For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    Plan for the future and make the preparations to meet your needs before taking the time to make yourself comfortable.

    It is human nature. Time and again, we turn from God and sin. When we suffer the consequences of our sin, we turn back to God and beg Him to save us. All too often, our repentance was shallow and as soon as our troubles passed we returned to our sin. But God is gracious and merciful, He continues to offer His forgiveness and will welcome us home if we ever truly turn from our sins (and not just from their consequences).

    Paul writes about how our faith in God should change how we live our lives. Every time he writes about this, he follows a similar pattern. First he writes that we should completely avoid sexual immorality, lust, impure desires, and greed. Repeatedly, Paul lumps various sexual sins together with greed. In addition, he makes clear that greed is a form of idolatry. Greed is the worship of material wealth. The reason Paul emphasizes these sins is because they little by little fill our time so that gradually the efforts we make to do God’s will are undermined by these sins.
    I want to point out again how Paul lumps greed in with sexual sins. He writes about sexual immorality, lust, evil desires, and impurity. The latter two are not exclusively sexual in nature, but are certainly related to sexuality. Then he adds greed to the list. Greed is not a sexual sin at all, but it goes along with it. If we look at society around us we will notice that those who are caught up by greed are usually sexually immoral as well. And those who are caught up in sexual immorality are often greedy as well. These are sins which tend to travel together. It is worth making this focus because there are all too many people who want to separate challenging sexual sins from challenging greed. There are those who preach against sexual sins while ignoring greed, and there are those who want to ignore sexual sins while challenging greed.
    I try to keep what I write short, but I need to make one more point. All too many of us, in our attempts to call people away from the sins above give in to anger, rage, and slander. There is an entire second “constellation” of sins for which we need to watch out. These are all related to anger. We need to be careful not to give into them. We often forget that if we allow ourselves to be justifiably angry it can easily lead us into sinful behavior. We are called to work for the good of others. Anger encourages is to work for against the good of others. If we are angry with someone, we will seek to “punish” them. This will cause us to act maliciously, or say things to cause others to think badly of them, or do other things which detract from doing God’s will.
    Having written about what we need to avoid, Paul goes on to tell us what to do instead. If we focus on filling our lives with virtues we will not have time for the sins he mentioned. If we act with humility, kindness, compassion, gentleness and patience we will not be easily sucked into those sins Paul had just written about. We are not to pursue these virtues for their own sake. Rather, these virtues should grow out of our love for one another. If we truly love others we will treat them with these virtues. All together Paul clearly shows us how we can judge our own behavior and act according to God’s will.

    Oh how this passage strikes me as applying today. Those who are supposed to teach us about God’s word twist it to say what they want it to say. They offer superficial answers to problems which require hard answers. They assure us that there will be peace when there is no peace. They are proud of distracting people from the real dangers of the world, rather than being ashamed. The common people and the leaders are equally guilty. They lie without a second thought. They deceive and cheat one another and then wonder why the economy is doing poorly. The people have refused to obey God’s commands so the time is coming when God will punish those who are “circumcised” in the body, but “uncircumcised” in the spirit. Those who make a pretense of doing good while selfishly seeking their own interest will suffer.

For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    An honest answer is a better indication of care and respect than a kiss.

    The psalmist reminds us of the importance of teaching the stories of our past to each new generation. When I was growing up, my family, and many others in my church, had a book called “The Martyr’s Mirror”. This book was an account of Christian martyrdom from the first century through the 17th century. By reading this book I learned the price that many have paid for following Christ. Furthermore, I learned that they paid that price joyously.

    When we came to Christ we were figuratively circumcised in that our spiritual nature was cut away from us. In that sense we died with Christ when we were baptized and were resurrected with Him. Our sins, and our sinful nature, were nailed to the cross with Christ. Now, God has raised us spiritually with Christ to a new life. We should not allow people to convince us that we need to follow certain dietary rules, or observe particular rituals, or hold celebrations on specific days in order to be saved. The Gospel message is not one of “do not do this and do not do that.” The Gospel is not a set of rules which govern our behavior. Instead our behavior is guided by our love of God and of others.

    God has offered people guidance. He has told us to follow the old way, the good way, but people have responded, “No, we want a different way. We don’t want to follow the path followed by the godly men and women of the past. They were fuddy-duddies. We want to follow the new, cool path. We need to be culturally relevant.” God has sent us watchmen who tell us to respond to the sound of the trumpet, but people have declared, “We have more important things to do. We will not listen for the sound of the trumpet, let alone respond to its call.”
    God warns us that He is raising up an army in a far away land. That army will be a destroying army and it will march upon us. There is no force that will stand in their way. Yet, even now, there is still time to turn from our sins. There are those who look at what is happening and are saying, “That cannot happen here.” Do not be fooled. It most certainly can happen here. It will happen here if we, as a people, do not start treating each other with justice. God is calling us to stop exploiting foreigners (think about why the Chamber of Commerce does not want immigration laws enforced), widows, and orphans.
    Do you really think that you can cheat and lie, steal and murder, commit adultery and other sexual immorality and never suffer any consequences? All of those actions have consequences and if we do not turn from them and start doing good, we will experience those consequences. Let us look at what has happened to other nations which were once mighty. The consequences of their evil came upon them and they were destroyed. I will pray for the people of my nation that they may turn to God.