritually speaking, is one of those four kinds of soil into which the Word of God has been sown. What kind of fruit are we bearing?

The False Prophet, the servant of Satan and the Beast, was the kind of soil that, at first, bore great fruit, but then, near the harvest, it all turned bitter. May God help us to be the kind of earth that, with patience and understanding, bears good fruit until the end.

Going Nowhere

“Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines.

For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace.”

Hebrews 13:9

“But the God of all grace, who hath called us

unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus,

after that ye have suffered a while,

make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you.”

1Peter 5:10

The Lord showed us through Sister Sandy a few years ago that man’s thinking is backwards, and the Lord reminded me recently of just how backwards man’s thinking is. Not long ago, the saints who gather here had the opportunity to interact with a large number of other saints, and non-believers as well. Among those whom we met was a pastor named James. After he had gotten to know the people here, he made the comment to someone that he wished he could get his congregation to the place where we are. Brother James meant this sincerely, and we all pray for him as he continues to try to do good for the souls over whom God has appointed him. But as I thought on his comment, the Lord showed me how backward from the mind of Christ that kind of thinking really is.

The truth is that we, as a body of believers, have not “gotten anywhere” since we got into Christ. That is what makes God’s obedient children seem to be so different. The truth is that when we were brought into the family of God by the Spirit, we just didn’t go anywhere else. People in this world are always trying “to get somewhere”. But Paul said, “As you have received the Lord Jesus, so walk ye in him.” In other words, just live in the Spirit once you have received it. Don’t go anywhere.

People who backslide from Christ are always those who “go somewhere” after they have entered into the kingdom of God. Mentally, they go somewhere without Christ leading; spiritually, they get carried off with some “wind of doctrine”, either “doctrines of demons” or some “good idea” of men. Jesus said, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, you shall ask what you will, and it shall be done unto you” (Jn. 15:7). In other words, don’t worry about “getting somewhere” once you are in Christ. Just abide in him. Once you get there, just abide in him. Don’t go anywhere. Let him travel. If you’re abiding in him, you’ll go with him. He’ll take you wherever he wants you to go. But don’t you go anywhere.

As your pastor, I’m not trying to get you anywhere. I’m trying to teach you to “be still and know that He is God”; I’m trying to teach you to be “content with godliness” and rest in Christ. Abide in Him! That’s where the joy is; that’s where the peace is; that’s where the truth is; that’s where the light is; that’s where salvation is and will be. Let’s don’t go anywhere.

Now, if you get to where you really are satisfied with God and don’t want to go anywhere, and will not go anywhere, regardless of the attitude of those around you, then you are what the Bible calls “established” and “rooted”. If you are rooted, you’re not going anywhere. Winds can blow, rains can come, and you will stay right there and abide in him. That’s what the truth about Christ does for the soul. It gets you to where you don’t go anywhere. As a matter of fact, you get so full of truth, there is nowhere to go.

So, what our dear Brother James was really wanting for the sheep of God was to get them content with the life that God first gave them when He brought them into His kingdom, and to help them abandon the false doctrines and the Christian ceremonies which moved them from the “simplicity which is in Christ.” It is my obligation to exhort you not to be beguiled by and attracted to vain imaginations and vain dreams of “getting somewhere”, and to help you get rooted in Christ so that you are not moved by any earthly thing away from the will of God.

Near the end of his life, Paul said that in every city through which he passed on his way to Jerusalem, the Spirit prophesied through various believers of great persecution that was awaiting him when he reached the holy city. “But,” he said, “none of these things move me.” Paul wasn’t going anywhere. He was being carried by Jesus wherever he went, and that’s where we want to be. That’s being “rooted and grounded” when we, of ourselves, don’t go anywhere, and Jesus does all the traveling. That’s being “led by the Spirit”. You are not being led by the Spirit unless you are carried by the Spirit in every situation you face. That’s the only way the Spirit leads. It moves and you are carried to wherever you go. You don’t go anywhere.

We here are not trying to get anywhere. We’ve already been taken by Christ to where we want to be. Paul said we are “complete in him”, and spiritual growth is nothing more than growing in the knowledge of how complete we are, once we are in him. Christ has taught us simply to live, and to resist the winds that blow through the vineyard of God, the fads and fashions that come and go, the styles and spiritual traditions that have started and that move people away from Christ.

It’s been that way from the beginning. In the 1960's and 70's, the “charismatic movement” came and went. Some of us were young in the Lord, but we watched the whole thing and were not carried off by it because we were instructed by those who were established and had no desire “to get somewhere”. They were simply happy in Jesus. And, if you are really happy in Jesus, where is there that you want to go? What is there that you want to become, other than what he has made you? Walking in the light with Jesus is like one of the poets said: “Trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home.” If you come from God, you’re in God. And when you come from God, you haven’t gone anywhere. You’re still in Him.

“There was a man sent from God whose name was John.” This John the Baptist was from God and in God. When he came preaching to Israel, he had gone nowhere from God because God sent him and God was with him. If you’re sent from Him, you’re in Him. And He’s right there. He’s carried you to wherever you are. And, He has carried us to where we are. And, until He moves again, we’re going to sit right here. I don’t have any ambition. No ambitions. No dreams of the future. Right now is pleasant enough. Jesus is good enough. What he really does is better than anything I’ve ever dreamed, anyway.

I had an incredible dream several years ago. I was in a battle, on the main line, and the enemy had come against us. Somehow, we ended up in hand- to- hand combat, and an enemy soldier had me on the ground and was choking me to death. I was struggling against him with all my strength, and then, I opened my eyes – and it was Jesus! I realized immediately that my real struggle was not against him but against my own fleshly will. I knew that if I wanted to live forever, I would have to force my body not to resist Jesus in his attempt to kill me; that is, to kill my old sinful nature. Jesus wasn’t really my enemy. He was trying to put my real enemy to death, the evil nature that is in my flesh. He was trying to get me out of the way, so that he could give me his kind of life!

The men in the New Testament who began to teach that the Spirit did not confess when Christ came into the flesh were described by John. And do you know what John said about them? He said that they went somewhere. He said, “They went out from us.” Those men “got somewhere” in this world, and in time, they persuaded almost all of God’s children in the world to go somewhere with them. But when they did, they left Christ behind and invented a religion of their own, the abomination called “Christianity”.

One of the biggest criticisms my father ever got concerning me was that he was keeping me from “getting somewhere.” People would tell him all the time, “You’re ruining John. He could have a great career as a pastor somewhere. He could get somewhere.” But they did not understand that I already was somewhere because I was in Christ. They did not esteem where Christ had put them enough to realize that they were somewhere too, somewhere good, and holy, and eternal. My father taught me and the rest of his flock to be content with godliness, to live in the Spirit, and to wait on God. Why would I want to go somewhere else? What was wrong with what God had done? What was incomplete about the work of Christ in me? There was already so much spiritual food being given to me that I could not eat it all. All I had to do was to eat, and grow in Christ, and be satisfied. What Christ was giving me would satisfy my soul completely if only I ate enough of it. When you stop eating is when you get hungry. Then, you begin to feel discontent and you start wanting to “get somewhere”.

When John described the men who began to teach false doctrine among the saints, he not only said, “They went out from us”; he also said, “They were not of us, for if they had been of us, they would have stayed with us.” In other words, those men would have stayed where John stayed spiritually. They would have stayed where he was in Christ. They would have continued to walk in peace with John and the other apostles in the Spirit. This whole world is pushing you to “get somewhere”, to “be somebody”, because the whole world is miserable. And it is miserable because it refuses to eat the spiritual food Jesus is offering. Many of God’s saints are swept up in that ungodly attitude. The whole world lies in wickedness and is dissatisfied, but Jesus will satisfy you. He will satisfy your soul if you will only open your mouth and eat the spiritual food he is offering you.

Let’s stay where Christ has put us. Let’s blossom in the place where he has planted us. Let’s be content and thankful and grow in the knowledge of who and where we are. If we do that, we will not succumb to the pressure of the flesh to strive to “get somewhere” and “be somebody” because we will realize that who and where we already are in Christ is all we will ever need.

Sowing While You Reap

“Why should I fear in the days of evil,

when the iniquity of my heels shall compass me about.”

Psalm 49:5

Paul was speaking from experience when he told the Galatians (6:7), “Do not be deceived; God is not mocked. For whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap.” Paul had sown some bad seed in his youth by persecuting the saints of God. In Acts 26, when he stood before King Agrippa, he confessed that he did many things “contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth” (vs. 9). He said that he locked up many of the saints in prison and that “when they were put to death, I gave my voice against them” (vs. 10). He confessed the he “punished them often in every synagogue, and compelled them to blaspheme; and, being exceedingly mad against them, I persecuted them even unto foreign cities” (vs. 11).

Paul reaped all the pain and suffering he inflicted on God’s people, but because of the love and the wisdom of God, his reaping of those sins was at the same time his sowing of seed for a better resurrection. Comparing himself to others who labor for the Lord, Paul said he was (2Cor. 11):

23 In labors more abundant, in prisons more frequently, in stripes more numerous, in deaths often.

24 Five times, I received forty lashes minus one at the hands of Jews;

25 three times was I beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I was shipwrecked; a day and a night I have spent in the deep;

26 on frequent journeys, in dangers on rivers, in dangers of bandits, in dangers from the Jews, in dangers from the Gentiles, in dangers within cities, in dangers in the wilderness, in dangers on the sea, in dangers among false brothers,

27 through toil and hardship, through frequent sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in the cold and nakedness;

28 besides the things I leave unmentioned, the daily responsibility upon me, taking care of all the congregations.

Paul reaped every ounce of pain he had inflicted on the innocent children of God before he was converted, and yet, all his reaping was transformed by the love of God into a sowing of good seed that would yield eternal life.

Job had similar thoughts. In the time of his deepest agony he cried out to God, “You are making me possess the iniquities of my youth” (Job 13:26b). In the beginning of the book of Job, we are told that Job was “perfect and upright”; a man who “feared God and eschewed evil” (Job 1:1). But Job had sown some evil seed in his youth, and he reaped it in a multiplied form. At the same time, however, he was being used in a great way to bring glory and honor to God by reaping what he had sown in his younger years.

You are going to reap the sins of your youth. Don’t be fooled. Nobody “gets by”. But if you will commit your life to Jesus, your reaping of those sins will be transformed by your heavenly father into a sowing of good seed for a better resurrection. And that is why David did not fear “the days of evil, when the iniquity of my heels compass me about.” How good God is, to use even our reaping of past sins for our blessing!

If you have sown bad seed in years passed, look to Jesus. If you trust him, he will make you thankful for every time that you reap what you have sown, even if that reaping brings tears. Those kinds of tears, God keeps in a bottle (Ps. 56:8). And He will turn them all to joy “in the morning”. David explained it this way: “His anger endures but a moment; in His favor is life. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning” (Ps. 30:5).

Who Is On The Lord’s Side?

And when Moses saw that the people were naked
(for Aaron had made them naked to their shame among their enemies)
then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said,
“Who is on the Lord’s side?”
Exodus 32:25-26

When Israel made the golden calf at Mount Sinai, they carried out their worship of the beast with rituals of drunken nakedness. The disgrace brought on the name of the Lord was so great that God demanded immediate death for the participants. Moses, furious, stood at the gate of the camp and cried, “Who is on the Lord’s side!” Men from the tribe of Levi responded to Moses and came with their swords to offer themselves to the Lord. Moses then commanded them to go into the camp and to slay whomever they met, man, woman, boy, or girl, without regarding age or relation. Over three thousand were mercilessly slaughtered before God told Moses to call off his Levite avengers.

Moses’ love for God was demonstrated in his zeal against those who had perverted the faith and turned to idols after experiencing God’s power and revelation. He was indignant. He was as insulted and angry as he would have been if the offense had been against himself instead of against God. That’s how close his heart was intertwined with the heart of God. No one could despise God without Moses feeling despised. And that is how close to God every truly godly person has felt since the beginning of the world.

Jesus said that if our brother sins and then repents, we must forgive, even if he sins and repents 500 times a day. He did not, however, command us to forgive anyone who sins and does not repent. Quite the contrary, Paul commanded us to WITHDRAW OURSELVES from every brother who lives contrary to the will of God and brings a reproach on the name of the Lord Jesus:

2Thessalonians 3
6. Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw yourselves from every brother that walks disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us.

But Paul did not have to give that commandment to anyone who truly loved God because they were already withdrawn from brothers and sisters in Christ who forsook God’s commandments. No one who truly loves God can bear to keep company with those who have turned away from righteousness because it is too painful to “hang out” with people who have brought disgrace on the Lord and the family of God.

David loved God. And it was his deep love of God that made him cry out, “Do I not hate those who hate you? And am I not grieved with those who rise up against you? I hate them with perfect hatred! I count them as my enemies” (Ps. 139:21-22).

When Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, became a companion to Israel’s weak-willed king Ahab and his wife Jezebel, God sent him a message by one of His prophets:

2Chronicles 19
2. Jehu the son of Hanani the seer went out to meet him, and said to king Jehoshaphat, “Should you help the ungodly and love those who hate the Lord? Therefore, wrath is upon you from before the Lord.”

Jehoshaphat was a good man, but terribly naive. And because of his friendship with fellow Israelites who had forsaken the right ways of God, who were unequally yoked in marriage to foreigners, who were worldly and proud, the little kingdom of Judah suffered horribly as soon as Jehoshaphat died. Because of Jehoshaphat’s friendship with those who had turned back from following after God, the holy line of kings who came from David was almost eradicated from the earth. Because Jehoshaphat embraced wicked, backslidden souls as his friends, those same wicked people seized power in little Judah and murdered all Jehoshaphat’s family, and all of David’s descendants, except for one infant, Joash, who was rescued from the slaughter but his nurse and hidden in the temple by the high priest, Jehoiada.

David hated the company of the wicked because he loved the presence of God. “Depart from me, you evildoers,” he cried out, “for I will keep the commandments of my God (Ps. 119:118). He could not bear the company of the wicked because he was so thankful for the mercy God had shown to him: “Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity; for the Lord hath heard the voice of my weeping” (Ps. 6:8). David did not feel as he did because he was an Old Testament figure, and everything has changed now. He felt that way because he truly loved God. God described David as a man after His own heart (1Sam. 13:14). Has God’s heart changed? I don’t think so. He said, “I am the Lord; I change not!”(Mal. 3:6).

Don’t even try to excuse your friendship with the wicked by calling it love. It won’t hold up in God’s court. To love and to help those who have been loved by Jesus and then brought his name into disgrace is no virtue. Jesus will cast into eternal fire those whom he washes from sin but then who despise him. The word of the Lord to you today is this: If you love God, you will forgive and embrace every fallen brother who repents and turns from his sin, every time. But if you forgive and embrace those who have sinned and not repented, you encourage them in their disgracing of the Savior, and you make yourselves, as their companion, an enemy of Christ.

Just recently, I was shown pictures of saints who think they are acceptable to God. They were publicly feasting with other saints who have fallen from all purity, into open fornication and other wickedness. It was impossible to tell by those pictures who was happier to be there in that celebration, the rebels against God or the ones who are maintaining an appearance of righteousness in the assembly of the saints. The disrespect to Jesus that they all were showing was heart-breaking, some of them were disgracing Christ because it is their normal way of life now to disgrace him, but others by frolicking with those foolish, fallen people.

It made me ashamed to know any of them, and I cried out in my spirit, “Who is on the Lord’s side?”