“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! 21. Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight.”
Isaiah’s prophetic ministry was during a very difficult time in Judah and Israel. The Northern Kingdom of Israel was about to be overtaken by Assyria, and the Southern Kingdom of Judah was on the brink of destruction as well. (Except for Hezekiah's righteous reign, Judah would have joined Israel in destruction.) The problem was an age-old problem – people thought that they were smarter than God and thought that they knew better than God. This is not unlike the time in which we live. We have never been better informed, nor have we been more deceived than we are now. Part of the problem was that people thought they knew better about what was good and what was evil than God did. After all, God’s people had the Ten Commandments to guide them, but they were beyond that. The seed of Israel and Judah’s destruction was that they thought they could determine what was good and what was evil, regardless of what God’s word said. We see this happening today. It is happening in obvious ways, for example, in relation to sexual sins of all kinds. God’s word makes plain what is right and what is wrong in this area, yet we think we know better than God. We say that, after all, this is 2014 and the old ways are no longer applicable. The “old ways” are applicable, not because they are old but because they are true. But this is also true in more subtle ways in what we would call “little sins.” For example, the Bible teaches us, particularly in the New Testament, that we are to be careful what we say about people, yet gossip is rampant –even in churches! People today are bent on turning biblical morality on its side and casting it away all together. We can’t do this with impunity and not pay a price for it. I want to be careful in my own life and in my own thinking, for if I’m not careful I will find myself calling good evil and evil good. This is wrong even in subtle, less obvious ways. Another part of the problem was that people thought they were smarter than God. Isaiah wrote: “Woe unto those that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight.” We need to be careful lest our brains run away with our wisdom. We think that we know so much, and compared to other generations, we do know more than people have ever known. We have knowledge at our fingertips on the internet. If I want to know something, I just look it up on the internet. The problem is that when we are wise in our own eyes, we seem to think that just because we tnow something it must be right. We think that the more we know, the smarter we are. This is not necessarily so. When our self wisdom drives us away from God and what He wants with and for us, we have been deceived. The solution to the two problems above is found in Proverbs 3:5-7: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; and lean not unto your own understanding. 6. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths. 7. Be not wise in your own eyes: fear the Lord and depart from evil.” When we trust God, we trust His wisdom and His directions for our lives. When we acknowledge Him and depend on His understanding, we will not call good evil and evil good, nor will be wise in our own eyes. We need to realize that there is wisdom greater than human wisdom, and that the Wisest One wants to give us our understanding and our knowledge. This is what I need to do and what you need to do! Do it! Bro. Joe
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“A time to keep silence and a time to speak….”
Ecclesiastes is an unusual book and some things in it are hard to understand. Our text verse in chapter 3 is not difficult to understand: There is a time to close our mouths and a time to open them. if you are like me, there are times that you speak out of turn and say to yourself later, “Why did I say that?” I want to feed off of the wisdom of this short verse in this article and point out some times that it would be good to keep silent. It is good to be silent when we don’t really have anything to say. Sometimes we talk just to hear ourselves talk, or we want to throw in our two cents worth to add to the conversation. We need to learn that if we don’t have anything to say that will be helpful to the conversation it would be better if we just kept our mouths shut. As I type this, I am saying to myself "physician heal thyself.” A good lesson to learn is that if we do not talk out of turn, we will never have any reason to regret what we say. It’s good to be silent when we don’t have anything constructive to say. What I mean by this is if what we have to say does not offer encouragement to the person with whom we are talking, it is better just to be quiet. Sometimes discouraging words will come up in our mouths before we get our minds in gear. One of my daily prayers is that I will be an encouragement to somebody on that day. Most often that encouragement, or discouragement, will come from what we say. I do not mean to imply here that we always have to say positive things to encourage people, but I think that the positive things that we say to other people should be predominant. Some of the best advice that I have gotten from people has been about something negative, but the people who said the negative things said it in a way that was constructive. We will never grow if all we ever hear are things that appeal to our egos. I think that this is what Paul meant in Colossians 4:6: “Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer every man.” A good rule of thumb is that if what you have to say, negative or positive, will really help a person, say it, if not seal your lips. It’s good to be silent when we have not heard the whole story. Proverbs 18:13 reminds us: “He that answers a matter before he hears it, it is folly and shame to him.” This is how gossip gets started. It is really best to not speak about anything before we know what the real story is. One story that I have shared over the years about this is about Senator Inouye of Hawaii. When he was sworn in as senator, the editor of a newspaper made a big deal out of the fact that Senator Inouye took his oath of office with his left hand raised instead of his right hand. Imagine how he felt when he was told that Senator Inouye could not raise his right hand because he lost his right arm in the Second World War. A good thing to do when we hear something about somebody is to just not say anything to anybody about it. I certainly have not written this to be judgmental toward people, for I have to watch my words just like everybody else. I know that we would all be better off in our families, communities and churches if we would all follow this sound biblical advice. Bro. Joe “And they said unto Moses, because there were no graves in Egypt, have you taken us away to die in the wilderness? Wherefore have you dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt? 12. Is not this the word that we did tell you in Egypt, saying, let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians? For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness.”
The text above was written just before the Israelites crossed the Red Sea. They were afraid, because Pharaoh’s army was behind them and the Red Sea was in front of them. Instead of trusting God, they wanted to turn their backs on Him and return to slavery in Egypt. This seems ridiculous to us because we know the outcome, but they didn’t know the outcome at that time. Would we have reacted differently? Would we turn our backs on God after all that He has done for us at Calvary? Why would we turn our backs on God? The Israelites were willing to turn their backs on God, because they knew what they had in Egypt, but they had no idea what lay beyond the Red Sea. They left Egypt in the first place because they wanted to be free of bondage to the Egyptians, and to go to a land that God had prepared for them. We make a mistake when we cling to the failures of the past because we are afraid to go forward in faith into the future. We might turn our backs on God because we prefer the security of the bad that we know to the good that God can do for us. Living a life of faith is about giving up the past and going forward into the future under the leadership of God. The old way of life with its habits and moral lapses gives us false security. What God wants to give us are His blessings and His presence. What is holding you back from going forward in faith? What is making you want to turn your back on Jesus? The Israelites were turning their backs on God because they did not stop and think that God had gotten them to where they were. They had forgotten about the plagues that God brought upon Egypt on their behalf. They had forgotten the joy that they had when they loaded up and left Egypt behind. Satan’s work is to make us forget what God has done for us, and make us think that we were better off in sin’s bondage. The joy of sin is an illusion, because it brings momentary satisfaction, but leaves us with lingering regrets. Just as the Israelites had memory lapses of the really hard times they had in Egypt, we forget the heartache and pain that sin causes in our lives. The amazing thing here is that God did not change His plans for Israel, for He did not turn His back on them. The God who had gotten Israel to where they were would continue to get them where He wanted them to be. Stop and think about your own life and you will realize that God does the same with you. He will not turn His back on you. The Israelites did not turn their backs on God, because Moses gave them a message of hope in Exodus 14:13-14: “And Moses said unto the people. Fear not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will show you today: for the Epyptians whom you have seen today, you shall see them again no more forever, 14. The Lord shall fight for you, and you shall hold your peace.” Just so, we will not turn our backs on the Lord, because we know that He will fight for us that He will go with us, that He will deliver us. He sent Jesus to go before us, to die for us, to rise from the dead for us, to ascend to the right hand of the throne in heaven to insure that we can go forward in faith. Hold your head up, pray and thank God for what He has done for you and march forward in faith. Bro. Joe “Ah, Sovereign Lord, You have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you. 18. You show love to thousands but bring the punishment for the fathers into the laps of their children after them. O great and powerful God, whose name is the Lord Almighty, great are your purposes and mighty are your deeds. Your eyes are open to all the ways of men; you reward everyone according to his conduct and as his deeds deserve.” NIV
My friend, Ronnie Morrell, sent me this scripture in an email. I took it as a challenge to write an article about it, and this is the result. The text is an eloquent declaration of the total and complete sovereignty of God. If God can be limited in His knowledge and power, unless He limits it Himself, then He is not the God revealed in the Bible. Here is what the text reveals to us about God: God is revealed as creator: “Ah, Sovereign Lord, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm.” This comes as no surprise to those of us who read the Bible daily. The very first chapters of the Bible tell us about God creating the universe. It is puzzling to me how some people can look at creation and not see the hand of God in it. The beauty and majesty of creation cannot be accidental. There is a beautiful symmetry to it all. God’s omnipotence is revealed: "Nothing is too hard for HIM.” It is good to know that we serve a God for whom nothing is too hard. There is nothing that our Sovereign God cannot do, but that doesn’t mean that what He does always comes out in our favor. Some people lose faith in God because they do not get something from God that they wanted, or they asked Him for something on behalf of someone else and God didn’t answer like they wanted. If God didn’t give them what they asked for, it meant that He had something better for them. Having faith in God means that we let Him be God in our lives and trust that He knows best. The question is, do we want what God wants in our lives, or do we want only what we want? We simply trust that nothing is too hard for God. God’s love and wrath are revealed: “You show love to thousands but bring the punishment of the fathers' sins into the laps of their children after them…” God loves us. In fact, God loves all people, but that doesn’t mean that He will not punish those who ignore Him, or discipline those who believe in Him. God loves us so much that “He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” It is through faith in Jesus, God’s Son, that we escape the wrath of God. Romans 5:8-9: “But God commends His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 9. Much more then, being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.” God’s awareness of what is going on in the world is revealed: “Great are your purposes and mighty are your deeds, Your eyes are open to all the ways of men; you reward everyone according to his conduct and as his deeds deserve.” God knows what is going on in the world, and He is just in that He rewards the good and punishes the evil. We are not saved by our works. (See Ephesians 2:8-10.) But we are saved to work and we will be rewarded in glory accordingly. The evil works of unbelievers will be judged as well. God knows those who are His and those who are not His, and He does not make a mistake in judgement, You will probably agree that this is an apt description of the God we love and serve. Bro. Joe “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint.”
I need to confess from the outset that waiting is not exactly one of my virtues. There is a joke in our family that daddy or granddaddy always wants to beat the crowd. It is just something that I have to deal with. I will let you know however that I have learned the value of waiting on the Lord. Life itself has taught me that there is great value and great power in waiting on the Lord. One of the reasons that I have learned to wait patiently upon the Lord is because I have no choice. The Lord moves in His own time and with His own timing. He knows the exact time that things should happen, and He will make whatever it is happen when the timing is right. In John’s gospel, we are reminded several times that certain things didn’t happen with Jesus because “the time was not right.” Even the Son of God moved through life on the timing of the Father. You will do yourself a favor by remembering this. There is no point in getting impatient with God, because He will not move on your timing but on His. That is a good thing. Sometimes we might try to push ahead beyond God’s timing, but we find out that it would have been better to wait. Believe me, I know that by experience. Another reason that I have learned to wait patiently upon the Lord is because while I am waiting, He is at work preparing my mind and heart for what it is that He wants. I have found that when I rush into things, I make more errors than when I take my time and measure my actions. We need to remember this when we are replying to people who have criticized us for one thing or another. It takes patience to hold our words until we know what it is that we need to say that will do some good. I think that God’s timing is important to that as well. I know that I have said things while preaching that I did not think through, and the effect was negative. We need to remember this when we are waiting for something to happen at our churches. We know what needs to be done and we feel that God is in what we know, but all concerned will be better off if we just wait for God to do what He is going to do through us. When we rush ahead of God, we make foolish mistakes. Still another reason that I have learned to wait patiently for the Lord is that while I am waiting God is leading me to His purpose for my life at that particular time. This is what we call being in the center of God’s will. God saved us through Christ to use us for His purposes. He takes His time in helping us fulfill the purpose that He has for us. All of Jesus’ early disciples, as well as the Apostle Paul had to wait to follow God’s purpose for them. This is illustrated in Acts during Paul’s second missionary journey. He wanted to go into Bithynia but the Holy Spirit would not let him, because Paul was needed in Macedonia. (You can read about this in Acts 16.) There is a promise in this text that I want to share with you before we close this out: “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint.” While we wait we are promised that God will renew our strength and give us the strength that we need to do His will. David mentioned this in Psalm 23:3a: “He restores my soul…” That is why there is power in waiting for the Lord. God’s power is at work where He is at work and our service is more powerful when we are at work where God is at work. Bro. Joe |
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