For today, One Year Bible Online links here.
Giving an honest answer is an act of love. If you truly love someone, you will not lie to them. Since we are called to love our neighbor (which Jesus defines as everyone we come into contact with), we should give everyone honest answers.
It is important to tell and retell the stories from the past. They can serve as a reminder not to repeat the mistakes made by those who went before us. While each generation must make its own mistakes, it is worth trying to learn from the mistakes of those who went before us. Let us teach those who come after us the mistakes which we made, so that they can avoid them. Let us not give up just because they have not listened to us before and have already repeated some of the mistakes we warned them about.
The people of Israel in the Exodus story repeatedly saw God’s mighty hand work on their behalf, yet time and again they doubted His ability to deal with the next hardship which came their way. This sort of behavior is not limited to the ancient Israelites, people of every generation have made the same mistake. Time after time throughout history people have experienced God’s miraculous aid, then when a new problem arose they complained and whined, rather than asking God what new wonder He was going to show them.
When we come to Christ, He cuts away our sinful nature and removes its authority to rule our bodies and lives. We do not overcome our sinful nature by rigorous bodily discipline. It is not by strict ascetic behavior that we are released from bondage to our sinful nature. The cleansing of our sinful nature does not happen by avoiding certain foods or drinks, nor by eating certain foods or drinks. It is not accomplished by following certain ceremonies or rituals. We should neither condemn others for what foods they eat or drinks they drink, nor should we allow others to make us feel wrong for those things. Following such rules makes us feel that we have earned our salvation and such is not the case. We do not become righteous by following rules and rituals. It is only by Christ that we receive righteousness through the Holy Spirit. We will not defeat our sinful nature by our own pious self-denial. Such things will only give our sinful nature another way to control us. It is only by surrendering our whole being to Christ that we can be freed from our sinful desires, our sinful nature.
When we chose a path for our life let us choose the old godly path. All too many people when it comes time to choose a path do not want to follow the old, tried and true path of godliness. They want to find a new path to righteousness. They think the old path is stodgy and boring. They want a path that is exciting and new. They want to demonstrate that they are better, brighter, wiser, more cool, more hip, more with it than those who went before them. Be that as it may, the old, stodgy path is the only one there is, if you want a path to righteousness. I will tell you that it may appear stodgy and boring, but it is more exciting than you can imagine. In order to discover that you need to be willing to travel down that path some distance. If you stay within sight of the other paths so that you can change your mind, you will never see the excitement which the old godly path has on it.
God has posted watchmen to sound the alarm when trouble is coming. Those watchmen are now calling out that trouble is coming, but the people have chosen to ignore their warnings. They rejected the idea that the watchmen God posted could tell them anything. People have become like the person who works in a building who ignores the fire alarm because they think it is just another drill. There is a reason we conduct fire drills. God has sent prophets to warn us before. As in a fire drill, people responded and turned to Him. The danger they were warned of never materialized, so they are convinced that it will not materialize this time either. They do not consider that perhaps the reason it did not materialize was because they turned to God.