A Cry for Repentance. Or Antidepressants.

The Lord said to me: “Do not pray for the welfare of this people.  Though they fast, I will not hear their cry, and though they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I will not accept them. But I will consume them by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence.” – Jeremiah 14:11-12

If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life—to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that.  All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death. – 1 John 5:16-17

Can a person or a nation get so completely out of kilter, so utter dysfunctional that they must be destroyed?  It must be possible, though it is not my call as to when that takes place.  Seeming devils can become saints.  God knows. 

Here is another one to contemplate.  There was open sexual immorality going on in the church at Corinth.  One of the church members was engaged in behavior that even the pagans would not condone, according to Paul who offered this remedy to the congregation:

For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing.  When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. (1 Corinthians 5:3-5)   

 

I suppose this was a form of excommunication, though it sounds, on the surface, as if the assembled saints were being called on to pronounce a curse on the wayward one.  The devil take you, we might say – which should remind us to be careful of our words.  Paul expected that allowing Satan to have access to the sinner would lead to his ultimate salvation.  Far better to see the flesh destroyed than to allow a brother to fall away into spiritual death. 

We like to think there is always hope.  Even the Bible suggests that a live dog is better than a dead lion (Ecclesiastes 9:4).  There are times when a disease requires extreme measures.  Damage can be so extensive that the only way to save a life is amputation.  The way to spiritual life is always through death; sometimes it may mean physical death.  Sometimes only suffering and destruction can get us back on the right road. 

I don’t see how a person can have much hope in a society that embraces and exalts wickedness, that glorifies stupidity and wallows in unrighteousness.  But, as I said yesterday, it is not anything new.  If it seems strange to us, it is only because we were once, for a brief moment in history, a better people, or thought we were.  No, I don’t think the revisionists are right – I think we did rise above the churning mediocrity of human ignorance and apathy and selfishness.  It may appear only as a spike above the regression line of history, but it happened.  Our fall is the more evident for it.

Freedom.  Do we even know what it means?  

Oh, and that man in Corinth that the congregation cursed, ever wonder how that turned out?

Now if anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but in some measure—not to put it too severely—to all of you.  For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough, so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.  So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him.

There is always hope.

Cutting the Devil Down to Size

Vindicate me, God, and defend my cause against an ungodly nation; rescue me from deceitful and unjust man. For You are the God of my refuge. Why have You rejected me? Why must I go about in sorrow because of the enemy’s oppression?

Send Your light and Your truth; let them lead me. Let them bring me to Your holy mountain, to Your dwelling place. Then I will come to the altar of God, to God, my greatest joy. I will praise You with the lyre, O God, my God.

Why am I so depressed? Why this turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I will still praise Him, my Savior and my God. – Psalm 43

Since there has been some talk of angels on One Cosmos the last few days, I suppose it started me thinking.

Like the Psalmist, I have trouble with trouble. If, like me, you believe in God, then you probably have found yourself wondering, at least momentarily, if God has rejected you. I take things personally. If something goes wrong, I blame myself first. What did I do wrong? Where did I miss it? But it isn’t always my fault. Sometimes it can’t be. So I look around for someone to blame. Maybe it’s my wife’s fault. And so I go down the list.

We are told plainly that we do not fight against mere flesh and blood enemies. The Bible has no problem saying that there is an adversary of the Divine, an accuser of the brethren. We shouldn’t use the devil as an excuse, but we should recognize his presence and resist his efforts. In The Screwtape Letters Lewis warns of the two ways to err regarding the demonic. We can become morbidly obsessed with the devil, which is clearly wrong. It is, however, equally erroneous to dismiss demonic influence entirely.

The devil is real. You can call him an archetype; you can say it is a function of the human psyche; you can call it a mind parasite. It is real, and it is an adversarial force bent on destruction. No less an authority than Jesus Christ said that the devil was a liar and the father of lies. He compared him to a thief, coming to steal, kill and destroy. In fact, Jesus spoke about the devil and demons frequently. He told us that the devil not only deceives us but even attacks us physically.

The poet and artist William Blake did not believe that the soul and the body were really separate. He thought the body was a manifestation or emanation of the soul. The philosopher Anaxagoras said, “Appearances are a glimpse of what is hidden.” What happens, what we see in the physical realm is intimately related to what goes on in the spiritual. If that is the case, it is not surprising to find a physical disease or disability result from the enemy’s attack on the soul.

When we find ourselves laboring in darkness and oppression, what should we do? First we should call out to God. Come into the light and understand that in Christ we are released from all Satan’s accusations and indictments. Jesus paid it all. While I must deal with the consequences of my sin, there is no additional redemption in me suffering for my sins. I am no more delivered because I wallow in sorrow and suffer under demonic attack than if I stand upon my salvation in Christ and fight the devil. That is the whole point of Ephesians 6 as Paul tells us to deploy the shield of faith lest we be pierced by the fiery darts of the adversary.

I may chose to endure suffering and hardship, or I may make a sacrifice to benefit another person, but I should give no ground to the devil. God has not rejected us any more than He has rejected Christ the Son. We need not “go about in sorrow because of the enemy’s oppression”. Instead, light and truth can lead us into God presence where we find genuine acceptance and joy. The writer of Psalm 43 touches on one, possibly the primary way to throw back the assault of the enemy, and fully enter God presence: praise.

To me, that has always sounded like pure cornball flakiness. Yet, the longest book in the Bible is the book of Psalms. David, called the man after God’s own heart, with all his faults, was above all a man of praise, a singer of psalms. Before Jesus went up to pray on Gethsemane on the night of His betrayal, He and the disciples sang a hymn. In heaven, the redeemed will sing a new song.

Hey, it’s worth a try.

Hallelujah!