Rant of Righteousness!

This "rest" of God, the true Promised Land, is living in complete relationship with Him, through holiness. Doesn't it make perfect sense? It's what He's been doing since the beginning of time!

God HATES sin and LOVES righteousness! Doesn't it make sense? Do you get why?

Look! Here is an important truth SEPARATES MAN FROM GOD!

Adam and Eve are created, loved, and placed in the greatest paradise man has ever seen, a place where God can walk and talk with them. But they tasted that forbidden fruit and had to be cast out of perfection.

Cain kills Able. Then he leaves the presence of the Lord!

The descendants of Cain didn't know God; they were all wicked.

The descendants of Seth were all righteous; they called on the name of YHWH. Did you get that? They were righteous, and they called God by His name. Name basis with the creator of the universe! But then these sons of God (the righteous descendants of Seth) mixed with the daughters of men (the wicked descendants of Cain), and they were all corrupted! Then God said that He was sorry He created the world. It actually broke God’s heart to see mankind being so sinful!

So He tried to start all over again. He found Noah, the only righteous man left on the face of the earth, and did the whole ark thing. He killed off all the wicked, but even the sons of Noah were soon again corrupted by sin!

Then He calls out Abraham who is called the FRIEND OF GOD because of His righteousness! God made Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob’s children His own children and He called them out to be holy.

This Promised Land was LIVING A RIGHT RELATIONSHIP WITH YHWH!

God created the world to love it and be with it, but as soon as sin entered, all of creation drew away and away and further away from the Father. He had to sit there and watch everything He loved fall away from Him.

He kept trying! He kept trying! Everything He has done since that day has been to draw His true love back to Himself, but in the stubbornness of sin we kept drawing away from Him! So He finally even cast off His very deity, all that made Him God, and came to earth as a lowly man. He endured every horrible temptation, yet without sin. He faced complete rejection, by both God and man, and carried all of our sin. Yes, Jesus Christ on His cross was the ultimate sacrifice, all that He could do to win us back to Him! He destroyed sin on the cross and defeated death in His resurrection and now we can say to death “Where is your sting?” And it was all so we could be rid of that sin AND BE IN RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM!

Oh, God misses you and I. His heart has always been for us, and He’s just waiting, just waiting for us to cast off that sin and enter into His rest, into His complete love! His heart breaks continually for us! Have you ever had a broken heart? Has anyone you've loved, and I mean really loved, done something to break your heart? Imagine what God must go through for us! Consider how many tears He must have wept for you alone, just because He longs to be with you!

But we can't be with Him now, not without His righteousness. Sin separates us from God. It always has and it always will. That’s why He says “If you love Me, you'll obey my commands.”
That’s why He says “Whoever sins has neither seen Me nor known Me.”
That's why He says “Without holiness no one can see Me!”

All of scripture and religion and life are summed up in this principle: God desperately loves us and completely desires us, but He cannot be reunited with us until we cast off our sin and accept His free gift of grace. He’s waiting for us. He’s been waiting for all of time. He will continue to wait, because that’s all that’s left. He’s done EVERYTHING He can for us. He continually calls us closer; He’ll never stop doing that. But Christ has finished the work of God and now sits at His right hand. YHWH waits for you and me.

There is one thing to do in light of all of this, and that is simply to deny and cast off all sin. Holiness is no longer an option. We must desire righteousness, for God’s sake and for our own.
The next few blogs will be about grace and faith and some stuff God’s been teaching me about that and how all that ties in to holiness. The Lord bless you and you draw near and nearer to Him in complete holiness.

The Promised Land?

The last blog was all about the blessings and curses that went along with God’s covenant with Israel. Basically, when the Israelites held their side, they would receive increasingly great blessings, with the pinnacle promise being that God would walk among His people.

The next step for the people of Israel was to enter the Promised Land. Unfortunately, when the time came for them to go and take the land, the Israelites were afraid of the people who dwelt there. The task of taking over the land seemed too great. Really, they just didn’t trust in God. In fact, they even said that they would rather go back to Egypt or even die in the wilderness than to enter into the Promised Land.

So God gave them what they asked for. He told the people that their generation would not be allowed to cross over into the Promised Land. They would wander in the wilderness until every last one of that generation had perished, save Caleb and Joshua, the only two of the entire congregation that remained faithful. Out of the hundreds of thousands of Israelites over the age of twenty, only two were faithful to God. The rest would die in the wilderness.

It was because of their disobedience that this generation was unable to enter into the land. Hebrews 4:6 says “it remains that some must enter it, and those to whom it was first preached did not enter because of disobedience.” Because the Israelites separated themselves from God by their lack of obedience, God couldn’t allow them into the land. Instead, this generation had to die off in the wilderness before the nation could enter into the land.

The people finally did enter the land, but they still missed out on it. The truth is, the nation of Israel never completely received the inheritance of the land, because the land wasn’t just a physical thing. The land was a place of complete blessing. The land was a place where “I will walk among you and be your God, and you shall be My people.” This land could only be obtained through righteous obedient faith, the faith of their father Abraham. The people never walked in that. The people didn't really seem to understand that. We probably don't either.

Hebrews 4 talks about how we need to be diligent to enter into the rest of God, because the Israelites never did. So what is this rest?

Blessing and Curses

Sorry this blog is so inconsistent. I just don't have a ton of time to get into it. Plus I'm not as passionate as I ought to be in finishing the series of thought I've begun. It's all based off of a big revelation I had a while ago. I'll try to be more consistent and finish this little series thing I'm doing.

Alright, so last blog ended with Abraham nearly slaying his only son of the promise. God stops the affair, praises Abraham for being obedient. Later, Isaac begets Jacob, Jacob begets his twelve sons, the Patriarchs, who are the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel. Through a series of events they end up in Egypt. A few generations later, the Egyptians persecute the descendants of Jacob. God sends Moses to take them out of Egypt. God sends a bunch of plagues on the land of Egypt through Moses and Aaron, his brother. The we have the parting of the sea and the Israelites are finally free of Pharoh's clutches when he and his army end up under the waters of the Red Sea. This is the Exodus.

So the next Israelites in the wilderness between Egypt and the Promised Land. The book of Leviticus is all about the law God gives to the people. Numbers is a counting of all the people, plus some neat stories about their journey through the wilderness and the disobedience of he people. Deuteronomy is the last words of Moses before he dies and before the people enter into the land. In Deuteronomy, Moses repeats the law and reminds the people of what God has done for them.

Sorry for all the background. It's sort of necessary.

In Exodus 24, God and Israel make a covenant with each other. The rest of Exodus talks of the Tabernacle, the place where the people would meet with the Lord to offer sacrifices. Leviticus gives most of the law. Then comes Leviticus 26, where God lists His blessings and His curses for the people if they keep or break covenant with Him. This is my summary of the blessing and curses:

If the people obey, God will give them, in this order-

1. Good harvests
2. Safety in the land
3. Victory over their enemies
4. Abundance
5. Close Relationship with God (He says He will "walk among them")

These are the promises of obedience. For disobedience comes-

1. Illness and disease
2. Defeat at the hands of their enemies
3. The land will produce nothing
4. Wild beasts will take their livestock and their children
5. More defeat and exile ("I will scatter you")

The language used to describe the curses is very strong. At one point, the LORD tells them that they will hear a leaf shake in the wind, and they will flee as if from an enemy who is trying to kill them, and they will fall. Just take a second and imagine it. How terrible.

The blessings and curses hold one thing in common- a succession that leads to completion. Perfect disobedience leads to perfect terror. Perfect obedience leads to perfect relationship with God. He promises even to "walk among them." The only other time I can recall that happening in scripture is Genesis, before sin entered the world.

Sorry this wasn't too exciting. It kind of reads like a text book. But it sets the stage for the last blog or two. So it was necessary. Thanks for reading. I hope you learned something!