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May 2021
It is not enough to simply declare oneself a Christian. This world is filled to overflowing with those who erroneously claim such a belief. Yet “belief” is not enough; belief is just the toe in the door. Belief is tissue-thin compared to true faith and trust. The mark of a true child of God and servant of Christ is not just belief, but life and words: Does one demonstrate, day in and day out, a devotion to and trust in the very Son of God. Does one live out a full-throated faith.
In Ruins
“And this house will become a heap of ruins; everyone who passes by will be astonished and hiss and say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house?'”
1 Kings 9:8
No voice breaks the stillness inside the musty dwelling.
No activity of late has left its mark.
Decades have passed since life was here.
What happened here? This was once a house, a home; a family dwelt here, children were raised here. The warm aroma of Sunday roast beef once wafted through its rooms, Saturday night radio once wafted through its rooms. Parents worked, children played in this house.
Once this had been a house filled with life, but what was once a home is now just a faded ruin.
° ° °
A journalist once penned an article in which she bemoaned the history of the Jewish people, to which she belonged. Her position, flippantly stated, was that Jehovah had paid a cruel trick on the Jews: He had, thousands of years earlier, selected them out to be His chosen people, but then permitted them to be invaded, sent into exile, dispersed around the globe, persecuted, annihilated, and generally abused ever since. What was the point of it all? If that was what He had in mind, why not just leave them alone? Where was the percentage in being the Chosen of Yahweh if this was to happen to them?
One mourns the appalling state of journalism when a member of the fourth estate hasn’t even sufficient curiosity to read the foundational book of her own people before making such comments.
God—the God, presumably this woman’s God—repeatedly makes it clear that He would shower blessings upon Israel so long as they obeyed Him.
“Now it shall be, if you diligently obey the Lord your God, being careful to do all His commandments which I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. All these blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you obey the Lord your God…”
Deuteronomy 28:1-2
But if they refused to hold up their end of the covenant, if they disobeyed, rebelled, worshiped other gods—transgressions all of which they committed, by the way, before the ink was even dry—then
“…all these curses will come upon you and overtake you: Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country. Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out… The Lord will send upon you curses, confusion, and rebuke, in all you undertake to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken Me… A people whom you do not know shall eat up the produce of your ground and all your labors, and you will never be anything but oppressed and crushed continually…”
Deuteronomy 28:15b-16,19-20,33
The God of Israel established a covenant with Israel; His agreement was specific and detailed: Live according to My rules and your nation will experience blessings unheard of in the rest of the world. But live according to your rules and your nation will be destroyed, your lives miserable.
And Yahweh was good to His word.
° ° °
For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.
Romans 15:4
Unlike the nation of Israel, America does not have a covenant with Jehovah. We are a nation born of faith in Him, but it is not documented in God’s word that He instigated our founding. Nor has He made us any promises. In fact, America is not mentioned at all, anywhere in Scripture—not even in the mysteries of the End Times. In the cosmic tapestry of God’s economy this nation is not even a footnote.
And, unlike with the nation of Israel, we have no evidence that God has turned away from us. But the evidence does show that, precisely like Israel, we are turning away from Him.
° ° °
What happened here? America was once a nation of morals, a principled nation. Children were raised in an environment in which decency was honored, not ridiculed, and character was rewarded. The picture of the fresh-scrubbed family attending church dressed in their Sunday best was not just common, but respected. Now it is the punch line for a sitcom joke. Even the idea of a healthy and sound family unit is sneered at. The concept of a father and mother raising their own children in a loving, supportive environment is considered dated, obsolete, certainly unrealistic, even offensive.
What was once a nation of decency and light is now just a fading ruin. America is now a place where the abnormal is being forced upon the populace as normality, where perversity is celebrated. Goodness and righteousness have become suspect. In America today not even the rule of man’s law is honored, and far less the rule of God’s law.
In America, God’s light is being extinguished. God and His truth are being systematically stripped out of our culture. His eternal precepts have become not just subject to ridicule, but are being systematically outlawed by the legal precepts established by a darkened society.
° ° °
But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does.
James 1:25
It may be too late for America. The days of this nation standing as a beacon of goodness, justice, and light may never return. The ruination of this country may never be reversed. America has no documented role in the chronicle of the End Times. By then we, as a nation, may no longer exist, or we may simply be of no consequence.
But that does not absolve the individual believer of his or her responsibility to stand unblinkingly and unapologetically for God’s truth.
It is never too late for the individual Christian to reject the dark, abnormal “norm.” It is never too late for the believer to be a witness for the light.
The blessings of a civic society are but chaff in the wind, compared to the blessings of holy God. The Christian is not beholden to the nation in which he dwells. The Christian is beholden to the King and kingdom to which he belongs: the kingdom of Christ.
° ° °
“Oh that they had such a heart in them, that they would fear Me and keep all My commandments always, that it may be well with them and with their sons forever!”
Deuteronomy 5:29
No Compromise
There is no negotiating with evil. Every day in headlines and stories of the press, in the infantile and corrosive comments coursing through “social” media, and in now rare face-to-face conversations between supposedly sentient human beings—in every fetid corner of society we have irrefutable evidence that healthy compromise is not possible with the pervasive darkness currently overwhelming this nation and the world. Evil will not be satisfied until it owns your very soul.
One does not bargain with Satan.
Given that, the Christian has no other course than to stand resolutely with his Lord. There is no benefit accrued to the believer who compromises his values, his beliefs, his faith, in a futile effort to get along with those who hate everything he represents.
° ° °
Epochs come and go. As King Solomon wrote,
That which has been is that which will be,
Ecclesiastes 1:9
And that which has been done is that which will be done.
So there is nothing new under the sun.
The hatred of this fallen world for followers of Christ may be worse today than it has been in our lifetimes, but it has existed, alive and well, for two thousand years, and has certainly been this intense many times before.
The Christian intent on living a righteous life is daily surrounded by anger, lies, open deceit, subterfuge, and enticing pitfalls. What is one to do?
Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.
1 Corinthians 16:13-14
“Can we all get along?” was the emotional plea of Rodney King as he stood before microphones and cameras during the explosive 1992 Los Angeles race riots. The violence and destruction had come after the trial and verdict of acquittal of the police officers that had been videotaped beating King during a traffic stop.
To answer the now-deceased Mr. King: No, we cannot. Whether it is strife between the races, between the poor and the wealthy, between warring nations, man will always fight against man. It is in our DNA; it is in our genes. We are born that way.
“And I will put enmity
Genesis 3:15a
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her seed.”
The die was cast long ago in the garden of Eden when the fall of man produced its first cosmic consequence: an enduring hostility between good and evil on earth. The battle had already been waged for some time in the heavenlies, since the fall of the beautiful, “covering” angel.
“By the abundance of your trade
Ezekiel 28:16a
You were internally filled with violence,
And you sinned;
Therefore I have cast you as profane
From the mountain of God.”
Satan—the name itself means “adversary”—and his “seed” would forever be in opposition to not just the Seed of the first woman, Christ, but His followers as well. Thus we have the inevitable and unrelenting battle of evil against good, good against evil.
Since man is born in opposition to God, with a sinful, depraved nature, he is born on the wrong and, ultimately, losing side of this cosmic battle. He is born, as it were, the serpent’s seed. But when he is reborn—born again by God the Father and God the Holy Spirit—man switches his allegiance to the winning side. He is now seed of the woman, through the sacrifice of the Seed, Christ, and now in a state of enmity against his former “father.”
“You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”
John 8:44
° ° °
The dramatic evidence in God’s word reveals the futility of playing both sides, of trying to have it both ways. If Satan cannot, mere humans cannot stand astride this divide. When the beautiful and highly favored cherub of heaven turned evil, he had to leave heaven and the presence of God. And when we accept the Holy Spirit’s leading and are born anew through the blood of Christ, we cannot remain the friendly familiar with our previous father, that dust-choked serpent. Though the cursed sin nature remains so long as we inhabit flesh, believers are sanctified in Christ, and have relinquished their place in the household of the enemy.
The condition of enmity between Satan and God, between Satan’s seed and the woman’s seed, between evil and good means that we must decide on which side of the divide we will dwell.
And there—in our interests, in our passions, in our devotion—we must remain. The time is past for compromise—in point of fact, there never was a time for compromise in the Christian era.
If you are, indeed, a believer, then determine to stand firm and live like one. Quit tap-dancing on the fence. Quit dallying with the camp that hates your Lord. You owe Him your very soul, so quit cheapening His sacrifice by renting out your life to the enemy.
Choosing
A Christian has no need of human philosophy… Where it happens to be right it will agree with Scripture, and is therefore unnecessary. Where it is wrong it will disagree with Scripture, and is therefore misleading. It has nothing necessary or reliable to offer.
John MacArthur
° ° °
Ultimately one must choose between the cross and the philosophies of this world. Most of us, even if a Christian at an early age, pass through stages where we try to mix the two: We are followers of Christ, but also believe that the “wisdom” of this world has something to contribute—not for salvation, but as regards life and living, social interaction, philosophical thought, etc.
But the two do not mix. We must decide: Will it be God in Christ, or will it be those claiming that “the word of the cross is foolishness”?
Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.
Colossians 2:6-8
If you are a Christian, you cannot have multiple lords. If you are a Christian, you have one Lord—and one Lord only.
° ° °
A life pays itself out like a plumb line in a windstorm—always wishing to stay straight and true, but bowing to the insistent demands of the gale as it reaches for the one, true point.
Life has a way of telling the truth through a series of small inconsistencies that keep us perilously off-balance, always reaching for something straight and solid, while never quite understanding the twists and turns of the life in which we have been set.
Man is a blithe spirit borne down by the weight of flesh—a soul desperately in search of freedom. He is created with a longing for someone larger than himself, someone who (unlike him) does not dwell on quicksand. He longs for someone with a surer footing and strong arms. Life is the spirit’s never-ending search for a way out of its corporeal bonds.
Human life is a quest—a quest up from the soil that fills our DNA, toward the purity of heaven. The problem is, for most of mankind’s time on earth, humans have defined a multitude of different “heavens,” each imagined and crafted into a comfortable dwelling place for a multitude of eternities.
° ° °
There was a point in time when there was heaven on earth. For a brief moment, paradise dwelt upon the dust of earth, and man and woman enjoyed a blissful, perfect harmony with God. But then the dust from which they had been made drew back from God—like its cousin, gravity—to pull them into the deceitful clutches of one who had once been beautiful, but was now the epitome of evil.
In one dark, ugly moment, heaven departed the leaden gravity of earth, not to return until sin and its father had been forever vanquished. Between these two points in time—between the innocence of Eden and the bliss of the New Jerusalem—man and woman would be condemned to be born in sin, creatures of depravity, their spirits condemned to the claustrophobic woolen cloak of flesh, longing for the bright sweetness they had once enjoyed.
° ° °
One is not necessarily destined to remain in the sin-laden dust from which one is born. Man and woman are born into sin, into earthbound depravity, but that need not be a permanent condition. One may be born into abject spiritual poverty, but one need not remain there.
Sadly, many do make the choice to remain where they are, stuck in the mire of their own birth. They have turned a deaf ear to the cries of their soul, listening instead to the Siren song of the earth from which they sprang. Like their parents, Adam and Eve, they have blindly reasoned that they know better than the Spirit that beckons them upward.
° ° °
The beginning of change is the decision to make it. The Spirit calls to the heart of man, igniting a longing for God—a longing not just for redemption, but for something better; not just for holiness, but for a higher plane. There is something better, and God knows what it is. But man and woman must decide whether they will live with God on His higher plane, or remain stuck in the foul muck of earth.
Without question, it is a mystery, and difficult for the temporal mind to grasp. God is all-powerful and all-knowing; He knows the way of every individual ever born, and it is His Spirit who ignites faith in the human heart. Yet (and here is the mystery) man is still a free agent. God is not a gangster forcing His will at gunpoint, but a wise Father offering a better way.
A wise dad counsels and influences his teenage children; he corrects and chastises when they do wrong, but he also recognizes the folly in dictatorship. The wise parent may dictate the way of a two-year-old, but allows the eighteen-year-old to become bruised by his own decisions, learning the hard lessons that will, ultimately, develop character. The dad understands the risk: the child may not seek higher ground, but become lost to the enticements of earth and flesh. But it is a necessary risk, for without learning self-determination the child will never grow up at all.
God is nothing if not a wise Dad. He has no interest in raising up brain-numb weaklings who must be told everything to do, but desires the fellowship of bruised-but-mature adults who have consciously made the decision to live for Him.
And He finds particular delight in those who pursue the path of sanctification with vigor, with passion, with an earnest yet innocent desire to attain what He offers. They pursue a faith that knows no bounds and gives no thought to the drumbeat of criticism emanating from the fallen world. They know their Lord, and they love Him.
They are determined to live out a full-throated faith.
Issue #853 / May 2021 / “A Full-throated Faith” Reflections by the Pond is published monthly at dlampel.com and is copyright 2021 David S. Lampel. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture is from the New American Standard Bible (Updated Edition). This and all our resources are offered free-of-charge to the glory and praise of Christ our Lord.