A Devotional Thought From Daniel

And as the toes of the feet were part iron, and part clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken.              Daniel 2:42

The great image King Nebuchadnezzar saw in his famous dream recorded by Daniel in chapter 2 contained a portion that referred to one of the great kingdoms of past history to us, but future history to him.

Most interpreters of Scripture agree this passage, Daniel 2:42, speaks of the Roman Empire. It is from this passage we get our modern-day phrase “feet of clay.” This kingdom, says Daniel, “shall be partly strong, and partly broken.”

It is easy enough to determine today's nation states (kingdoms as it were) that are partly strong and partly broken.

Strong nations have (iron);

the rule of righteous and merciful law;

they are following God’s word;

they allow freedom of thought and expression;

they have quiet neighborhoods;

they have righteous governments as governments go;

they support traditional moral values.

Broken nations have (clay);

lawbreaking as the norm;

rejecting the Bible;

no tolerance for opposing views;

violence in the streets;

duplicitous government;

everyone does what is right in their own eyes.

Nations today need to revive what makes them strong, and discard what breaks them. This happens in the individual, and transfers to the nation, as one by one people turn from sin to righteousness, from being broke to being strong. So if you want your nation to be greatly blessed, and that means everyone in the land, repent of that which makes it broken.

A Devotional Thought From Revelation

He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. Revelation 22:20

In the book of Revelation it is Jesus, Himself, who is testifying, or announcing, the things herein recorded. Look back at the first verse of the book (Rev. 1:1) and we find God, the Father, gave the revelation to Jesus for the purpose of showing to his servants (those who trust in Him, and love Him, and serve Him) what will be happening “shortly.” From our human perspective we do not understand what “shortly” means in God’s understanding of time. What we do know is what is revealed here will happen sometime.

So when Jesus says at the end of the prophecy, “Surely I come quickly,” again we don’t know what “quickly” means in His God understanding of time. We do know that He keeps His word, He means what He says, and He will come.

We who love Him believe Jesus is coming again. We are glad He is coming, and John speaks for all of us when he says, “Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”

A Devotional Thought From 1 John

And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full. 1 John 1:4

John writes this letter with at least this verse as one of the most important ideas he wants to transmit to the Christians of his day. He indicates, the things I’m writing to you about the reality of Christ, the dangers of sin and false doctrine, the knowledge of God, the need to love your fellow Christians, the assurance of eternal life, I write to you so that your joy may be full. The written word and your personal knowledge of it produce joy and more joy.

This sincere, personal, clear theological treatise is meant to make the joy you feel in trusting Jesus as your Savior, be ever more full and fulfilling than it is now.

The word of God in all its teachings, not just 1 John, is this wonderful tool that God uses, not just to teach, and bring us to being born again, but the Bible is a book of His speaking in His own voice, and like Adam in the garden, we know He is calling to us through it. Once we begin putting the word of Scripture into our heart it has this amazing joy producing capacity.

Want to be joyful? Get into the reading, studying, praying, and obedience of the Bible.

A Devotional Thought From Nahum

Who can stand before his indignation? and who can abide in the fierceness of his anger? his fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by him. Nahum 1:6

This prophetic message is proclaimed by Nahum to Nineveh (Assyria) at the peak of its power. To paraphrase Nahum read it, “Be afraid, be very afraid.”

You can imagine when this prophecy was first heard in Assyria there was probably little concern. It may have provoked sarcastic laughter, “Yeah, right!”

This is Nineveh of Assyria, they might have bellowed. This is the most powerful nation on earth. We count our armies in the hundreds of thousands. We oppress people and nations, like Judah. We are not those who are defeated and oppressed. Talk about riches, we got ‘em. Talk about prisoners, we got ‘em. Talk about being secure, we got it, man. We will take on anybody. We will battle to the death, their death. The prophets of our gods do not talk about Assyria being judged, so why should we fear the God of a people who don’t even use statues to depict Him. We will be who we want to be. We will do what we want to do. We will treat Judah any way we want. We’re not afraid.

But, eventually, they found out that even mighty Nineveh could not stand before God’s indignation and anger. He brought Babylon, and a number of their allies, upon Nineveh, and Assyria felt his fury as if it had been fire poured out upon them, and rocks thrown down from heaven at them.

When the battle came to Nineveh, according to Nahum’s prediction, the Army commanders cried to their men, “Stand, stand” (2.8), but the ranks broke, and the soldiers never looked back. “Who can abide the fierceness of his anger?” Certainly, not even one of the strongest nations in the world.

A Devotional Thought From Hosea

Hear the word of the LORD, you children of Israel: for the LORD hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, or mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out and blood toucheth blood. Therefore shall the land mourn… Hosea 4:1-3a

God speaks to His people: I have a controversy (a quarrel) with you. He says, your land is vacant of truth, empty of mercy, and without knowledge of, and obedience to, Me. It is filled with false swearing and lying, and killing and stealing, and committing adultery. As a result the land will mourn.

What was happening in that land in those days sounds a lot like what is happening in our land, and others around the world. If such a societal lifestyle brought that ancient nation mourning, could it not do the same today?

The cure for this danger is to turn to God and follow His guidance for nations.

A Devotional Thought From Daniel

Wherefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable unto thee, and break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by showing mercy to the poor; if it may be a lengthening of thy tranquility.  Daniel 4:27

Daniel had just announced God’s judgment on Nebuchadnezzar. It was a personal judgment. The mightiest ruler in the known world, the richest king in the world, the most feared king in the world, would live like an animal for seven years. He would eat grass, and live out of doors like a wild animal until he knew that the heavens (God) rule all.

Now if a President, Prime Minister, Emperor, or other titled ruler, today heard such a prediction from a preacher what might he/she think?

How wild, how wacky, how impossible, how nutso! It is no wonder nobody pays attention to God’s spokesman anymore. That could never happen.

An interesting thing about this passage (Daniel 4) is that Daniel did not get in trouble for saying this to Nebuchadnezzar. A proud and insensitive king like Nebuchadnezzar could have had Danile cut in pieces for saying such a thing. Nebuchadnezzar had already had experience with Daniel’s prophetic witness from God. He knew not to doubt. If Daniel says it then God has given him the knowledge. It’s going to happen. The comfort that Nebuchadnezzar had was that Daniel said after these times of living like an animal Nebuchadnezzar would be restored to his throne.

So now look carefully at what Daniel counseled the king. Break off thy sins by righteousness, in other words start doing good and turning from evil, and break off thine iniquities by showing mercy to the poor.

The judgment has already been pronounced. So why change these things? What good will it do? Nebuchadnezzar might’ve asked.

Daniel says, “If it may be a lengthening of thy tranquility.”

God might hold the punishment off a little longer if you reform yourself, your actions, and your country. Perhaps, Nebuchadnezzar did, because the judgment did not occur for another year (Daniel 4:29).

Maybe there are leaders in our world who through evil deeds, and failing to recognize the role of heaven, may have set themselves, and their nations, up for serious trouble. That trouble may be coming fast, but if the leaders, and people change their evil ways, and respond to God’s word the time of their trouble might be delayed, because of God’s grace. 

Turning from sin always brings positive results.

A Commencement Address for the Class of 2019

On this beautiful day of graduation, skies are blue, bright with sunshine, big sky, clear for as far as one can see into the future, there is but one little cloud way off, barely seen, just above the far horizon, the size of a man’s hand. It will grow bigger as time flies. The cloud represents death. You graduates will one day die. It is appointed unto humanity to die.

So the advice of this commencement messenger is live well; work hard, be honest, be brave, do right, honor your family, your nation, and God: believe and know that your life is valuable and precious, and meaningful, and can yield one hundred fold of influence upon those around you, around the world, and the generation following, no matter how famous or little-known you may become.

Every life and family is a building block in constructing a great edifice like our nation. Your life will, too, have eternal consequences for you, and, perhaps, others. So seek to make those everlasting things the glorious blessings possible.

But how can you do that? How can you make your life so special?

Once King Solomon of Judah, the wisest man in the world, gave this sentence that is your answer. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man (Ecclesiastes 12:13).

A Devotional Thought From Ezekiel  

As silver is melted in the midst of the furnace, so shall ye be melted in the midst thereof; and ye shall know that I the Lord have poured out my fury upon you. Ezekiel 22:22

The prophet Ezekiel explains God’s judgment against His ancient nation. The capital city, representing the whole country, was full of shed blood (murder); idols (false worship), they actually despised holy things; oppression of immigrants, widows, and fatherless children; lewdness, adultery, incest; usury, and extortion.

Because the rulers in particular, and the people, had made this their lifestyle God thought of them as dross. Dross is the name for the impurities found in metals like silver and gold, and brass and iron. To remove this dross ancient people learned to fire the metal to boiling. Bubbling in the heat the metal melted and the dross rose to the top of the molten mixture. When the dross was skimmed the metal was pure.

So God declares that He will put them through that process. The burning, melting, and removing of dross will be His fury upon that nation.

The burning, melting, furnace would be in the form of invading soldiers crushing and taking captive the land. God did this in response to years and years of a nation’s sins.

The Lord is over every nation, and sin was then, and still is a reproach to any nation.

An Easter Thought Based John 20:19

It was still dark as Mary Magdalene climbed the road to the cemetery on Gethsemane. She had not been able to come to the grave all day Saturday because of Jewish law, but as soon as it was permissible she was on her way. (John 20:1)

She sees something a strange when she arrives. The stone used to close off the Garden tomb has been rolled away from the mouth of the cave. The darkness of the grave stares back at her. Stunned, she turns from the grave and starts running. She runs to Peter and John. (John 20:2)

“They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him.” (John 20:3)

Immediately, Peter and John start running back to the grave to see what Mary was talking about.     (John 20:4)

When they get there, indeed the body of Christ is gone, but the grave clothes that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus had wrapped Jesus were still there. The face covering was folded and placed separately from the grave clothes. (John 20:6,7)

John’s saw and believed (John 20:8). I’m not sure if he believed in Christ’s resurrection as we understand it today from all the other accounts in Scripture, because the next verse (John 20:9) says: “For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.” But John knew something strange and wonderful, beyond human imagining, had happened.

He was later to learn, as did all the disciples and followers of Jesus, and all of us living two thousand years later, that Jesus had come alive from the dead, walked out of that grave and proved that his offer of eternal life is real, and available to all who will receive him.

“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.” (Acts 16:31)

Good Friday

And when they had crucified him, they parted his garments, casting lots upon them, what every man should take. Mark 15:24

In Mark 15:24-37 Mark is like a news reporter giving the details of Christ’s death in a few soundbites of explanation. They crucified him at 9 AM the third hour on the Roman clock. The word crucified includes all they did to get him up on the cross.

They made him carry the cross until his strength gave out and Simon of Cyrene was forced to finish the job.

They stripped him of his clothes.

They pushed his shredded, bleeding back against the wooden cross.

They stretched his arms out on the cross piece, held his hands to the wood, and nailed them down.

They placed his feet together and drove a spike through them into the wood.

They tilted the cross up off the ground, dropped it into the base support with a thud, and a terrible jolt to the Savior’s broken body.

And having done all that, they watched as Jesus suffered there, high and lifted up.

The Roman soldiers ignored his suffering to gamble for his clothing. The sounds of their dice game, ironic considering the terrible tragedy playing out above their bowed heads, bowed to view the results of their casting lots not to the King of glory. They ignored the fact that their eternal destiny hung up on the cross. They bowed their heads to temporary pleasure.

Mark adds another detail in verse 27, he was crucified between thieves, one on his right hand the other one is left. The thieves were crooks, criminals, transgressors, evildoers, malefactors.

“Look,” people could say, “there, right in the middle of the transgressors that’s Jesus. We always thought he was a good man, all the stories and testimonies we heard were about his goodness, but there he is numbered with the crooks.

This too was ironic, UNLESS you knew about the prophecy.

Eight hundred years before Jesus was crucified in the midst of these wicked men, Isaiah had predicted, prophesied, that Messiah the anointed Savior sent by God, would be numbered with the transgressors.

Mark tells us that the cross was the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy.

But there was a little more to the prophecy (Isaiah 53:12) that Mark did not include in his recounting of the story of the cross. Here it is. Isaiah had been moved by God’s Spirit to prophesy that the Messiah - “he bared the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”

Intercede means mediate. And when we hear that Jesus made intercession for the transgressors is easy to think of 1 Timothy 2:5; “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”

He died so that when anyone who believed in him stood before his Father, God the father in heaven, Jesus could say: “Father, accept this one who believes in me. I died for her. I died for him. I carried their sin. I suffered the punishment of your wrath against sin. I am there one mediator.”

That is how a person gets saved, forgiven of their sins, by trusting in Jesus as their own personal Savior.

There are no other ways of salvation. There are no other saviors. There are no other redeemers. There is no co-Redeemer. There are no other doors into heaven. There are no other religions that can save.

He is the one, the one and only, mediator tween God and humanity.

If you believe when he died,he died for you,

if you believe when he died, he saved you from sin,

if you believe when he died, he made you God’s child,

then you are born from above, and you belong to the Lord for all eternity.

While he was dying to accomplish all this Mark tells us (15:29-31) there were others there not throwing dice, but throwing insults of Jesus.

You were going to tear down the temple, and rebuild it in three days. Start by coming down from the cross come on save yourself. Come down from the cross.

The religious leaders who were there mocked him-“He saved others; himself he cannot save.”

One translator translated the word for mock as jested. You could get the sense they were joking from that. They knew he couldn’t come down from the cross so they joked about it.

But they had the wrong idea about why he could not come down from the cross. They thought the nails held him there, and he could not break their hold on him. They thought he could not come down due to physical restraints. They were woefully wrong.

Jesus could not come down from the cross because our sins, YOURS AND MINE, held him there. He could not be our Savior without bearing our sins, our judgment, our punishment, for not being the kind of people we should be: pure, sinless, perfect is God’s eyes. Jesus could not come down from the cross because dying for us was the only way to make us pure and sinless in the eyes of God.

So he loved us enough to give his pure and holy life on the cross  so that we could give him our sinfulness and have his life instead.

The mocking continued (Mark 15:32) “Let Christ the King of Israel  descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe. And they that were crucified with him reviled him.”

They had forsaken him, those on Skull Hill who refused to believe in him as Savior, and the spiritual darkness in their hearts clouded over the execution place.

Then after Jesus had been hanging in agony God sent the physical darkness at noon that covered the whole land, and in the dark Jesus cried out “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (15:34)

For the first time, and the only time, in all eternity, God the Father had not been in full intimate fellowship with God the son. He had turned away when Jesus became sin for us, and Jesus felt alone, abandon. We can never understand what happened, except to know this was the greatest agony Jesus ever experienced, and he took it on himself for us, as our Redeemer, our one mediator with God the Father.

If you have a Bible, or can print out this passage Mark 15:24-37, turn to it, or print it out, then read, and think about it, and see if you can sense the great thing Jesus has done for you. For us!

Then just a few moments later (Mark 15:37) “Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost.”

He died.

He was nailed and crucified-he did not deserve it.

He was placed among the transgressors-he did not deserve it.

He was scorned and mocked-he did not deserve it.

He gave up the ghost and died-he did not deserve it.

But he went to that cross, and suffered it all because he loved us.

Have you ever thought about Jesus, and his death upon the cross in any serious way?

Have you ever realized he died for you personally? For you! For your sins!

Today is a good day to do that. It is a day of salvation to all who will trust Jesus to save them. It is your day of salvation if you will throw yourself upon him believing he paid for your sins. Will you trust him right now.

Come to Jesus.

He will save you,

If you trust Him.

Then start reading the Bible, and start going to a Bible teaching church.

A Thought From The Psalms

O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. Psalm 137:8,9

What a terrible thing to say. Why is the writer of Psalm 137 speaking this way? He is furious and wrathful. His people have been conquered and brutalized by Babylonian soldiers, and he wishes that the Babylonians will be cursed with the same brutality that they have heaped upon God’s people.

This Psalm is what Bible teachers and theologians call an imprecatory Psalm, one that calls down curses on the enemy. It’s an angry, revenge filled, “You’re gonna get yours!” kind of Psalm.

Babylon in its conquering of the world in ancient times was not a nation that waged war according to international laws. They had no rules of engagement intended to protect the civilian population of their enemies. Kill, spoil, and destroy is how they did it.

Imagine what this Psalmist had seen with his own eyes when Babylon conquered Jerusalem and all Israel. Like other nations in battle at that time, they mowed down people in the streets chopping them in pieces with swords. Like other nations in battle at that time, they probably “ripped up the women with child” (Amos 1:13 re: Amalek), and may have pulled some baby (babies) from the mother’s belly and cast it on the ground to die, if it wasn’t dead already. When little toddlers were running in fear from the battle hardened brutes of Babylon, the soldiers, like other soldiers at that time, may have grabbed the child by its ankles, swung it around his head, and battered it against a rock or other object hard enough to crush the little skull. They may have heard cheers and laughter from their fellow soldiers patrolling the streets of the vanquished city.

It is hard for any modern person to imagine how even a battle hardened soldier of any army, who had seen and been a part of the most horrendous war situations, could, for any reason, be that hard, that murderous.

The Psalmist implies he expected that one day Babylon’s children would be treated “as thou has served us.”

Eventually God judged Babylon as He had promised (Jeremiah 25:12) for their iniquity, and the women and children of that wicked city did not fair well.

A Devotional Thought From Isaiah

Now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever: That this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the LORD: Which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits:      Isaiah 30:8-10

God calls out His ancient people in this passage. He says they are rebellious people (rebelling against Him), they are lying people who should be a people of truth. They are His children (chosen and called), but they will not hear His law. They will not listen, and they do not want to obey God. They tell their preachers do not preach right things, tell us smooth, easy things. Things we want to hear. Prophesy deceits, tell us lies that fit what we want to believe.

How could these be the people God called His own?

Today in some Christian denominations there is almost the same cry from many who call themselves God’s children. Don’t tell us the Bible says things we approve are really sin, we don’t want to hear that. Don’t tell us we must follow God’s teaching if we are to call ourselves Christians. The world around us approves certain values that the Bible does not, so prophesy deceits, tell us that sin and God’s word are actually compatible. We will believe it because that is what we want to believe.

How could these be the people God calls His own?

A Devotional Thought From Isaiah

In the city is left desolation, and the gate is smitten with destruction. Isaiah 24:12
At the noise of the tumult the people fled; at the lifting up of thyself the nations were scattered.   Isaiah 33:3

In his sermons, the prophet Isaiah gives us the clear understanding that God is in control of the future of the nations. They do not determine their futures except in the sense that their wicked and sinful societies can bring forth the judgment of God.

Isaiah tells us that Moab, Damascus, Tyre, Judah, Israel, Assyria, Egypt, and even Babylon, the great, lost their power and faced destruction under His hand. They could not stop it.

The news hounds and political junkies, politicians and military leaders, of that day, viewing many of these nations from the earthly perspective, would never have expected them to be flattened and desolated as they were. They were, so to speak, too big to fail. They were too great to fall. They were too powerful to be overpowered. So it seemed, so they just went on their merry, sinful way. They did not expect that their behavior could bring down their country, but it did.

If God still rules in the affairs of the nations, and He does, the modern countries have obligations to govern themselves and be righteous according to God’s biblical directives. Present day nations could fall just as remarkably as those of Babylon’s time.

A Devotional Thought From Isaiah

Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts. Isaiah 6:5

“Woe is me!”

What brought on this lamentable exclamation from the prophet Isaiah? What terrible thing had occurred in his life that caused him to see himself this way? What circumstance had brought him to this revelation? Was he just diagnosed with some dread disease? Had he lost a lawsuit and the payout would bankrupt him? Had his son decided to marry outside the faith? Had any one of a myriad of awful or tragic things happened to him?

No.

Isaiah had experienced something so spectacular that it had shown him how pitiful and sinful he was. Isaiah had been at the Temple, and there he had a vision of the LORD sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up.

When Isaiah saw the glory of God, in that moment he saw himself and his people for the unclean, sinful, unglorious beings he, and they, were.

When that happens to anyone, he/she sees the LORD, it is the beginning of moral and spiritual reformation. A modern word, still in vogue, is renewal.

The people of this country, much less the world, need this! They need to see God as He has revealed Himself. That revelation of Himself, as we know, is in the Bible. Real improvement, personal and national, begins with this experience.

A Devotional Thought From Proverbs

At the end of Proverbs 16 verse 6, Solomon, the wise, makes this great statement, by the fear of the LORD men depart from evil.

This is true. It has always been true. It will never cease to be true. When men and women, boys and girls, revere God, and honor God, and lovingly fear him as a little child does his or her father, they will depart from evil. When they fear him, when they know him, they will think the LORD would not want me to do this or that or the other sinful thing, and they will depart from the evil. They will go away from it. They will stop doing evil.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if leaders of nations, and political parties, and religions, and street criminals would all begin to fear the LORD. If they did national policies would be for the good of all people, politics would be clean and decent, religion would be loving and Bible-based, criminals would turn from crime and give up their guns and other weapons, and streets would not run with blood and tears.

None of these things, unlikely as they are, can’t happen. If people start fearing and trusting the one eternal God of the universe, their hearts can be changed and the individual evil deeds will disappear. If people around the world en masse were to fear the Lord, the world would have an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity, but it takes departing from evil by fearing the Lord.

Consider what God said in Isaiah 1:18; Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

Your sins that are blood red will be cleansed by the blood shed by the Savior of the world, Jesus. So if you want to personally help renew the world fear of God and depart from evil.

Another Thought From The Psalms

He turneth rivers into a wilderness, and the watersprings into dry ground; A fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein. Psalm 107:33.34

These two verses speak of both the power of God, and the judgment of God. If he desires he can turn a beautiful, verdant, pastureland fed by a vibrant flowing river into a wilderness; a lush and pleasant, productive, flood plain into a desert. What follows is a natural result of the dryness. He can turn a fruitful land into barrenness, producing famine and the terrible things that come with it.

A natural question coming from such a statement is, why would God do such a thing? Why would he put the inhabitants of such a land into such a time of distress?

The answer concludes the two verses, “for the wickedness of them that dwell there.” Because the people who live in the land are doing things that are wicked. Wickedness perpetrated by the populace can put a nation at risk for losing its blessings.

This nation, America, has been a blessed, bountiful land, well- watered, and fruitful, in so many ways most of its storied history. She still is, but it is a land where wickedness is prevalent. Depending on one’s political views various list of what wicked things are among us could be made, and publicized and argued, in most cases without changing anyone’s mind, but there is one wickedness that should be agreed upon, and rejected, by all Americans.

It is wrong to kill viable pre-born babies, and  babies who have been born, some even surviving terrible abortion procedures. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist, or pro-life activist, to know that some things are wicked. Abortion and infanticide are. Some things are just wrong.

So here’s the thought question. Is our nation risking God’s judgment because of our destruction of babies? If He expresses his feelings about this pre-born and after born infanticide will our fruitful land face barrenness?

A Thought from the Psalms

The author of Psalm 96 calls earth to be glad (v. 11), “for he (God) cometh to judge the earth; he shall judge the world with righteousness, and the people with his truth.” Psalm 96:13

In our modern day the cries of politicians and people in general, are filled with words like equality, fairness, justice, values, and right. It sounds as though the world should be in better shape with so many agreed we need what is good. The problem lies in definitions.

Many want equality as long as they are the ones to define equality. So it is with fairness, and values, and right, as long as they are the ones who define what these things mean they want them.

At the same time they call for what is “right,” they cheer a legal statute to allow some abortions right up to the day before the baby is due. Of course, that is not right or fair or equal.

This is just one of the issues in modern society where people call for these noble words, and apply them to things that are not right, not just, not fair, not good.

And so the earth, because of people, who want to be considered right, but just do wrong and redefine it, goes its sad and weary way saying right is wrong, and wrong is right.

One day the earth’s way will be glad because the LORD is coming, and he shall judge the world with righteousness. One would think this to be something all the politicians and people would look forward to, but I don’t think it’s a popular hope. The reason? Note what the scripture says here. God will judge the people with HIS truth.

When the LORD comes all the false definitions will be in the trash heap of history, and God will judge by his truth. God’s definitions will rule the day. God’s definitions will determine justice, and equality, and fairness. Then, killing babies in the womb will be what it always has been, wrong, and worthy of judgment.