Fatalism Revised

1JN 2:1 NLT

My dear children, I am writing this to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate who pleads our case before the Father. He is Jesus Christ, the one who is truly righteous.

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Jesus advocacy warms our hearts!

The person who knows Jesus can make real choices. Before we are received into God's family by grace through faith we are slaves to sin, Paul says. We have no choice. Everyone who isn't a believer in Jesus can't help but sin. Sin is their master and they are not free agents. If sin says jump, they must jump. And the deception of sin is powerful. We know nothing else. What is sin? Sin is disobedience to God. Sin is disbelief in his promises. Sin is an inextricable headlong run toward death. Sin is self destruction. Sin is selfishness. Sin is loveless. Sin takes and destroys. Sin murders when it cannot have what it wants. Sin leads to death.

So sin requires judgement. God is just. He will not allow sin to ruin everything. God will save some from sin. He has set some free. He has released some from the slavery of sin and the fear of death.

But we who are free to choose life, the ones able to obey, may still fall prey to sin. Although we are free from the hideous, cruel master that wants our  destruction and uses us to lash out in rebellion against God, we sometimes still sin. We should hate sin. We should find sin repulsive. We should see past the moment of selfish pleasure and we should loathe the harmful, hateful former master of our torture and destruction. We should feel the sting of being a pawn in the full on assault against life. We should feel the shame of being a treacherous traitor who has deceived the vulnerable and harmed the neediest of this world.

We don't have to sin, but we do. We sin against God. Even more, we sin against Jesus who died for our sin. We add to his suffering.

And what does he do?

He defends us. The Father and the Son must execute justice against our sin. This sin we cling to in many ways is a greater offence, for it is the sin we chose. We were washed, we were saved. We had a choice. We knew better.

And the one we keep hurting the most is the one who defends us.

Jesus stands up for us. He says, I died for them. Jesus is the only one who is right. We are wrong. And yet he makes us right even when we are a traitor.

Choose not to sin! You can. You are not a slave. You are free.

But if you do sin, Jesus defends you, Jesus protects you, Jesus is your advocate. Jesus loves you. He has chosen you to be his. Jesus knows you are a sinner. Jesus knows your heart, your motives, your fears and he knows your selfish heart. Jesus knows your disbelief and your stubborn selfish pride.
And still he defends you, still he protects you from his coming wrath. Jesus sees you sin and try to hide it and, even so, he will treat you as righteous because of his own righteousness.

So stop sinning. You don't have to; you are free.
But if you do sin, repent without fear. Return with no reservation. You are safe. 

Oh sinner, you are safe.

The Watchman is Responsible!

Ezekiel 33:1-13 NLT

Once again a message came to me from the Lord: “Son of man, give your people this message: ‘When I bring an army against a country, the people of that land choose one of their own to be a watchman. When the watchman sees the enemy coming, he sounds the alarm to warn the people. Then if those who hear the alarm refuse to take action, it is their own fault if they die. They heard the alarm but ignored it, so the responsibility is theirs. If they had listened to the warning, they could have saved their lives. But if the watchman sees the enemy coming and doesn’t sound the alarm to warn the people, he is responsible for their captivity. They will die in their sins, but I will hold the watchman responsible for their deaths.’ “Now, son of man, I am making you a watchman for the people of Israel. Therefore, listen to what I say and warn them for me. If I announce that some wicked people are sure to die and you fail to tell them to change their ways, then they will die in their sins, and I will hold you responsible for their deaths. But if you warn them to repent and they don’t repent, they will die in their sins, but you will have saved yourself. “Son of man, give the people of Israel this message: You are saying, ‘Our sins are heavy upon us; we are wasting away! How can we survive?’ As surely as I live, says the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of wicked people. I only want them to turn from their wicked ways so they can live.

Turn!

Turn from your wickedness, O people of Israel! Why should you die? “Son of man, give your people this message: The righteous behavior of righteous people will not save them if they turn to sin, nor will the wicked behavior of wicked people destroy them if they repent and turn from their sins. When I tell righteous people that they will live, but then they sin, expecting their past righteousness to save them, then none of their righteous acts will be remembered. I will destroy them for their sins.

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Are you neglecting your responsibility? Did you know God holds you responsible to warn people of his coming judgment? Ezekiel was given the job of being a watchman.

People need to know that the wrath of God is coming.

But rather than judging people the watchman's job is to warn, to plead, and to warn as one who shares the same fate. The watchman is from among the people, the watchman is chosen to warn and watch. The watchman lives among the people.

The watchman bears responsibility for the death of the people if he does not warn them.

Do you recognise you have a responsibility?

Do you know you are in peril?

Do you understand the peril facing those you have not warned?

You are responsible!

A Word Study in Abomination

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Ezekiel 7:1-9 NASB

Moreover, the word of the Lord came to me saying, "And you, son of man, thus says the Lord God to the land of Israel, 'An end! The end is coming on the four corners of the land. Now the end is upon you, and I will send My anger against you; I will judge you according to your ways and bring all your abominations upon you. For My eye will have no pity on you, nor will I spare you, but I will bring your ways upon you, and your abominations will be among you; then you will know that I am the Lord!'   "Thus says the Lord God , 'A disaster, unique disaster, behold it is coming! An end is coming; the end has come! It has awakened against you; behold, it has come! Your doom has come to you, O inhabitant of the land. The time has come, the day is near-tumult rather than joyful shouting on the mountains. Now I will shortly pour out My wrath on you and spend My anger against you; judge you according to your ways and bring on you all your abominations. My eye will show no pity nor will I spare. I will repay you according to your ways, while your abominations are in your midst; then you will know that I, the Lord, do the smiting.

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Today I read Ezekiel through chapter 8. I started seeing some trends. Have you ever heard of a' wordle' or a 'word cloud'?  There is a software program that analyses the frequency of words used in text, a speech, or some other literature and then creates an image made of the words and depicts emphasis by bolder larger fonts. So frequently used words are bigger and more prominent while less frequently repeated words are smaller. Someday I'd like to create this kind of a picture for the book of Ezekiel. But instead I've looked at various words I noticed today and searched their use in the New American Standard Bible (NASB).

Most of the words in the list below appear many times more in Ezekiel than they do in any other part of the Bible.

I'm sure you'll begin to get the picture God intended for his people.

He's not happy with what their doing. He doesn't like it one bit. God finds their behaviour very unpleasant.

God is planning some harsh punishment because of the actions of his people.

If I was you, I'd figure out what had gotten God so upset and then I try to see what can be done about it.

Here the list and what I found.

Abomination (42)
Iniquity (42)
Idol (42)
Profane (30)
Ways (48)
Commit (42)
Judge (21)
Wrath (33)
Detestable (10)

Not a pretty or admirable description.

May be it can be summed up this way,

If your everyday life isn't about loving God, then God is disgusted with your ways and is planning to judge you in wrath.

Something to think about.

https://soundcloud.com/wkbode/abomination-a-word-study-in

The compatibility of bringing grief and showing compassion.

Lamentations 3:31-33 NLT

For no one is abandoned by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he also shows compassion because of the greatness of his unfailing love. For he does not enjoy hurting people or causing them sorrow.

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I've finished reading Jeremiah and Lamentations this week. I've also been preparing a Bible study on Joshua chapter 11. I'm very concerned for you and for me. I think we have deliberately misrepresented God.

We think we know what's best. We are quite sure we know right from wrong. So we think we know how God should act. We stand in judgement over God. We gather others who hold the same opinion as us and feel smug. We feel self - righteous. We're confident we know how God behaves.

God is a nice God.

Or we dream up an evolved God, a new God, a changed God of the New Testament.

BUT God is the same yesterday, today, and forever!

God does not change.
What God does is right.
We are not better than God nor do we know better than him.
We can not take from God what he has claimed. We can not attribute to another what God has attributed to himself.

When I read these passages I have to reevaluate my opinion of God. I must fear God. I must trust him. I must follow him because he demands it. I must not think I am better than God. I must not think I know better than God.

I must not make God in my puny image.

I must also not use God as my sword! God is not my tool for my twisted sense of vengeance or my bigger gun brought to the shoot out! I do not choose what is just. God is not up for the highest bidder.

I've seen both these approaches to God's more uncomfortable accounts of judgment. From the first chapters of Genesis to the last chapters of Revelation, God has held out death and all its horrors as a judgement for disobedience. And God does demand love. We showers us with blessings and he scares us with terrors! But all this is to the end that we would know him, fear him, and love him! Far too often we have glossed over the overwhelming inescapable wretched judgements brought about by God against his people for their hard hearted spiteful rebellion. But then we also have ignored his self sacrificing, compassion, grace and love! In fact we have ignored God altogether unless it is to use him as a genie in a lamp, a scapegoat for evil and trouble or a weapon against our enemies. We can not make God for our own purposes! We did not invent right and wrong. We are not trustworthy sources of ethics, morals or reality. We are flawed and selfish. We should stop making idols that bear the name of Jesus, God the Father, and the Holy Spirit. We must cease reading the Bible to accomplish our own ends. 

We are not God. We actually misunderstand who God is or what he is like. A proper view of God should be our goal. And to that end we must challenge our preconceptions. We must not avoid the unavoidable. We must force our minds to wrestle with the truth. Our world is full of apparent paradoxes. We don't know everything. In fact we actually really know very little. Whether we are people of faith or people of reason, whether we are say we follow science or the Bible or feel we have reconciled them both. We will have to trust other sources, we will have to accept we can't explain all the apparent paradoxes.

But we still need to grapple with them.

We need to be humbled.

We need to resist making God in our own image.

• God the bear

  • Lamentations 3:10 (NLT)

    10He has hidden like a bear or a lion,waiting to attack me.

  • Lamentations 3:11 (NLT)

    11He has dragged me off the path and torn me in pieces,leaving me helpless and devastated.

  • Lamentations 3:12 (NLT)

    12He has drawn his bowand made me the target for his arrows.

  • Lamentations 3:13 (NLT)

    13He shot his arrowsdeep into my heart.

  • Lamentations 3:14 (NLT)

    14My own people laugh at me.All day long they sing their mocking songs.

  • Lamentations 3:15 (NLT)

    15He has filled me with bitternessand given me a bitter cup of sorrow to drink.

  • Lamentations 3:16 (NLT)

    16He has made me chew on gravel.He has rolled me in the dust.
  Labels: arrows gravel joshua 11

• Dead in the streets

  • Lamentations 2:20 (NLT)

    20“O Lord, think about this!Should you treat your own people this way?Should mothers eat their own children,those they once bounced on their knees?Should priests and prophets be killedwithin the Lord’s Temple?

  • Lamentations 2:21 (NLT)

    21“See them lying in the streets—young and old,boys and girls,killed by the swords of the enemy.You have killed them in your anger,slaughtering them without mercy.
  Labels: cannibals joshua 11 lying in the streets

• Utter horror

  • Isaiah 66:24 (NLT)

    24And as they go out, they will seethe dead bodies of those who have rebelled against me.For the worms that devour them will never die,and the fire that burns them will never go out.All who pass bywill view them with utter horror.”
  Labels: joshua 11

• Eaten by worms

  • Acts 12:23 (NLT)

    23Instantly, an angel of the Lord struck Herod with a sickness, because he accepted the people’s worship instead of giving the glory to God. So he was consumed with worms and died.
  Labels: joshua 11 judgement

• Destroyed by your only helper

  • Hosea 13:9 (NLT)

    9“You are about to be destroyed, O Israel—yes, by me, your only helper.
  Labels: 11 by god destroyed

• Mangled like a wild animal

  • Hosea 13:2 (NLT)

    2Now they continue to sin by making silver idols,images shaped skillfully with human hands.“Sacrifice to these,” they cry,“and kiss the calf idols!”

  • Hosea 13:3 (NLT)

    3Therefore, they will disappear like the morning mist,like dew in the morning sun,like chaff blown by the wind,like smoke from a chimney.

  • Hosea 13:4 (NLT)

    4“I have been the Lord your Godever since I brought you out of Egypt.You must acknowledge no God but me,for there is no other savior.

  • Hosea 13:5 (NLT)

    5I took care of you in the wilderness,in that dry and thirsty land.

  • Hosea 13:6 (NLT)

    6But when you had eaten and were satisfied,you became proud and forgot me.

  • Hosea 13:7 (NLT)

    7So now I will attack you like a lion,like a leopard that lurks along the road.

  • Hosea 13:8 (NLT)

    8Like a bear whose cubs have been taken away,I will tear out your heart.I will devour you like a hungry lionessand mangle you like a wild animal.
  Labels: joshua 11 judgement mangled tear out your heart

• Babies dashed, pregnant women ripped

  • Hosea 13:16 (NLT)

    16The people of Samariamust bear the consequences of their guiltbecause they rebelled against their God.They will be killed by an invading army,their little ones dashed to death against the ground,their pregnant women ripped open by swords.”
  Labels: because joshua 11 judgement killed rebellion terrible

• Bowel trouble painful death judgment

  • 2 Chronicles 21:13 (NLT)

    13Instead, you have been as evil as the kings of Israel. You have led the people of Jerusalem and Judah to worship idols, just as King Ahab did in Israel. And you have even killed your own brothers, men who were better than you.

  • 2 Chronicles 21:14 (NLT)

    14So now the Lord is about to strike you, your people, your children, your wives, and all that is yours with a heavy blow.

  • 2 Chronicles 21:15 (NLT)

    15You yourself will suffer with a severe intestinal disease that will get worse each day until your bowels come out.”

  • 2 Chronicles 21:16 (NLT)

    16Then the Lord stirred up the Philistines and the Arabs, who lived near the Ethiopians, to attack Jehoram.

  • 2 Chronicles 21:17 (NLT)

    17They marched against Judah, broke down its defenses, and carried away everything of value in the royal palace, including the king’s sons and his wives. Only his youngest son, Ahaziah, was spared.

  • 2 Chronicles 21:18 (NLT)

    18After all this, the Lord struck Jehoram with the severe intestinal disease.

  • 2 Chronicles 21:19 (NLT)

    19The disease grew worse and worse, and at the end of two years it caused his bowels to come out, and he died in agony. His people did not build a great funeral fire to honor him as they had done for his ancestors.
  Labels: bowel death idolatry joshua 11 judgement painful trouble

• Manure on your face

  • Malachi 2:3 (NLT)

    3I will punish your descendants and splatter your faces with the manure from your festival sacrifices, and I will throw you on the manure pile.
  Labels: joshua 11

• Ripe for judgment, scattered dead bodies

  • Amos 8:2 (NLT)

    2“What do you see, Amos?” he asked.I replied, “A basket full of ripe fruit.”Then the Lord said, “Like this fruit, Israel is ripe for punishment! I will not delay their punishment again.

  • Amos 8:3 (NLT)

    3In that day the singing in the Temple will turn to wailing. Dead bodies will be scattered everywhere. They will be carried out of the city in silence. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken!”
  Labels: joshua 11

• Harsh day of the Lord

  • Amos 5:18 (NLT)

    18What sorrow awaits you who say,“If only the day of the Lord were here!”You have no idea what you are wishing for.That day will bring darkness, not light.

  • Amos 5:19 (NLT)

    19In that day you will be like a man who runs from a lion—only to meet a bear.Escaping from the bear, he leans his hand against a wall in his house—and he’s bitten by a snake.

  • Amos 5:20 (NLT)

    20Yes, the day of the Lord will be dark and hopeless,without a ray of joy or hope.

  • Amos 5:21 (NLT)

    21“I hate all your show and pretense—the hypocrisy of your religious festivals and solemn assemblies.
  Labels: joshua 11

• I will slaughter

  • Amos 1:8 (NLT)

    8I will slaughter the people of Ashdodand destroy the king of Ashkelon.Then I will turn to attack Ekron,and the few Philistines still left will be killed,”says the Sovereign Lord.
  Labels: joshua 11

• Day of the Lord, horrible

  • Zechariah 14:6 (NLT)

    6On that day the sources of light will no longer shine,

  • Zechariah 14:12 (NLT)

    12And the Lord will send a plague on all the nations that fought against Jerusalem. Their people will become like walking corpses, their flesh rotting away. Their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths.
  Labels: joshua 11

• Disaster comes from God

  • Job 12:9 (NLT)

    9For they all knowthat my disaster has come from the hand of the Lord.

  • Job 12:10 (NLT)

    10For the life of every living thing is in his hand,and the breath of every human being.
  Labels: joshua 11

• God as a fighter

  • Jeremiah 48:10 (NLT)

    10Cursed are those who refuse to do the Lord’s work,who hold back their swords from shedding blood!
  Labels: joshua 11

• God as a fighter

  • Zechariah 14:1 (NLT)

    1Watch, for the day of the Lord is coming when your possessions will be plundered right in front of you!

  • Zechariah 14:2 (NLT)

    2I will gather all the nations to fight against Jerusalem. The city will be taken, the houses looted, and the women raped. Half the population will be taken into captivity, and the rest will be left among the ruins of the city.

  • Zechariah 14:3 (NLT)

    3Then the Lord will go out to fight against those nations, as he has fought in times past.
  Labels: joshua 11

• King caught

  • Lamentations 4:20 (NLT)

    20Our king—the Lord’s anointed, the very life of our nation—was caught in their snares.We had thought that his shadowwould protect us against any nation on earth!
  Labels: jesus messiah

• Tenderhearted cannibals

  • Lamentations 4:10 (NLT)

    10Tenderhearted womenhave cooked their own children.They have eaten themto survive the siege.
  Labels: cannibals jerusalem siege survival women

• No one abandoned forever

  • Lamentations 3:31 (NLT)

    31For no one is abandonedby the Lord forever.

  • Lamentations 3:32 (NLT)

    32Though he brings grief, he also shows compassionbecause of the greatness of his unfailing love.

  • Lamentations 3:33 (NLT)

    33For he does not enjoy hurting peopleor causing them sorrow.
  Labels: abandoned compassion crushed grief unfailing love

• Mercies never cease

  • Lamentations 3:16 (NLT)

    16He has made me chew on gravel.He has rolled me in the dust.

  • Lamentations 3:21 (NLT)

    21Yet I still dare to hopewhen I remember this:

  • Lamentations 3:22 (NLT)

    22The faithful love of the Lord never ends!His mercies never cease.

  • Lamentations 3:23 (NLT)

    23Great is his faithfulness;his mercies begin afresh each morning.
  Labels: bitter cup gravel hope judgement