Tag: wickedly

2.p.  Leave your simple ways, and live, and walk in the way of insight.”

2 Chronicles 20:35  After this Jehoshaphat king of Judah joined with Ahaziah king of Israel, who acted wickedly. He joined him in building ships to go to Tarshish, and they built the ships in Ezion-geber. Then Eliezer the son of Dodavahu of Mareshah prophesied against Jehoshaphat, saying, “Because you have joined with Ahaziah, the Lord will destroy what you have made.” And the ships were wrecked and were not able to go to Tarshish.

Proverbs 13:20     Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.

Proverbs 9:6  Leave your simple ways, and live, and walk in the way of insight.”

Revelation 3:19     Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.

We are bound to make mistakes during our life.  They seem to be right at our doorstep knocking and enticing us to open up that door.  These door-knocking guests are either our sinful natured self or some other friend, colleague, or new acquaintance.  We have the choice to make once we open the door.

Do we let them in? When it comes to self we are told to take every thought captive and recognize it for what it is against the word of God.  We can only do this if our heart, mind, and soul seek and desire to intentionally humbly serve, honor, follow, obey, and trust God.  We spend time in His word with a hunger to know Him more and more so that we can honor Him more and more in every part of our life.

When it comes to a friend, colleague, or new acquaintance knocking we also have a choice to make.  We open the door and their intention is made known to us.  This is where we compare what is being said with and against the word of God.  This is where we need leading from and through the Holy Spirit to discern what we are thinking about doing or what is being asked of us.  This is where we lean not unto our own understanding but seek Jesus Christ to make it know to our heart and mind.  Many of Christians have gone down paths apart from God because they were blind, neglectful, or complacent with the word of God.

There is no substitute for time in God’s word.  Time in His word feeds us, directs us, gives us hope, strength, peace, rest, love, and courage.

We were bought with a great price, the price of our sin, with the payment of whipping, beating, and nailing to a cross of God’s only beloved Son.  We read where “for the joy set before Him he gladly went to the cross”  This was the price that was paid for us while we were yet sinners.  He did this to call to Himself those who would believe in sacrifice for our sin as full payment.  Though we know this I wonder if somehow we have forgotten the great cost that was paid.  Are we living as though we have been purchased?  Are we living in constant remembrance of the cost?  Are we living in such a way that honors and glorifies the one who paid the price?  This is nothing to take lightly or half-heartedly.  Christ deserves all honor and glory from His redeemed.  Anything short of this does not reflect the price that was paid.

If we keep this in mind then we surely would spend more time in His word so that we grow in understanding and knowledge of Him and how to humbly live in service, honor, glory, to Him at all times.

1.i. Therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way, and have their fill of their own devices.

1 Chronicles 21:9  And Jehovah spake unto Gad, David’s seer, saying, Go and speak unto David, saying, Thus saith Jehovah, I offer thee three things: choose thee one of them, that I may do it unto thee. So Gad came to David, and said unto him, Thus saith Jehovah, Take which thou wilt: either three years of famine; or three months to be consumed before thy foes, while the sword of thine enemies overtaketh thee; or else three days the sword of Jehovah, even pestilence in the land, and the angel of Jehovah destroying throughout all the borders of Israel. Now therefore consider what answer I shall return to him that sent me. And David said unto Gad, I am in a great strait: let me fall, I pray, into the hand of Jehovah; for very great are his mercies: and let me not fall into the hand of man. So Jehovah sent a pestilence upon Israel; and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men. And God sent an angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it: and as he was about to destroy, Jehovah beheld, and he repented him of the evil, and said to the destroying angel, It is enough; now stay thy hand. And the angel of Jehovah was standing by the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite. And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of Jehovah standing between earth and heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell upon their faces. And David said unto God, Is it not I that commanded the people to be numbered? even I it is that have sinned and done very wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done? let thy hand, I pray thee, O Jehovah my God, be against me, and against my father’s house; but not against thy people, that they should be plagued.

Then the angel of Jehovah commanded Gad to say to David, that David should go up, and rear an altar unto Jehovah in the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite. And David went up at the saying of Gad, which he spake in the name of Jehovah. And Ornan turned back, and saw the angel; and his four sons that were with him hid themselves. Now Ornan was threshing wheat. And as David came to Ornan, Ornan looked and saw David, and went out of the threshing-floor, and bowed himself to David with his face to the ground. Then David said to Ornan, Give me the place of this threshing-floor, that I may build thereon an altar unto Jehovah: for the full price shalt thou give it me, that the plague may be stayed from the people. And Ornan said unto David, Take it to thee, and let my lord the king do that which is good in his eyes: lo, I give thee the oxen for burnt-offerings, and the threshing instruments for wood, and the wheat for the meal-offering; I give it all. And king David said to Ornan, Nay; but I will verily buy it for the full price: for I will not take that which is thine for Jehovah, nor offer a burnt-offering without cost. So David gave to Ornan for the place six hundred shekels of gold by weight. And David built there an altar unto Jehovah, and offered burnt-offerings and peace-offerings, and called upon Jehovah; and he answered him from heaven by fire upon the altar of burnt-offering. And Jehovah commanded the angel; and he put up his sword again into the sheath thereof.

At that time, when David saw that Jehovah had answered him in the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite, then he sacrificed there. For the tabernacle of Jehovah, which Moses made in the wilderness, and the altar of burnt-offering, were at that time in the high place at Gibeon. But David could not go before it to inquire of God; for he was afraid because of the sword of the angel of Jehovah.

Proverbs 1:29-31    Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the LORD,  would have none of my counsel and despised all my reproof,  therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way, and have their fill of their own devices.

Numbers 20:12     And the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.”

Joshua 24:15   And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”

We read of Moses, David, and Aaron who lost sight of following God for a brief moment and were disciplined by God for their unbelief and pride which led them to dishonor God.  It is important for us to understand when God says I want your whole heart, mind, and soul, He wants them all of the time.  He wants our first thought in the morning when we wake and the last thought before we sleep and everything in-between to be God-honoring humble submission, God-seeking, God-glorifying, God praising, God following, God trusting, and God Obeying.  When we lose sight for just a fraction of our day we are swept away with thoughts and actions that do not honor God.  When we do these things of this world will rob us of service to God and our ability to reflect the light of Jesus Christ to a dark and lost world.

God disciplines His children in love and mercy.  We see where He withheld from Aaron and Moses, put to death people under David’s kingdom, and others He let them eat of the fruit of their way and be filled with their own devices.  This I would think would be the worst discipline from God – to be let go and allowed to continue in sinful ways.

Bright sparkling things of this world will distract us if we are not able to recognize they are of this world and not God-honoring.  They will disguise themselves in what seems appropriate and allowable but they are not.  The only way we can know of these worldly illusions and deceptions is to have the word of God in our heart, mind, and soul with an intentional choice to have it there every moment of every day.

139. For there is no one who does not sin

1 Kings 8:46   “If they sin against you—for there is no one who does not sin—and you are angry with them and give them to an enemy, so that they are carried away captive to the land of the enemy, far off or near, yet if they turn their heart in the land to which they have been carried captive, and repent and plead with you in the land of their captors, saying, We have sinned and have acted perversely and wickedly,’ if they repent with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their enemies, who carried them captive, and pray to you toward their land, which you gave to their fathers, the city that you have chosen, and the house that I have built for your name, then hear in heaven your dwelling place their prayer and their plea, and maintain their cause and forgive your people who have sinned against you, and all their transgressions that they have committed against you, and grant them compassion in the sight of those who carried them captive, that they may have compassion on them (for they are your people, and your heritage, which you brought out of Egypt, from the midst of the iron furnace). Let your eyes be open to the plea of your servant and to the plea of your people Israel, giving ear to them whenever they call to you. For you separated them from among all the peoples of the earth to be your heritage, as you declared through Moses your servant, when you brought our fathers out of Egypt, O Lord God.”

How do we know if there is sin in our life?  How do we know if we are active in our walk with God?  How do we know if our walk is worthy of honoring God? 

“If they sin against you—for there is no one who does not sin.”  “ Psalms 19:12    Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults.”  “Proverbs 20:9 Who can say, “I have made my heart pure; I am clean from my sin”? “Ecclesiastes 7:20  Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.”  “Isaiah 64:6   We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.”  “1 John 1:8-10 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

I fear that we are thinking we are active in our walk with God and that our life is honoring Him but His word is far from our heart, mind, and soul.  This is an intentional choice being made every single day to neglect His word, live for self, and give no thought about serving, honoring, glorifying, following, and obeying God on a deeper level each day. How can we say we are committed Christians and we spend little to no time in His word with the single thought of to know and understand Jesus Christ more and more so that we would honor and serve and become very aware of sin in our life.

Turning a blind eye or deaf ear to God’s word does not give us a pass on the sin in our life.   

109. The Pursuit of God

1 Samuel 20:1  Then David fled from Naioth in Ramah and came and said before Jonathan, “What have I done? What is my guilt? And what is my sin before your father, that he seeks my life?”

  Psalms 7:3-5     O LORD my God, if I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands,  if I have repaid my friend with evil or plundered my enemy without cause,  let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it, and let him trample my life to the ground and lay my glory in the dust.

Psalms 119:112    I incline my heart to perform your statutes forever, to the end.

1 John 3:21     Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God;

Psalms 18:21-22       For I have kept the ways of the LORD, and have not wickedly departed from my God.  For all his rules were before me, and his statutes I did not put away from me.

2 Corinthians 1:12     For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you.

Trials and troubles come into our lives.  We can take note of God’s word when He was angered and past judgment on people or nations.  Their guilt was evident and the action taken by God was righteous.  Other times, people were victims of the consequences of others actions.  This is why David is speaking like this.  What have I done?  What is my guilt?  What is my sin?  These are very good questions to ask ourselves when trials and troubles come our way.  Note the heart of David;  “I incline my heart.”  “I have kept your ways.”  “Your word is before me and I kept it close to me.”  “I’m committed to the end.”

Tozer wrote this in his book “The Pursuit of God.”  We pursue God because and only because He has first put an urge within us that spurs us to the pursuit. “No man can come to Me,” said our Lord, “except the Father which hath sent me draw him,” and it is by this drawing that God takes from us every drop of credit for the act of coming. The impulse to pursue God originates with God, but the outworking of the impulse is our pursuit (following hard) after Him.  All is of God.  God is always previous.  In practice, where God’s previous working meets our present response, we must pursue God.  On our part, there must be positive reciprocation if this secret personal drawing of God is to become an identifiable experience of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our life.  David said, As the deer pants after water, so pants my soul after thee.”

It would seem we have watered down and diluted the conversion of becoming a child of God.  Has it become mechanical and spiritless?  Has faith been diluted to the point where there is no shake-up to our moral life and no embarrassment to our self-centered, non-hungering and non-thirsting pursuit of God?  Are we in danger of losing God because of our lack of hunger and thirst for His word?  Have we lost sight of what it means to be a humble servant?  Does the lack of time set aside for His word and subsequent lack of knowledge and understanding give any indication of how non-existent our pursuit of God is?

Now is the time to assess your heart.  Do you hunger and thirst for His word, or are you eating and drinking the way of the world.