Have you ever reflected upon those times when you were willfully out of the will of God for whatever reason? Of course, you have. It is not as if you purposely dwelt on it, but it paid you a visit without warning. From out of nowhere, something or someone flipped on that mental screen in your head, and your eyes were glued to the set! I suppose all who are not suffering from an acute case of self-righteousness have experienced something similar to that. Denial can be an ugly thing, yes?
Looking back over my Christian life, my failures always seem to loom large in comparison to all of my successes. It is analogous to showing a blank piece of printer paper where the white represents all the good things done, and ask, “What do you see?” The answer is “Nothing but good things.” Then, I put a small ink mark on the same paper which represents a bad thing, and I ask, “What do you see?” Every time the answer is a dot.
It didn’t matter to the person about the rest of the white dominating the sheet of printer
paper. The dinky dot was the attention-getter. This is how people see our
testimony. If there is an inkling of a mark, forget about them seeing the rest
of the paper or the life, or all the good things done. The dot is dominating the paper though it only occupies an infinitesimal area.
We may have asked forgiveness and moved onward
over our spiritual failures, but at times we are still haunted by the ghosts of
the past by those pop-up ads in our head reminding us of past failures. We are once again reminded that the wheels of consequences are still rolling. The
law of the harvest is tough and unbiased; a man reaps what he sows. It truly doesn’t pay to disobey the Lord.
For me, it is not whether God has
forgiven me or not; I know that He has, but at times, I question whether I had
forgiven myself. Honestly, I think this is a derivative of lending an ear to
the enemy; it’s not a wise thing to do. The outcome is always negative and can
be self-destructive if you never get off that prickly path. I know I am
unworthy to be called a child of God, but whenever Satan gets an opportunity,
or I provide him with one; he always reminds me that I am unworthy to be an
ambassador for Christ. It’s good to remind the accuser, in times like these, of
where he is going to be spending eternity! He is the ultimate loser.
At the judgment seat of Christ for the
believers, known as the Bema Seat, we know that this particular future event is
about rewards in personal service to God; it has absolutely nothing to do with
judgment for sin; nor is it a determination to see if you and I are worthy to
enter glory! Such an investigative judgment concept is heretical and tantamount
to an intentional corruption of biblical salvation.
The penalty for sin was addressed at the
cross by Jesus Christ once and for all (1 Jn 2:2; 4:10). For by faith we are
saved in the Sacrifice that satisfied the just demands of God the Father. We
are judicially declared to be righteous by faith, not if our good outweighs our
bad. The Bema deals only with our rewards in service to the King of Kings on this
side of eternity.
It will be a time of disclosure on
whether our service to Yahweh after spiritual regeneration was temporal being
comprised of combustible material such as wood, hay, or stubble or eternal in
nature and fireproof as gold, silver, or precious stones. This examination is
intricately complex and involves the evaluation of our performance for every
thought, word, or deed in service to the King of Kings. From the very
moment Yahweh became our Master at spiritual regeneration, our service to Him
was activated, and we are expected to glorify God in our bodies 24/7/365 until
raptured or R.I.P.
Obviously, a believer being out of the
will of God is sin, and it is that disobedience to Yahweh that describes the
quality of our service to Him as wood, hay, or stubble which is flammable and
temporal in nature. Only from obedience to His will does gold, silver, and
precious stones emerge because of its eternal and inflammable nature. Again, the
focus of the Bema is not on sin but service; we will witness firsthand how rewards for service are impacted through obedience or disobedience by
our thoughts, words, or deeds at the Bema Seat. I think it will be a time of
rude awakening!
Let’s take a look at the wood, hay, and
stubble nature of hypocrisy. Even in our best efforts to beat this thing back
with an ugly stick, we find ourselves succumbing to some contradiction in our
lives of not walking the talk as a believer.
Have you ever read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
1850 classic novel entitled, The Scarlet
Letter? Hester Prynne, his central character, was a woman who was condemned
by her Bostonian Puritan neighbors for having an adulterous affair with the
minister of her church, Arthur Dimmesdale. As part of her punishment, she wore
the scarlet letter A on
her clothing; there are hypocrites who always want to cast the first letter
without thinking it through (cf. Jn 8:7). Now, here is why I mentioned
Nathaniel’s novel.
Imagine if every time we were
hypocritical in thought, word, or deed, a red H would appear on our forehead? Aah, think of the embarrassment and belittlement;
we would become paranoid to be seen in public! It would be analogous to
Pinocchio’s nose growing every time he told a lie. People would know by the
length of his nose whenever he was not telling the truth. A literal red H on our foreheads would only confirm the
world’s disdain for Christianity and draw the ire of the self-righteous folks. It would
be risky to be seen in the public eye, if that was the case, yes?
If this was reality and thank God it is
not, we would all be doing our best to avoid hypocrisy not because we truly desired
to be genuine but we feared awkward and uncomfortable situations while we were
sporting the H. And let’s
say that every time it appeared on our forehead; it would remain until we repented
of it! Freedom of choice would essentially be meaningless. God wants us to be
willfully holy as He is holy as a matter of choice to obey Him and express our
love for Him (Jn 14:15).
But here is the reality; Yahweh knows
already when we are genuine or disingenuous with any singular thought, word, or
deed. It comes with His attribute of all-knowing (omniscience)! Realizing that
God knows when we have two faces, we have a choice to make; we can either repent of it or try and buck God’s authority in our lives. I am
sure that Satan would love nothing better than to use us as his fiery dartboard; Yahweh, on the other hand, desires that we be restored to
fellowship through repentance.
Have you ever noticed how those without Christ is quick to brand Christians with the letter H (“a self-righteous hypocrite”) for the smallest infraction (cf. Mt 15:2; Jn 15:18, 19)? They eagerly and meticulously look for those inconsistencies like a bird dog that doggedly sniffs for fowl and projecting their sins on others. Should we trip over some sin, or what these sin sniffers perceive to be a sin like the Pharisees of old, the accusative finger is unsheathed like a dagger. The next thing we know; we are being labeled with a scarlet letter, identifying and exposing our transgression to the world around us.
Do you know that this is what the
accuser of the brethren does constantly before God – accuse, accuse, accuse
(cf. Rev 12:10)? The scarlet H on our forehead would tell the community at large whenever we reared
our head in public that we were a person with two faces, a fake, an imposter,
one who is disingenuous, not to be trusted, a sinner!
How many lost people have you overheard say that the reason they don’t go to church is that there are too many
hypocrites to be found there!? They may even cite examples (not them of
course)! The truth is that hypocrites are everywhere, even in grocery stores!
Are those apart from Christ going to stop going to the grocery store because of the
hypocrites? <><
%20MG%20t-bkgrd%2060x44.png){kind=small}
%20sunflower%20makeover%2045x63.png){kind=small}
