Psalm 15 - Hell

Trembling seizes the ungodly:  "Who among us can dwell with a consuming fire?  Who among us can dwell with ever-burning flames?"  Isaiah 33

The other question.  David wants to know who can dwell with God.  Isaiah speaks for those who go their own way, devising evil or living in apathy.  What do we do with the thought of God being a "consuming fire"?  Moses tells the people before they enter the promised land that they should heed the commandments when they go in without him, because God is a jealous God - a consuming fire.  We are His and He is not only protective over us, but jealous of our turning away to other gods.  It is the ungodly, however, that God will finally deal with.  Things done in the dark - atrocities out in the open.  He sees them.  Our holy God will deal by burning them up.  Ash to ash in an ever-burning fire.  He is righteous and cannot look on that which is not holy without becoming enraged.

Don't judge God on this.  Anyone look at Penn State in the last couple of days?  What did you feel when you heard about the coach who has been molesting boys for years, his deeds hidden by those who chose football over doing the right - the legal - thing?  Anything rise up in you?  Think, then, about what our God sees and wonder why He has not already set the earth on fire.

What of those who listen to God?  Who, as David says, live honestly, acknowledge the truth in their hearts, don't slander with their tongues, don't harm their neighbor, who despise what God despises and love what God loves, who keep their word whatever the cost, and who don't take bribes or lend with interest.  What can those who have believed with their hearts expect one day?

Your eyes will see the King in His beauty.  You will see a vast land...Your eyes will see Jerusalem, a peaceful pasture...For the Majestic One, our Lord, will be there, a place of rivers and broad streams...For the Lord is our Judge, the Lord is our Lawgiver, the Lord is our King.  He will save us...none who dwell there will say, "I am sick."  The people who dwell there will be forgiven their iniquity.  Isaiah 33

It is not that those who will see Jesus will have lived a sinless life.  That is impossible.  The Christian life is really impossible to live in the flesh because it is powered by the Holy Spirit.  That is why we must first "acknowledge the truth in our hearts" before we can endeavor to do all the other things.  And my motive for being "good" is not to win points with God.  My motive is Him.  Pleasing Him.  That I cannot do on my own, either.  I must rely on "Christ in me, the hope of glory."  I will be right with God because Jesus made me so, not because I have power on my own to do good. 

Then He showed me the river of living water, sparkling like crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the broad street of the city.  He said, "I will give water as a gift to the thirsty from the spring of life."

Both the Spirit and the bride say, "Come!" Anyone who hears should say, "Come!" And the one who is thirsty should come.  Whoever desires should take the living water as a gift.  Revelation 21 and 22.

Thirsty anyone?  Anyone.  Regardless of what you have been in the past.  If you have been on your way to the consuming fires of an eternal conflagration, you can still come.  Anyone.  These are some of the last words of the Bible.  The parting words of Jesus to John the Beloved.  Avoiding eternal fire is as simple as accepting a gift.  Of water.  Living water from the hand of the God of all creation.  Drink.  Taste.  See that the Lord is good.

Psalm 15 - An Ounce of Pretension

Lord, who may enter your Holy Tent?  Who may live on  your holy mountain?
Only those who are innocent and who do what is right. Such people speak the truth from their hearts and do not tell lies about others.  (vs. 1-2)

God wants honesty.  He hates pretense.  Take off the mask.  It makes Him sick to see you with it on your hypocritical face.  Who are you really?  He would rather see that.  Don't lie about yourself, first of all.  Are you living a lie right now?  Do you really think you are smart enough to fool God with your whining about being someone's victim?  Here's the thing.  He knows your heart.  And that is all He cares about.  You can actually be doing all the right things for the wrong reasons, and He will look the other way.  Even if you are not pathological about what you have to say about others, if you are lying about your own stuff, He is tapping His foot and waiting until you get real.

I recently tried to speak with a man who is throwing his life away because he wants to be with a woman who is not his wife.....and, of course, it is his wife's fault.  His heart has changed.  That is the problem.  And from it "flow the streams of life."  Guard it! 

What is this truth that the innocent speak?  Where does it come from? Especially when the Lord says: "The heart is deceitful above all things and cannot be tamed.  No one truly understands it." (Jeremiah 17) That sounds like we need a new heart, since the old one cannot be fixed.

  "I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord.  They will be my people and I will be their God because they will return to me with their whole heart."  God is the only one Who can heal the heart.  We want what we want.  We love our sin.   And we will make up any excuse possible to keep doing the thing we love no matter who it  hurts.

Sound awful?  It is.  And God is jealous over the center of our lives.  You and I both know that the heart tells the mind and body what to do.  It drives our lives.  If we live constantly doing what our hearts want, we bypass two-thirds of our own personal trinity.  Sometimes we actually need to think or understand.  All the time we need to listen to the One Who created us.  A heart that is deceived is the most dangerous thing on earth.  It is capable of the most heinous crimes known to man.  But it can be living in the most unlikely looking person.  However, God knows the heart and is interested in motive.  The why's of your life and actions.

 David strolled his rooftop in the months when the other kings went to war and kept looking at the woman across the way bathing.  Go get her.  Sleep with her.  Bored.  Alone.  He got his way.  Uh-oh.  She is pregnant.  Bring her husband home to sleep with her.  He is too honorable.  So have him killed at the front of the battle. And this, a "man after God's own heart."  Marry the widow.  No one will know.  David might have been able to pull it off except God knew...and God was broken-hearted.  Nathan, the prophet, comes before the king and declares:  "Thou art the man!"   The one who took a precious lamb and stole it.  David, on his knees now praying for the salvation of the baby.  And we all know the story of his most shameful actions.  But the moment his heart turned back, God forgave.  Consequences, yes.  The baby died.  Yes.  But for the sweet Bathsheba that the Lord also loved, her son, Solomon became the king after David....because, God sees hearts.  More important to Him than actions....no matter how bad.  If the heart is finally right, God notices and forgives.

"I will give them a desire to respect Me completely, and I will put inside of them a new way of thinking.  I will take out the stubborn heart of stone from their bodies and I will give them an obedient heart of flesh...And I will be their God and they will be my people."  (Ezekiel 11)

Isn't it amazing that the Lord is primarily concerned with our hearts?  At the same time it is horrifying because I know my motives are not always pure.  He sorts that out for me and I am beginning to know more and more when the things I do are all about me and not really about Him.  But my thinking is directly associated with what my heart is telling me and I am thankful He has given me a new one.  I am an "innocent" because He shared His innocence with me.  I will see Him one day because He provided me with a new heart.  It is a heart I give back every morning because I know it needs to be tamed and taught to love the way He does.  It is prone to straying - to wanting what it wants.  But I established a while back that I love Him more than what I want...sometimes only a little bit more...but that is enough to keep my heart in His hands.

Psalm 15 - Where Are You Going?

Who gets to live with God?  Isn't that the question all seekers ask?  Not just those who are Christians, but everyone wants to know who goes to eternal bliss.  We are especially cognizant of the afterlife when we are dangerously close to it.  Our brother-in-law died of pancreatic cancer two years ago in December.  His wife, my husband's sister, died suddenly ten days prior to Tom's death when she collapsed with a massive stroke.  While Bill ferried Tom back and forth from the hospital and the funeral home, Bill talked to Tom about his death.  Where did Tom think he would be?  Didn't know.  Hadn't given it much real thought.  Had heard that there is a land "in the sweet by 'n by" but did not believe in it.  Then he looked Bill in the eye and said: "But I'm about to find out, aren't I?" 

At Pati's funeral, Tom did not want any religious stuff read.  Didn't want a bunch of Bible verses.  They had not lived that way.  In his home later, though, he said he was ready to die because Pati was on the other side waiting for him.  Hmm.  Wondered then as I do now about what she would have said to him could she have reached him before he died.  Would she have said to him what the rich man wanted Lazarus to say to his brothers?

There was a rich man who always dressed in the finest clothes.  The jeweled rings on his over-fattened fingers bulged with the flesh surrounding them.  Costly nard dripped like treacle from his beard and hair as the scent of him filled the air wherever he walked.  Each evening he drank the best wine and ate the fattest lambs.  He lacked for nothing.

Lazarus was sick, covered with sores, the pus oozing from his body and crusting on his beard.  Left to beg, he was a pariah on the streets.  So, some townspeople picked up his blanket by its four corners and dumped Lazarus at the entrance to the rich man's door.  Dogs came to lick his sores as he lay there famished, wanting only the scraps that fell to the floor from the rich man's table.

Lazarus died there.  No one mourned him in an impressive funeral.  He was a filthy beggar.

The rich man died and with great fanfare was buried.

Lazarus was carried to Abraham's bosom.  The rich man found himself in the place of the dead, Hades.  In this lower part of Hades, the rich man experienced the torment of flaming fires that whipped around him and scorched his body.  He was thirsty and destitute.  When he looked up, the rich man could see Lazarus safely with Abraham and he cried out:  "Send him down here with some water because I am thirsty!" 

Abraham answered him.  "In your life you received good things and Lazarus bad things.  And besides, there is a great chasm fixed between you and us.  I cannot send Lazarus to you and you cannot come here."

"Send Lazarus then to my five brothers to warn them lest they come here to this place of torment also!  I'm begging you!"  Even in hell the rich man saw Lazarus as beneath him..as a servant to his whims.

"They have the Word of God," cried Abraham in reply.

"No, Abraham!  They won't listen to that.  But if someone came to them from the dead, then they would listen!"

"If they do not believe the words of the prophets, neither will they believe even if someone rises from the dead."  And Abraham was done talking.

If at death we go somewhere, shouldn't we be spending at least part of our lives in the quest for where we are going and what the journey is about?  Most of us put off the thought because in our minds death is a long way off.  Or, we don't think there is anything we can do about it anyway.  It is inevitable.  But Pati and Tom are somewhere at this moment, and one of them ran out of time before she was perhaps even able to consider it once more.

Psalm 15 - Home

I have spent the weekend thinking about the joys of living with Christ one day in His kingdom.  A Christian sister of mine died briefly following a horrific traffic accident that left her pinned under a semi for two hours.  In the ambulance and then through surgery and on life support to keep her body functioning, she was "somewhere else."  Her visions of heaven and our Christ took my breath away.  He is real.  Our home awaits.  And it is far beyond what mere words can describe.  In tears, she spoke of having to leave His presence to come thudding back into her own shattered body once more.  But, of course, she is different.  Her heart left in another realm where her Lord abides.  She is homesick.

O Lord, who may abide in Your tent?  Who may dwell on Your holy hill?    Psalm 15:1

David's song begins with two questions.  Christ came to give us the answer. 

"Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me.  In My Father's house are many dwelling places.  If it were not so, I would have told you, for I go to prepare a place for you."

Thomas said to Him,  "Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?"

Jesus said to him, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.  No one comes to the Father but through Me."  (John 14)

How do we get to the dwelling place of God?  Through Jesus. No other way.  It is a love gift from God to  man.  We open our hands to receive it or walk away.  It may seem narrow, but that view is false.  Open to everyone who will come.  Free and plentiful as ocean water or the air we breathe.  Ubiquitous, His grace is everywhere available.  The confining thing about it is that it gives no other options.  Because there is no need for other options.  There is no other proffered redemption by the gods worshipped on this earth that can in any way match the grace of God.  He wants us to live with Him for all eternity and we don't need 70 virgins to draw us in or an early morning mantra to numb the pain of our lives.  We have a Father.  And He has a home.  And we are going to live there because He calls us there through His Son.

Our Father has a throne room where we can go in and out.  Before Christ, God visited His people once a year in a ball of glorious light in the traveling tabernacle and then in the temple Solomon built for His presence.  Only the high priest could go into the holy of holies once a year and he had to go through many cleansing exercises before he was allowed entrance into the presence of God.  That holy place was separated from the most holy place by a very thick veil.  That temple veil tore in two from top to bottom at the death of Christ allowing us access to the holy of holies and thus to God Himself. 

Therefore, let us approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to hope us at the proper time. (Hebrews 4)

We do not have to wait for heaven to live in God's holy dwelling or to climb to the holy hill.  Physically we are stuck for now in this fleshly tent, but we all know we are made for more.  We all yearn for the knowledge of our significance, the place of our origin, and the eventual abode of that which is really us.  Our souls - spirits.  While we long for the other home, the one where Jesus waits and prepares a place for us eternally, we can enjoy the first fruits of our salvation here.  We were made for relationship with Him now...not just at some future date.  He is surely with us and longs for conversation and fellowship with His children.  So come with confidence as beloved children into the "office" of your Father and be loved.

Psalm 14 - Deer in the headlights

There is a generation that curses its father and does not bless its mother.
There is a generation that is pure in its own eyes yet is not washed from its own excrement.
There is a generation - how haughty its eyes and pretentious its looks.
There is a generation whose teeth are swords, whose fangs are knives, devouring the oppressed from the land and the needy from mankind.   (Proverbs 30: 11-14)

A generation without a heart.  Clambering for their own rights.  Devouring the poor and wretched.  These people are animals seeking what is good only for themselves.  These are the people David is talking about.  And they are not just in Darfur or Somalia.  They are our neighbors and acquaintances.  Without natural affection.  Narcissistic and vacuous. I just read the newspaper this morning.  Not much good news there because a generation has some big problems.  A mass murderer's words appear across the headlines: "I know what I did."

What they have forgotten is that God sees.  He saw Saddam Hussein beneath the manhole cover and Muammar Gaddafi in his drainage pipe.  Retribution might not be as swift as we want, but our God is the defender of the afflicted. Terror for terror is what David is requesting:

Then they will be filled with terror, for God is with those who do what is right.  You sinners upset the plans of the poor, but the Lord will protect them. (vs. 5-6)

Why does God allow such an evil generation to exist in the first place?  He could annihilate it from the planet swiftly.  Ironically, it is the people most upset by the injustices of the world that are most critical of the God of the Bible when He actually does strike down the wicked.  Can't have it both ways.  We have choices.  I know I cannot solve this age-old issue in this short space, but the comfort of these verses and of the record of God's dealing with evil throughout time is that He always has a future grace for those experiencing current affliction.  He is our champion. 

I will say to my Lord, "My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust."
He Himself will deliver you from the hunter's net, from the destructive plague.
He will cover you with His feathers; you will take refuge under His wings.  Psalm 91

Prey, as a rule, is at the mercy of the predator.  Those whose teeth are swords and devour the weak.  With pride, they think themselves to be above reproach when they stink of their own excrement.  What must God think if even we know them to be vile?  He will not allow it forever. He will stomp His foot and declare that He has had enough.  He sees our position and calls to us to come running like little chicks under His mighty wing for protection.  Scurry there.  For our enemy is not always flesh and blood, but he is surely just as real and he is the energy that drives the generation of predators.  His plans are to steal, kill and destroy us (John 10).  On the other hand, our God wants us to have life and to have it in abundance. (John 10) 

So, don't go out there fighting the enemy in your own strength.  Deer don't march out of hiding to tell the hunter off.  Unprotected, warring our own way with our puny weapons, we will surely lose.  Take out your bow and arrow from the shelter of a feathery haven and then shoot with confidence, for the Lord is your refuge.

Psalm 14 - Roaches and Pigs

Had my weekly young women's Bible study last night.  Talked about walking in the light from Romans 13.  In John 1, the apostle says that Jesus came to "tabernacle" in us.  It is a significant word because it refers to the tabernacle that was set up in the wilderness in which God dwelt among His people as a ball of light in the holy of holies.  Now His presence is dwelling in our bodies, the temples of God.  So He has made our hearts His holy of holies and our lives lights.  So, Paul says in Romans, we should live as children of the light, not children of the dark.  Live so that at any time the flashlight of man and God can shine on us and we won't be ashamed.  Roaches and rodents who feed off things in the dark are scattered when the lights come on.  Our lives should shine out to dispel the darkness instead of leaving the droppings of sin around after we have done what we do in the dark.

But, as David points out in verses 3-4, some have "turned aside." 

They have all turned aside.  Together they have become corrupt.  There is no one who does good.  Not even one.  Have they no knowledge, all the evil doers who eat up my people as they eat bread and do not call upon the name of the Lord?

I was interested in the meaning of turn aside.  The Hebrew word is suwr.  To turn away, to desert, to quit, to keep far away from, or to stop.  You have been going one way and decide to suwr.  In this case, you have been enticed to follow other gods as you turn away from following after Yahweh.  You have turned off the light and gone back into the darkness.  How is that possible?

Remember in Ezekiel when the Lord showed him the hole in the wall and the horrible things the elders were doing in the dark?  God explained that was the reason He had left the tabernacle.  He was no longer in the building with them.  It is, to me, like when you snuff out a candle.  Darkness overcomes the light.  What the ones overcome by the darkness again seem to lack is "knowledge."  Of what?  Yada is the word.  Acknowledge. Be aware of.  Comprehend.  Consider.  Discern.  To know relationally.  In other words, these people cannot empathize.  They don't "get it."  Others are simply prey for them.  Using religion, these evil doers disguise themselves as "children of light" in order to "eat up" the children of God.

At first blush, I would say I don't know anyone like that.  They would seem so obvious.  I know some people covered in pain who have, as Christians, done some pretty rough things.  Have been one of those myself.  But a person who rationally decides to masquerade in order to devour.  Whew!  That is really evil.  But then I know of wives whose husbands have intentionally lied to cover up their dalliances and in so doing have made their wives feel like they are crazy for suspecting some wrongdoing.  Men in the church who have abused children pretending to be a good Christian.  Women who kill each other with words so vicious they might as well have used a knife.  "Chaff among the wheat," they destroy from the inside like a cancer undetected until it has devoured its host.

The apostle Peter speaks about them in 2 Peter 2:

These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm.  For them the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved.  For, speaking loud boasts of folly, they entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error...For if after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge (epignosis - the act of coming to full knowledge of something) of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse than the first....What the true proverb says happened to them:  "The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire."

Eh-hem.  That is cringe-worthy.  We get all cleaned up and walk the walk for a while then are enticed by some passion that enslaves us to go back to the "dark side."  It is hard to watch....and do.  Tricked by our own selfishness or by what looks to be a greater enlightenment, we leave our fresh-washed state, having barely escaped the claws of our former addictions and attachments, only to be led back to the pig pen again.  Of course that state is worse than the first, because we now know what it is like to be clean.  And, we know how much face down time that took.  The energy for pursuing that kind of "brightness" is diminished by shame and the fog of the new slavery.  Once a shining star, filled with the tabernacling Christ, we are creeping in the darkness pooping sin and thinking no one sees the mess. 

We could do something, though.  We could call upon the name of the Lord.  David's question:  Don't they know they could call upon the name of the Lord?  They have quit Him.  But they could call out His name from their new sty and He would answer.  Oh, the hubris that keeps us from the safety of refuge beneath His wings.  And the willfulness that defies His mercies with lives we think better lived our way.

Light should dispel the darkness and expose the works of the "night."  Light should not be engulfed in the shadows again.  If it is our passions that draw us back to the hell we used to occupy, then we are far short of understanding the gift of the tabernacle our hearts have become.  If something on this earth can captivate our souls' imaginations to such a degree that we would throw away Christ, then the gift of grace for which He died is taken with us to the pit we jump into and besmirched, misused and defiled.  We have become eaten up with our own rebellion and taken the temple of God with us into misery.

Where shall I go from Your Spirit?  Or where shall I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend to heaven,  You are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol,  You are there!
If I say "Surely the darkness will cover me, and the light about me be night,"
Even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as day,
For darkness is as light to You.
Search me, Oh God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!
See if there is any wicked way in me.
And lead me in the everlasting way.
Psalm 139.

Psalm 14 - Private Parts

Ever think about what the Lord must see as He surveys the earth?  I sometimes wonder why He lets it all keep spinning.  Aside from the heinous acts of violence which are obvious to us all, there are the hearts, black with hate, regret, resentment, lust, and every perversion.  These are not so clearly seen by the naked eye of man. 

The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God.  (vs. 2)

What is it that God wants us to understand?  The Hebrew word here is sakal.  To be prudent, to act with insight, to teach, to consider, to ponder, or to act with devotion. Sounds like He wants us to know how to live.  Understanding is active and in this verse it is wrapped up in seeking God.  If one has been foolish enough to reject Him and His wisdom, that life will reflect it.  He has promised that if we seek Him we will find Him.  There are just too few hours in a day for us to be face down, I guess.

The story in Ezekiel 8 shows us a glimpse of what God sees that we do not.  Ezekiel was sitting in his house with the elders of Judah, the righteous men of his day.  In the midst of their conversation, God fell on him there.  A brilliant being that looked like a man, half glowing, half burning, stretched out his hand and grabbed Ezekiel by a lock of hair and suspended him between heaven and earth to show him a vision of the temple in Jerusalem.  God had not dwelt there for many years because He could not abide what was happening in His sanctuary.  In the vision, Ezekiel was shown the idols that had sprung up in the Temple.  "Look, Ezekiel, at what the children of Israel are doing in the temple that keeps me away from it.  But you will see greater sins than these."

The being then brought Ezekiel to the entrance to the court and showed him a hole in the wall there where he told Ezekiel to dig through.  Ezekiel found an entrance on the other side and the glowing being told him to enter. He was told to go in and see what evil the elders were committing there.  What Ezekiel saw stunned him.  The room was literally filled with likenesses of every imaginable detestable idol carved on the walls.  And standing in front of them were the seventy elders of the house of Israel.  The men were burning the holy incense to the forms of creeping things and vile idols. 

The being said:  "Son of man, do you see what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, each man in the room with his carved images?  For they say, 'The Lord does not see us.' "

Sitting in his living room with the mucky-mucks of the church, listening to their pontifications about God and religion, Ezekiel had no idea what their private lives were like.  God had left the building long before and showed Ezekiel why.  He sees what we do in the dark.  He knows what we look at.  What we think.  What we really worship. 

This makes me want to put my face to my carpet and repent because I know that I am not now nor have I been in the past all He deserves me to be.  I need a savior.  Had someone peered into the darkness of my idolatry I would have been scorned and lost forever.  But.....

He took our suffering on Himself and felt our pain for us.  We saw His suffering and thought God was punishing Him.  But He was wounded for the wrong we did; He was crushed for the evil we did.  The punishment, which made us well again, was given to Him and we are healed because of His wounds. Isaiah 53.

What does God see when He looks at me?  Perfection?  Oh, no!  Not in my own self.  But He does see one made whole by His Son.  That death and resurrection allows me to walk away from idols, from burning the holy incense of my praise before something detestable to God.  I am free to call out to Him.  To seek Him.  To run from the dark cave of addictions, agreements and generational curses and careen into the throne of God, desperate to know Him fully.  For He loves me.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord.  "Plans for welfare and not calamity to give you a future and a hope.  Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.  And you will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.  And I will be found by you," declares the Lord.