2009-03-13
Good Morning God’s Treasures,
The Holy Spirit urges me to write more about how to avoid making wrongful judgments. Today’s question is another which allows for comparison between Christ’s words in the Sermon on the Mount [MT 7: 1-2]. Before starting on it, here is a recap of the issues already written about in previous devotions. 1) Do we go before God’s throne of grace and examine our hearts? 2) Are we being self-righteous or are we walking in love? 3) Do we seek the motives of people’s hearts or only see their outward appearance? 4) Are we judging them from our own traditions and interpretations rather than seeking God’s of His law? 5) When we are wrong, do we admit it and change to conform to Christ? And now, here is today’s question: 6) Do we seek forgiveness when the need is present?
MT 7: 1-2, “Do not judge others so that God’s will not judge you, for God will judge you in the same way you judge others, and He will apply to you the same rules you apply to others.” Such a deceptively straight forward sentence this is; only, it’s impact on many other things is so all-encompassing! Even if we are mature believers, we are still sinners! In fact being a mature believer sets up the temptation to be self-righteous even more. That is how cunning an evildoer that Satan really is. We can never be so self-satisfied that we conclude we will never sin again. Otherwise, all of us would be in heaven enjoying our eternal reward right now. We not only need to be in the word daily and have an active prayer life, but we must keep our hearts open to God’s teaching and his corrections, if necessary to be made. PS 1: 1, “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But His delight is in the law of the Lord, and on His laws he meditates day and night.” Moreover, we must deal with the issue of integrity, not as man defines it, but as God does. MICAH 6: 8, “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” PS 15: 1-2, “Lord, who may abide in Your tabernacle? Who may dwell on your holy hill? He who walks uprightly and words righteousness, and speaks the truth.”
It makes sense to me that anyone who really understands these godly words on integrity also is able to recognize it’s presence or the lack of it in others. Because that person himself has integrity, he would find a godly way to act upon the lack of it he observes in others. Does God call us to blindness to unrighteous behavior of others? To the teaching and acceptance of false doctrine? I think not. On the other hand, we are not to become so self-righteous, either individually or corporately, that we assign ourselves the role as the world’s judge and jury. So, where does the responsibility to correct wrongful behavior begin and end? My first response is it begins in the home. Anyone who has ever watched “Supernanny” on TV knows that children raised without discipline are being short-changed by their parents. They run, they hit, they swear, they refuse to go to bed at a reasonable hour, they throw food, they trespass in so many ways. Being left to do this as they become teens is a pathway to crime, drug addiction, teen pregnancy, and general rejection of the authority of adults around them. JoJo Frost comes into these homes to help careless, hapless parents learn to set reasonable boundaries, get involved in healthy ways with their children, institute reasonable structure, and to establish loving, respectful family relationships. Too much [unreasonable] discipline is the opposite problem. It squelches creativity, causes excessive self-loathing, and breaks spirits. “Supernanny” encountered this problem with a Chinese family that was insisting on so many outside activities for each of their five children, that the children were not having time just to be kids. The parents were required to reduce the number of activities after receiving each child’s input, so the children had time for homework and play. In this case, the parents required Chinese school [after regular school] and each child was allow to choose one other activity.
If county B is unprovoked and attacks country A causing deaths and injuries, then country A has the right to take measures to put a stop to it. War is not pretty, but it is sometimes necessary in order to stop a cancer of evil from spreading from country to country. There have been times when God brought countries to war with each other, because there was no way to work out peace on the bargaining table. Such was the case with the war discussed in 2 CH 20: 1-30 in the Scriptures. The badly outnumbered Jews under King Jehoshaphat faced a combined army of Edomites, Ammonites, and Moabites. They knew they were outnumbered, and they were frightened. I’ve related this story before, the story of how Jehoshaphat immediately sought out God in prayer and asked for both His protection and direction. God’s answer was quite shocking, “You will not have to fight this battle. Just take up your positions and wait; you will see the Lord give you victory [17].” All Israel had to do was to trust in the Lord! God, as always kept his promise, and the enemy soldiers turned in confusion on themselves. Not a single Jew had to raise a hand to an enemy. Obviously, not all wars are won without fighting and considerable cost, but still, we must put our trust in God and follow His direction, even if it is as much of a surprise to us as this one was to the Jewish army. This issue here is seeking God first in prayer and having the courage to take that direction, no matter what it happens to be.
PRAYER: O Lord, we come before Your throne this morning to say, “thank You,” for your constant love and availability to us when we are called upon to make judgments. The Jewish homeland, Israel, is once again at war with her enemies. She was called upon to make such a judgment as King Jehoshaphat had to make. While I rarely speak of political matters, this is one that must be understood. Extremist followers of Islam, Hamas, detest Jews and all non-Muslims. This hatred was expressed in the form of missiles lobbed into southern Israel, unprovoked, from the Gaza Strip. There are other anti-Semitic forces over Israel’s northern border in Lebanon who are considering doing the same. Israel has chosen at last to mount an offensive over her southern boarder in an attempt to stop these missile attacks on innocent Israeli citizens. Father, we pray today that this military action will push back Israeli’s warring neighbors and stop their attacks with a minimum of loss of civilian lives, that Hamas will stop the training of children to fight against Israel. You have asked us to “be holy because You are holy” [LV 11: 44-45; LV 19: 2; 1 PET 1: 16]. You have told us that You care for us [1 PET 5: 7]. We ask that You place Your hand of protection on Israel, that Israel has learned to seek You first, and that some day, those who are traditional Jews in Israel will know You are the Messiah for which they have been searching. In all matters where we must make judgments, that we will face You first with our request for help, that we will confess any sin on our part, and that we will have the courage to follow Your direction no matter what it is. May we always act with integrity. For all your love, compassion, wisdom, and strength, we thank and praise You. In Christ’s holy name, Amen.
Next week, I am led to write about the warning Christ gives us in MT 7: 1 and 6. Both wisdom and honesty are required before we can use our God-given intelligence and powers of observation to know when we have done wrong and genuinely need to confess it. We always need to turn to the Counselor [JN 14: 16-18] the Father has given us, the Holy Spirit, for His wise advice. He will give us the courage to make this confession and keep our hearts open to His direction. Even in the times that His advice comes to us in totally unexpected ways or takes us far from our comfort zone, we must trust God and take it. Imagine what might have happened if His Son, Jesus Christ, who uttered what He did in LK 22: 42, hadn’t obeyed. Instead, He went to the cross after suffering through scourging, being mocked. He followed through on the Father’s command that He give up His physical life, so that we could have a way out from sure spiritual death through sin [JN 3: 16]. Because of that and the Father’s faithfulness in keeping His promises, Christ is alive today in our hearts, we have been saved because of our faith in Him, and we have been eternally forgiven. COL 3: 3-4, “For you have died and your life is hidden with Chris in God. Your real life is Christ and when He appears, then you too will appear with Him and share His glory.” We are left with the hope of the resurrection to a blissful eternal life with the Father! Praise be to Him!
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn