For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    Plan for the future and make the preparations to meet your needs before taking the time to make yourself comfortable.

    It is human nature. Time and again, we turn from God and sin. When we suffer the consequences of our sin, we turn back to God and beg Him to save us. All too often, our repentance was shallow and as soon as our troubles passed we returned to our sin. But God is gracious and merciful, He continues to offer His forgiveness and will welcome us home if we ever truly turn from our sins (and not just from their consequences).

    Paul writes about how our faith in God should change how we live our lives. Every time he writes about this, he follows a similar pattern. First he writes that we should completely avoid sexual immorality, lust, impure desires, and greed. Repeatedly, Paul lumps various sexual sins together with greed. In addition, he makes clear that greed is a form of idolatry. Greed is the worship of material wealth. The reason Paul emphasizes these sins is because they little by little fill our time so that gradually the efforts we make to do God’s will are undermined by these sins.
    I want to point out again how Paul lumps greed in with sexual sins. He writes about sexual immorality, lust, evil desires, and impurity. The latter two are not exclusively sexual in nature, but are certainly related to sexuality. Then he adds greed to the list. Greed is not a sexual sin at all, but it goes along with it. If we look at society around us we will notice that those who are caught up by greed are usually sexually immoral as well. And those who are caught up in sexual immorality are often greedy as well. These are sins which tend to travel together. It is worth making this focus because there are all too many people who want to separate challenging sexual sins from challenging greed. There are those who preach against sexual sins while ignoring greed, and there are those who want to ignore sexual sins while challenging greed.
    I try to keep what I write short, but I need to make one more point. All too many of us, in our attempts to call people away from the sins above give in to anger, rage, and slander. There is an entire second “constellation” of sins for which we need to watch out. These are all related to anger. We need to be careful not to give into them. We often forget that if we allow ourselves to be justifiably angry it can easily lead us into sinful behavior. We are called to work for the good of others. Anger encourages is to work for against the good of others. If we are angry with someone, we will seek to “punish” them. This will cause us to act maliciously, or say things to cause others to think badly of them, or do other things which detract from doing God’s will.
    Having written about what we need to avoid, Paul goes on to tell us what to do instead. If we focus on filling our lives with virtues we will not have time for the sins he mentioned. If we act with humility, kindness, compassion, gentleness and patience we will not be easily sucked into those sins Paul had just written about. We are not to pursue these virtues for their own sake. Rather, these virtues should grow out of our love for one another. If we truly love others we will treat them with these virtues. All together Paul clearly shows us how we can judge our own behavior and act according to God’s will.

    Oh how this passage strikes me as applying today. Those who are supposed to teach us about God’s word twist it to say what they want it to say. They offer superficial answers to problems which require hard answers. They assure us that there will be peace when there is no peace. They are proud of distracting people from the real dangers of the world, rather than being ashamed. The common people and the leaders are equally guilty. They lie without a second thought. They deceive and cheat one another and then wonder why the economy is doing poorly. The people have refused to obey God’s commands so the time is coming when God will punish those who are “circumcised” in the body, but “uncircumcised” in the spirit. Those who make a pretense of doing good while selfishly seeking their own interest will suffer.

For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    Plan ahead and make sure you know how you will pay for it before you start building or buying a house. The same concept can be applied to any large project, make sure that you have figured out how you are going to feed yourself while you are undertaking the project and plan the project before starting work on it.

    Are we like the ancient Israelites, who saw the wonders God performed, yet refused to trust Him? Will it take God starting to kill us for the people of the United States to turn to God? And if we do turn to God, will we do so with sincerity, or will we merely give lip service to Him? Trouble is coming for the people of the United States and the rest of the world. There is still time to repent of our sins and turn to God, but we must do so with sincerity.

    I prefer the NIV translation of this passage. We have been raised with Christ, so let us set our minds on things above, on the things of heaven. We died with Christ on the cross and our life is now with Him. Just as we are not yet completely raised in our new life in Christ, neither is the death of our sinful nature complete. We need to continue to put to death those things of our sinful nature which live within us. Those things which we need to put to death are sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed. The first four of these are variations on the same thing. These are all perversions of our God given sexuality. Paul lumps greed in with these distortions of sexuality and identifies them all as idolatry. The first four are the idolatry of worshiping ourselves. Greed is the idolatry of worshiping things, whether it is money, or food, or some other possession. In all of these the sin is serving our own pleasure ahead of serving God’s will.
    However, it is not enough to put aside and avoid these sins, which are readily seen as the sin they are. In addition to putting to death the idolatry of self contained in those sins, we must also put aside the desire to see others as less than ourselves. That is what the other sins really are, they are the attempt to put others below us. Anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language are all attempts to put others beneath our control, to make them less than ourselves. If we have truly allowed the Holy Spirit to strip off our old selves, we will not lie to one another. We will be honest about both our joys and our sorrows, about our successes and our failures. We will admit our sinfulness to each other and not try to pretend that we have it together.
    God has chosen us to be His holy people despite our unworthiness. Our response ought to be: compassion for others who are struggling with sin as we did and are; kindness towards those who are suffering the consequences of their mistakes; humbly recognizing that our mistakes are just as bad as theirs, even if we may have escaped some of the consequences they are experiencing; gentleness and patience in showing others how their sins are causing the problems they see in their lives. Let us always remember that we are no better than anyone else. The sins which God forgave me for are no less terrible than the sins which others need His forgiveness for. Considering that God forgave me for how badly I treated Him, how can I not forgive those who have done me wrong (especially since it may only be that I think they have done me wrong)?
    We cannot go wrong if we let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts and actively love those we come into contact with. In all of our actions let us remember that we represent Jesus to those who have not yet met Him.

    People twist the word of God to say what they want it to say, then proclaim themselves wise for doing so. They offer aspirin to those suffering from hemorrhagic fever and tell them that all will be well. But all will not be well. There can be no healing from the hurts people are suffering as long as they go on doing the things which have caused their hurt. People habitually lie to one another. They do not seek success through honesty, rather they attempt to take advantage of one another by lies and deception. We will do them no good if we continue to tell them that everything will be alright because God loves them. Everything will NOT be alright if people continue in the path that leads to death. God is willing to forgive, but His forgiveness does us no good if we continue to sin.

     I am using One Year Bible Online for my daily Bible study. For today, One Year Bible Online links here. I have found that by writing this daily blog of what I see when I read these scriptures, I get more out of them. I hope that by posting these ruminations others may get some benefit as well. In order to make that possible I read the passages and write my thoughts a day in advance. If you have any thoughts or comments regarding these verses or what I have written about them, please post them.

     Jeremiah speaks of religious leaders and teachers who have rejected the word of God and teach their own thoughts in the place of God’s word. They offer superficial treatments for mortal wounds. This sounds like all too many of those who claim to be religious leaders today. This whole passage reminds me of our day. A little further in Jeremiah refers to people who refuse to stand up for the truth and how every day things go from bad to worse. He warns not to trust your neighbor or even your relatives because everyone is trying to take advantage of everyone else. Again this reminds me of so much of our society today, where all too many are only concerned with gaining an advantage for themselves, not what is best for everyone. People tell lie after lie and refuse to acknowledge God. The prophet tells us the end result of this, the land will become such that no one will dare travel through it. Something we are already seeing in certain places. Time is running out for people to turn to the Lord and be saved.

     We are to put to death the things of our sinful nature. Paul lists them out some of them here: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed. I find it interesting that people have a tendency to not see how these are all connected. Sometimes people focus on how wrong sexual sins are, but dismiss greed. Other times, people focus on how wrong greed is, but dismiss sexual sins. What people forget is that all of these sins involve treating others as objects to satisfy our own desires. They are all a form of idolatry where we make ourselves the center of the universe. Paul goes on to list other ways in which we attempt to make ourselves the center of the universe. He tells us to give up anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language. These are also ways in which we attempt to make ourselves the center of the universe. They are ways in which we attempt to usurp God’s place.
     If we place God in His rightful place we will act in the way which Paul instructs. When we recognize that others are as important as ourselves, and make God the center of our universe. we will behave with compassion, kindness, gentleness, humility, and patience. We will not operate in a world of Us and Them. Our world will be a world where everyone is loved by God, and therefore we are obliged to love them all as well. All of this will flow naturally if we allow the peace of Christ to take over in our hearts. I will strive to remember that everything I say and do is done in the name of Jesus. Others will interpret my actions and judge Christ by how I act. If I act poorly, it reflects not just on myself, but on Christ as well.

     The psalmist recounts how time and again people turned away from God to their own sinful desires. When they began to suffer the consequences of their sins, they turned once more to God and He forgave them. Unfortunately, all too often when people turn to God, they merely offer lip service and do not actually change how they act. Am I willing to fully surrender myself to God and rely solely on Him?

     This proverb tells us that we need to first arrange our affairs to supply ourselves with food and clothing. Only after we have done that does it make sense to arrange where we are going to live and shelter on a permanent basis.