For today, One Year Bible Online links here. Well, it is the second day of the new year. I am sure that one of these days I am going to publish this blog before I catch the fact that I typed 2014 as part of the date.
Fear of the Lord is the starting place of knowledge and understanding. When we fear God’s discipline we begin the process of acquiring wisdom. Those who despise discipline also despise wisdom. They are immoral fools.
The rulers of the nations of this world do not want to be limited by rules laid down by God. They wish to be free to do as they please without fear of any consequences. They refuse to recognize that God laid down those rules because that is how He designed the world to work. Those who fight against God are destined for defeat because not only is He infinitely more powerful than anyone else, but He created the rules which govern how everything works.
When the wise men left, once more God sent a messenger to Joseph. Joseph took his family to Egypt to escape Herod. Herod then demonstrates both the reaction of the powers of this world to God’s actions and the futility of that reaction. Jesus is a threat to the powers of this world because He demonstrates that our first loyalty must be to God. The powers of this world demand that we give them our first loyalty and attempt to make our religion subservient to them. God will never accept that position and as a result there is inevitable conflict between those who serve Him and those who have power in this world. And as we see in this passage, every attempt by the powers of this world to stop God’s plans results in actually fulfilling them.
We often blame women in the form of Eve for original sin. However, Adam was standing right there when Eve had her conversation with the serpent. He could have, and should have, argued for obeying God. Instead, he merely stood there and allowed Eve to be convinced to eat the fruit and then, once she had done so, did so himself. One could argue that the original sin was a sin of omission. The original sin was Adam’s failure to stand up for what was right.
Ultimately, the serpent’s argument was , “What harm can there be in that?” All too often our response to such arguments is, “Yeah, that rule is just there to keep me from enjoying myself.” We learn to late that the rule was there to keep us from pain, even when we were told that was the case when the rule was given. I have learned that, even when I cannot understand how it can work that way, when God tells us that something is a bad idea, it is a bad idea.