Judges 17-18 - Part 3
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Judges 17-18
Saturday, December 29, 2018
Friday, December 28, 2018
How did it go, and how will it go.. in 2019? Thinkin' about King Saul and how he wasted so much time -- he failed and early on failed to inquire of the Lord. 1 Chronicles 10:14
So, how was your Christmas? Did you get all you needed or wanted?
Grateful and content! I feel amped and upbeat. Are you going to make any New Year's resolutions? Question for you. Are you going to follow Jesus this year or want Jesus to follow you? Sounds kind of crazy, but many people do that.. even asking Him to do that with so many words. We do what we want to do and sometimes we ask God to bless it. Been there, done that.
Are you going to inquire of Him for direction?
God chose to send Jesus to earth to save us from the penalty of our sins. But why did He do it the way He did?
Jesus submitted to the Father's plan; He chose to go with the Message that all people really need -- the Gospel. Need even now, and through this new year. The Spirit led Him all the way to the Cross.
"My soul magnifies the LORD, and my spirit rejoices in God my SAVIOR, for He has looked on the HUMBLE estate of his SERVANT. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done GREAT things for me..” ~ Mary, Luke 1:46-49 #emph.mine
Mary said, “Behold, I am the SERVANT of the Lord; let it be to me according to your Word." Luke 1:38a
Not a rebel or selfish. Mary submitted to and really loved the Word -- she was godly and blessed! Stoked! Let's all of the Word and live enthusiastically! She saw herself as a saved servant of God instead of being prideful about being chosen to carry Jesus to term. She pointed people to Jesus. She never wants prayer directed to her -- don't do it. Glorify God like she did.
All need to be forgiven, saved, and humbly obedient -- daily led by the Lord. You can make it right and inquire right now. How should we view Him, and ourselves in 2019 if God gives us really important directives and tasks? You know he has a good plan for you!
Thursday, December 27, 2018
"It's somehow gotten complicated and so confusing." We hear that a lot these days. So, why not make clear and uncomplicate things for this new year? “Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems men face.” ~ Ronald Reagan
Ever been in a relationship that somehow got complicated? Hate that. So, what do you do? You simply uncomplicate it.
Listen, the Bible helps with that. It is the most fascinating and spectacular Book -- the greatest read there is. Yep, that ever existed. Really great stories that equip and more! I ain't going to lie, it is. The best Book to pull from the shelves.
No book has been translated, copied, or read as much as the Bible. Cultists and other religious sort of people still twist and selfishly use it sometimes to do their own thing even within some so called churches. Strange -- it's not helpful, but there are some healthy Bible teaching churches you can find. And if the words of the Bible are taken at face value, within their context (so important), then good will come to this world. To you too!
As Jesus was saying these things, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore You, and blessed are the breasts that nursed You.’ But He replied, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.’ Luke 11:27-28
Now therefore, my sons, listen to me, for blessed are those who keep my ways. Proverbs 8:32
Got a struggle of some sort? Pray honestly from the heart. Let's take care of it while we can. Right now. Q. What beats understanding and doin' what the word of God says as a forgiven, regenerated person -- I mean while having the Author living as Lord on the inside? Zip, nuul, nada. Nothing does!
Hear it, God’s voice as you muse over the words in the Bible. Pray it -- Scripture in a non-spooky, practical sorta way. Why act hyper-spiritual? Rehear it. Study it. Ponder it and how to act on it. Memorize the words of verses or passages of the Bible. Live it. Be blessed by it -- God does that cuz He delights to see the truth of the Scriptures dwelling in you richly with all wisdom.. for His glory.
But He replied, ‘My mother and brothers are those who hear the word of God and carry it out.’ Luke 8:21
If you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. John 13:17
Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and obey what is written in it, because the time is near. Revelation 1:3
I say we wisely apply it instead of foolishly, the great principles found in the 66 books from 35 those authors. 5,000 years of history and every single human problem there has ever been or ever will be.. can be answered in the Bible.
So why aren’t students being taught the Bible? Why are Bibles still catching dust? Why aren't more Bibles on devices like iPhones? Why aren't parents being taught the Bible? Why do so many politicians and other leaders avoid it like the plague?
I just heard of another very creative artist who got depressed and committed suicide. Why? Well, cuz he ran out of Hope which is like an oxygen of sorts for people. So sad!!!
"For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might HAVE HOPE. Rom. 15:4 #Emph.Mine
We are now on the threshold of a new year. Read through the Book. And need some excellent memory verses to prayerfully meditate upon?
Here are 25 bonus truths on Scripture! No charge. : )
- “Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and deepens with our years.” -Charles Spurgeon
- “We are the Bibles the world is reading; we are the creeds the world is needing; we are the sermons the world is heeding.” -Billy Graham
- “We modern people think of miracles as the suspension of the natural order, but Jesus meant them to be the restoration of the natural order. The Bible tells us that God did not originally make the world to have disease, hunger, and death in it. Jesus has come to redeem where it is wrong and heal the world where it is broken. His miracles are not just proofs that he has power but also wonderful foretastes of what he is going to do with that power. Jesus' miracles are not just a challenge to our minds, but a promise to our hearts, that the world we all want is coming.” -Timothy J. Keller
- “It is mind-boggling to me that the Almighty power created everything I see; the Bible says that God created the entire universe just so he could create this galaxy just so he could create Earth so he could create human beings so he could create a family.” -Rick Warren
- “He does have surprising, secret purposes. I open a Bible, and His plans, startling, lie there barefaced. It’s hard to believe it, when I read it, and I have to come back to it many times, feel long across those words, make sure they are real. His love letter forever silences any doubts: “His secret purpose framed from the very beginning [is] to bring us to our full glory” (1 Corinthians 2:7 NEB).” -Ann Voskamp
- “When the world beats you down, open up your Bible.” -Lysa TerKeurst
- “The Word of God I think of as a straight edge, which shows up our own crookedness. We can’t really tell how crooked our thinking is until we line it up with the straight edge of Scripture.” -Elisabeth Elliot
- “Unless we form the habit of going to the Bible in bright moments as well as in trouble, we cannot fully respond to its consolations because we lack equilibrium between light and darkness.” -Helen Keller
- “The Bible is the cradle wherein Christ is laid.” -Martin Luther
- “What I see in the Bible, especially in the book of Psalms, which is a book of gratitude for the created world, is a recognition that all good things on Earth are God's, every good gift is from above. They are good if we recognize where they came from and if we treat them the way the Designer intended them to be treated.” -Philip Yancey
- “The Bible is the book of my life. It's the book I live with, the book I live by, the book I want to die by.” -N. T. Wright
- “I’ve read the last page of the Bible, it’s all going to turn out alright.” -Billy Graham
- “Put your nose into the Bible everyday. It is your spiritual food. And then share it. Make a vow not to be a lukewarm Christian.” -Kirk Cameron
- “The Word of God well understood and religiously obeyed is the shortest route to spiritual perfection. And we must not select a few favorite passages to the exclusion of others. Nothing less than a whole Bible can make a whole Christian.” -A.W. Tozer
- “The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.” -Søren Kierkegaard
- “The Holy Scriptures are our letters from home.” -Augustine of Hippo
- “We go from Malachi to Matthew in one page of our scriptures, but that one piece of paper that separates the Old Testament from the New Testament represents 400 years of history - 400 years where there wasn't a prophet, 400 years where God's voice wasn't heard. And that silence was broken with the cry of a baby on Christmas night.” -Louie Giglio
- “Don't fall into the trap of studying the Bible without doing what it says.” -Francis Chan
- “So great is my veneration for the Bible, that the earlier my children begin to read it the more confident will be my hopes that they will prove useful citizens to their country and respectable members of society.” -John Quincy Adams
- “Reading and understanding the Bible involves lots and lots of interpretation. Not just in light of the world and culture around us, but in reference to other parts of the Bible.” -John Piper
- “Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.” -Mark Twain
- “I am profitably engaged in reading the Bible. Take all of this Book that you can by reason and the balance by faith, and you will live and die a better man. It is the best Book which God has given to man.” -Abraham Lincoln
- “The more I have read the Bible and studied the life of Jesus, the more I have become convinced that Christianity spreads best not through force but through fascination.” -Shane Claiborne
- “Apply yourself wholly to the Scriptures, and apply the Scriptures wholly to yourself.” -Johann A. Bengel
- “I want to know one thing, the way to heaven: how to land safe on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach the way; for this very end he came from heaven. He has written it down in a book! Oh, give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God! I have it: here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be: “A man of one book.” – John Wesley
Wednesday, December 26, 2018
Got no time for loving the world and things here. Talkin' about worldliness -- I just hate the world system. I don't mean the world of people, not the creation (earth's nature and divine order with this world here), but the evil system of sin "the world system." You and I are never to love it because we love the Lord instead. We love people, His Church, and His good plan!
Father God, please restore, build up strong, rekindle that pure passion in side, that affectionate love for Jesus Christ in each of us today.
Why love the world or things in it, instead of loving the Lord, His plan, and people He created? I really love to meditate upon these verses too: 1 John 2:15-17.
“Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away and also its lusts, but the one who does the will of God abides forever.”
Lord, have your way with us so we will love all that You love and hate what You hate. Thanks for being our living hope! As we stand on the threshold of a whole new year, send authentic spiritual awakening and biblical revival. Start it in us, stir it up in our hearts -- in each one. Strengthen, quicken, edify, kindle, equip. Please fan into flames a passion for your Name. Do it again... cuz we really like to live red hot for You, Jesus! No time for lukewarm carnality, immature distracted worldliness, or some other icy cold non-endurance in 2019. Clothe us with power from on high -- let Your glory fall. Again. Have Your way -- wanna walk in Your Way!
Please know that God the Father’s attributes of justice and wrath aren’t ever in conflict with His love—they are rather a natural extension of His love.
He loves you perfectly, and because God loves perfectly, He also hates perfectly too. The two go together -- they are actually inseparable. To love perfectly is to hate perfectly as well. That is to say if you really love something, you really hate whatever threatens that something to destroy it. If you really love someone, you really hate whoever threatens that someone to harm or destroy. And the greater your love in you, the greater your hatred is. The more your good affection for what is right, the more your good disaffection for what is wrong.
That’s why Psalm 97:10 says, “Hate evil, you who love the Lord.”
Loving God right actually requires us to hate all that is opposed to Him and His Word. Unrighteousness won't do that.
Whatever it is that you love most will cause you to hate whatever is contrary to that unless you've somehow allowed something inside of you to become twisted or perverse. And the absolutely flawless.. always perfect love of God demands an absolutely perfect hatred of all those things which are contrary to that pure love. In our U.S. society today people have been taught to hate the word hate (and we are never to hate people or what's of God).
Let it sink in deep -- God loves perfectly, and He actually hates perfectly. He still loves sinners (like you and me) perfectly and He hates sin that destroys all those people He really loves.
God’s perfect love for His people is generous, it's excellent, it's relentless and it's lavish. He rightly expects us to reciprocate—not in scope, because our capacity to love is finite. Rather, He requires us to be single-minded in our pure affections and any divergence or distraction amounts to betrayal.
He is the Initiator and we are the responders. We love Him because He first loved us. For God so loved the world that He did something about it.. He gave what was so costly to Him... He sent Jesus. And Jesus willing left heaven and came here in love for us sinners. That's why we want to all out worship the Lord in spirit and in truth! There is acceptable biblical worship and then there is unacceptable worship today, but we will go with Christ and the former.
The divine perspective on such spiritual infidelity is basically spelled out in a verse found in 1 John 2:15: “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
That’s the love God hates -- the love of this corrupt world system involving the lusts of the eyes, the lusts of the flesh, and boastful pride of life. Those are the three areas where Christ was tempted when He was walking here. And those are the areas where we all get tempted in today. God hates sin, He hates that evil system of sin (the world system). How are you doing in your prayer life and righteous fight of faith?
Pray that you can hate sin and the world system to the same degree that Jesus does. Pray that you can love God the Father and righteousness to the same degree that He loves the Father. If you don't there is room for spiritual growth.
Believer, you indeed know our real enemies:
1,) The evil system of sin a.k.a. the corrupt World system,
2.) The old fleshly nature within, and
3.) The Mr. Lu-Cifer (the devil, the father of lies who kills, steals, and destroys. He's called Satan), a thug with his fallen angel gang.
So how is sin described in the Bible?
1.) Sin is defiling. It is not just an act of disobedience, it is an internal pollution. It is likened to filthy rags. Man, even at his best, is only doing what is essentially filthy rags.
In 1 Kings 8:38, sin is likened to sores that come from a deadly plague. In Zechariah 3:3, it is likened to filthy garments that cover someone. It stains the soul. It degrades man’s nobility. It darkens his mind. It makes him worse than an animal, baser than a beast. It is so defiling that, according to Zechariah 11:8, it causes God to loathe the sinner. And it even makes the sinner loathe himself. And you will remember, writes the prophet Ezekiel, your ways and all your deeds with which you have defiled yourselves, and you will loathe yourselves in your own sight for all the evil things that you have done.
So sin is defiling; that is to say, it stains and it pollutes. That is why Paul calls it the filthiness of the flesh. Thomas Goodwin, the Puritan, wrote, “Sin is called poison; sinners, serpents. Sin is called vomit; sinners, licking dogs. Sin is called the stench of graves; sinners, rotted sepulchers. Sin is called mire; sinners, pigs.” Graphic language to describe the pollution, corruption, and defilement of sin. It has turned all of the human race into defiled beings.
2.) Sin, as to its nature, is rebellious. It is rebellious. It isn’t just that you slip up and break the law of God. It is that there is in you a will to rebel. Psalm 12:4 says, “Our lips are our own. Who is lord over us?” So says the sinner. Jeremiah 2:31, “We are lords. We will come no more to you,” say the sinners to God.” Jeremiah 44:17, “We will certainly do whatever thing goes forth out of our own mouth,” say the sinners. Sin is so rebellious it is God’s would-be murderer. Sin would dethrone God and ungod God and replace Him with the sinner. Sin is defiling, but it is also blasphemously rebellious.
3.) Sin that it is ingratitude. It is, in its own nature, ingratitude. It is God, after all, who’s given us all things. It is God who gave us life and breath and food and beauty and joy and love. It is God who’s given us all the goodness of life, knowledge, wisdom, fun, laughter, skill, health, relationships. The sinner is literally engulfed with the goodness of God. But he abuses his privileges. He’s like Absalom. You remember the story of Absalom. As soon as David, his father, had kissed him and taken him to his heart, Absalom went out immediately after that and plotted a treason against his own father.
And so it is that the sinner who is kissed by God in the realm of common grace, who indulges himself in God’s graces and God’s mercies, turns rapidly to betray God by being only the friend of Satan, God’s avowed enemy. Sin is such gross ingratitude, and Romans 1 says it is characteristic of the sinner that he is not thankful to God.
4.) Sin is totally incurable - it is incurable apart from the Lord to answer your repentant pray to forgive you. Man does not have in himself the capacity to do anything about his sin. He is sin to the bone, and he cannot alter that. In Isaiah chapter 1, “Alas, sinful nation, people weighed down with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, sons who act corruptly, they have abandoned the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel. They have turned away from Him. Where will you be stricken again as you continue in your rebellion?”
Then he says this: “The whole head is sick, the whole heart is faint, from the sole of the foot even to the head, there is nothing sound in it, only bruises, welts, and raw wounds, not pressed out or bandaged nor softened with oil.”
It's so sick - sin-sick from head to toe and utterly incurable, like a leper. Jeremiah 13:23, says, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin color or the leopard, his spots? Then may you also do good that are accustomed to evil.” You can’t do anything about sin in your life apart from knowing Jesus Christ.
The great Puritan, John Flavel, said, “All the tears of a penitent sinner, should he shed as many as there have fallen drops of rain since the creation, cannot wash away one sin. The everlasting burnings in hell cannot purify the flaming conscience from the least sin. Not anything in this life and not anything in all of eternal hell could expiate sin from the sinner. Hell is where men pay an unpayable debt. There is no human cure for sin, not good works, not reformation, not education.”
And then we need to add that sin is deadly because the Bible says the soul that sins, it shall die. The wages of sin is death.
It’s amazing knowing how hard people actually work at sinning. This defiling, rebellious, ungrateful, constant violation of God’s law, which is incurable and deadly, is still the choice of men. Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. They pursue sin gladly.
Jeremiah 9:5 says, “They weary themselves committing iniquity.” They wear themselves out sinning.
Psalm 7:14 says "in pain, they bring forth evil. They literally bring forth evil with such commitment and devotion that they will pain themselves to achieve it."
Proverbs 4:16 says they can’t sleep unless they do evil.
Isaiah 5:18 says they "drag sin around like a beast pulling a wagon."
Ezekiel 24:12 says Jerusalem’s people weary themselves with lies.
People go to hell sweating, make amazing effort to sin. This is all they know. This is all they’re capable of. This is life. This is where they seek their pleasure and their fulfillment. Sin, then, as to its nature is defiling, rebellious, ungrateful, incurable, and deadly.
How many people are affected by sin? And the answer to that is everybody. All, Romans 3 says, have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Romans 3:10 says there is none righteous - no, not one. No one escapes sin - no one. The whole world lies in the lap of the evil one, says 1 John chapter 5. In fact, in Romans 5:12, it says, “Just as through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned.” The whole human race is infected with this virus. No one escapes.
What are sin’s results? What does sin do to us people? Well, it's clear what it does.
1.) Sin causes the Devil's evil to overpower man -- "Yes, it causes evil to overpower man. Man is utterly and totally dominated by evil. His mind is dominated by it. His will is dominated by it. His affections are dominated by it. All man can conceive in his mind is that which is sinful. He has a futile or an empty mind as regards righteousness. His will is polluted so that he will do whatever he wants to do. His affections are polluted so that he loves darkness more than light. It causes evil to literally dominate man.
2.) Sin holds all men under Satan’s control. Because all men are sinners, they are therefore under the power of the general, you could say, or the monarch or the king of the kingdom of darkness, Satan himself. They walk according to the prince of the power of the air, says Ephesians 2:2. The devil, then, rules the sinner because the devil rules the world system in which the sinner is held captive.
3.) Sin results in bringing man under God’s wrath. And the Bible is clear about that, it calls sinners, all people who are lost sinners, children of wrath. It says that God is going to bring about retribution on all lost sinners, and they will spend eternity in hell if they die in their sins.
4.) Sin subjects men to all the miseries of life. Because of sin, we have misery. That’s why Job 5:7 says, “Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward.” That’s why Romans 8:20 says, “The creature is subjected to futility.” That’s why Isaiah says there’s no peace for the wicked. That’s why Solomon, who had everything the world had to offer, could look at it and say, “Vanity of vanities, it’s all nothing.” It’s all meaningless, it’s all empty." ~ John MacArthur
Jesus Christ is the Father's only Solution for you and your sin. Sin really overpowers people, brings him under Satan’s control, brings him under God’s wrath, subjects him to all the miseries of life, and ultimately, number five, it damns him to eternal hell. Jesus, frankly, is personally responsible for the precision and the clarity which the New Testament gives us to the doctrine of hell. It was Jesus Himself who described hell with clear, unmistakable language - Matthew 8, Matthew 13. So that’s what sin does.
Sin is thee universal problem -- all people in all nations have sinned. ALL have. None are righteous, so says Romans 3. There is none good, no not one. Sin is to be ditched and avoided. The chaos from sin has really been seen in the earth more and more. Will things ever get better here on earth. Yes, there is hope in Christ--it'll get better here after the His Second Coming to earth cuz He'll thrash all his enemies that constantly hate Him, who have been too hard hearted to hear His good Message and repent. It'll get worse and worse here until Jesus comes again (even though there will be an awakening in the middle of the tribulation years with Jews turning to Christ and spreading the Gospel Message). But then it'll get far better on earth after Jesus returns.
Sin has essentially generated the cosmic chaos that exists in the heavens between God and Satan, between holy angels, between fallen angels, as well as between men and men and men and God. The chaos of the heaven has become the chaos of the earth. All of the realm of created beings has been devastated by the reality of sin. And we want to talk about its impact on human life. Sin attacks every baby at the moment of conception, and it waits, it lurks to embrace that baby fully when it leaves the protection of the mother’s womb. Sin rules every heart, it intends to damn every soul to hell.
Sin turns beauty into ugliness, wholeness into deformity, joy into sorrow, bliss into wretchedness. And that’s why the Bible in Joshua 7:13 calls sin the accursed thing. It is compared in Scripture to the venom of snakes and the stench of rotting death. Understanding sin for what it really is ..is critical so that we understand the need we have -- our great need for a Savior and His salvation from sin.
Now, just a few questions to sort of frame up the big picture. Let’s ask the question, what is sin? And the answer is simple, 1 John 3:4, “Sin is the transgression of the law;” that is to say, sin is any violation of God’s law - any violation of God’s perfect holy law. Sin is unrighteousness while the law of God affirms what is righteous. Any act, any word, any thought, any motive that violates God’s holy, just, and perfect law constitutes sin. It’s not a narrow category, it’s a sweeping and broad one.
And God has the right as God, as holy God, to establish what pleases Him and what does not. He is the authority. He set the standards for man to live by. He established what is right, what is wrong, and anything that God says is wrong constitutes sin.
Listen, it's a good day to ditch all that's evil, yes to over come evil with good by worshipping the Lord. The one Lord we really love (the Jesus of the Bible), and to start really hating the world system and the sin that Jesus hates.. even to the same degree that Christ hates the world system and sin.
