Deny that the dead do not praise God and you show whose side you will take when the lying wonders break out. If we take both David and Solomon to the landfill whose legs will we stand on?
I said, “What good is it if I die and go down to the grave? The dead just lie in the dirt. They cannot praise you. They cannot tell anyone how faithful you are.
Psalms 30:9
I can guarantee you that my great, great, grandfather’s loins were rocking with protest against the slavemaster and his assertion of property rights. If you are wondering, I am a descendant of African people, a part of the waves of westward transported labour to America and the Caribbean.
Since the 17th century, European powers (Spain, Portugal, France, England, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany) have been exploiting their own poor and people in far-flung lands with various justifications.
I would have been a runner: running off the slaveowners property to entrust my life to God. They would have had to chain me 24/7 or kill me.
Running is good for the believer.
We live because Christ gave us life
We sing because Christ gave us a song
We conquer because Christ gave us the victory
We should run – live – for life’s sake and remember that our crown does not come from anyone overcoming sin. Even with laws in our hearts and near countless constant recitations of God’s will we come to God with contrition or prove that we are still lost, having no Spirit to help because we did not really believe that God forgives sin all the time and powers our life moment by moment.
If you had the free of charge power of an exorcist you would not leave it at home.
Ecclesiastes 12:14 gets recycled perhaps as often as “Yahweh loves a cheerful giver” and “Yahweh is my shepherd” and with the same effect. Nothing big happens just for saying or believing these things. If 12:14 is TRUE we are all dead: fallen on our way to what we thought was rest and sanctuary, slaughtered by the idolatrous streak in our nature and by unbelief. Mighty Mount of Likes! It is still a lie.
Who is doing the judging and sentencing?
We cannot look away from Christ- the Nazarene- and call what we see truth.
He has the promises
He has the remedy to death
He has the bread to nourish us
All things have been delivered to me by my Father. No one knows the Son, except the Father; neither does anyone know the Father, except the Son, and he to whom the Son desires to reveal him. Matthew 11:27
“How much” God loves is a fool’s mantra and the seedbed for bigotry, racism and misogyny.
Ask yourself “Did God love the world more than he loved his Son?” “Does his love fluctuate or is he not pure unadulterated and unchangeable love?”
Reverence and diligence
How does the growth in Christ proceed? Still trying to find and live by every word that God speaks or has ever spoken? That amounts to hundreds of commands and loving others is supposed to foot the bill.
Get an attitude adjustment! It ends the labour and heavy load. It feels like rest.
Have this in your mind, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men.
Philippians 2:5-7
