DAILY DEVOTIONAL – June 19, 2019
“No Compromises”
Prayer: Our Most Holy God, You have set before us life and death. Sin has brought death just as You said it would, and we have all sinned greatly. But in Your mercy and great love, You have provided eternal life in the blood of Your Son Jesus. We pray for ourselves, Lord, that we would daily receive Your gift of forgiveness, and we pray the same mercy that You have had on us be had upon those who do not yet know the joy of Your salvation. Amen.
Scripture: 2 Timothy 4:1-4
I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
Devotional – “No Compromises”
The Bible, its history, its truth and its teachings, in their entirety, are absolutely timeless. Yes, there are certain parts of the Bible that are unique to the time, culture and circumstances in which they were written, however, the truths the Scriptures teach transcend time and space because they were written by the God and Creator of all who transcends time and space.
The being said, there are some passages in Scripture that make me wonder if God wasn’t giving the writers of Scripture a vision of today when they wrote. Nearly 2,000 years ago, the Apostle Paul wrote in our text for today that, “the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth.” Wow. You’d think Paul was looking into the future; right into the year 2019.
Everything today has to have options. Everyone wants everything custom tailored just for them. Have you ever heard some of the possible coffee orders you can place at a Starbucks?! I’ll never forget the day, about a year ago, when I heard one order that left me absolutely staggered. So much so, once the patron ahead of me who ordered the coffee left, I asked the barista to repeat what they ordered…and I wrote it down. The customer ahead of me ordered a “Double cup, Iced, Half-Caff, Ristretto, Venti, 4-Pump, Sugar Free, Cinnamon, Dolce Soy Skinny Latte.”
The Huffington Post actually ran an article on how outrageous this coffee ordering has become and what it suggests about the mindset of our current culture. The article said, “It’s this convenience that’s also turning us into the most obnoxious and entitled group of coffee drinkers around — well caffeinated for sure, but downright bratty. Not only can you have your cup of coffee with any kind of milk or cream or whipped air you could dream up, but Starbucks even lets you control the exact temperature of your coffee drink. This is insane, people — and it makes us sound like the most demanding jerks when we order our drinks.”
Unfortunately, the same demand for convenience that makes people self-entitled and obnoxious coffee drinkers has too often become how people also approach their relationship with God and with His Word. We live in a culture and society today that believes what you believe doesn’t matter at all, as long as it’s custom order for you and exactly what you want. A little bit of this and a little bit of that…none of this and not so much of that. “This Bible verse I like a lot, but this one doesn’t sit too well with me…I’ll ignore it. These commandments seem right to me, but these other ones are too hot, too cold…they aren’t exactly relevant to me right now anyway. I believe in God and all…but I don’t believe in going to church. Well, that might be how you understand what the Bile says, but I prefer it this way.”
Fewer things better illustrate the reality of our sinful condition than our tendency to think and act as if God has to somehow convince us to believe in Him or accommodate our preferences and demands if He desires our worship. Not only is that absolutely illogical and contradictory to the very idea of God, but the scary truth Jesus reveals in Scripture is that too many people will find out the hard way the unavoidable truth of what God says in Romans 14:11, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.”
The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our Almighty Creator is God because He does not compromise or acquiesce to human demands. He is wholly righteous and demands righteousness. He is the maker of morality and the perfect and exacting judge of the Law He has put in all of our hearts and in His Word. As He revealed Himself to Moses in the burning bush, God said, “I AM who I AM.” Only a God who is in and of Himself sufficient in everyway, and only a God who is truly Holy in both His character and His actions of judgement is a God worthy of our worship. That’s who God is. He does not change and He is not made-to-order.
There are a terrifying number of churches and preachers that claim to believe in the Bible but who subvert the truth of Scripture in order to acquiesce to people’s demand for a made-to order god; happy to tell people whatever their itching ears want to hear. And what does our sinful nature want to hear? It wants to hear that God loves us just the way we are. That God doesn’t really send anyone to hell because He says He is a God of love. Even just a cursory reading of Scripture reveals the opposite. God does not love us as we are. We are all sinful and corrupt and deserve God’s judgement. The only reason God loves us is because He loves His Son Jesus who He sent to die in our place. God is a God of perfect love, but also a God of uncompromising justice. People go to hell because that is where they have insisted to go by refusing to repent of sin and believe in Jesus Christ.
The late theologian Dr. A.W. Tozer nailed it when he said, “The vague and tenuous hope that God is too kind to punish the ungodly has become a deadly opiate for the consciences of millions.”
God’s love and gracious mercy, seen fully in Christ, does not nullify God’s expectation of righteousness or the fact that His Law must be perfectly fulfilled to the letter by anyone who desires to be saved form sin and death and inherit eternal salvation by the merits of Christ alone. To put it bluntly – God’s standard for getting into heaven is absolute, unwavering perfection. Fail in just one fraction of God’s Laws and commands, and you are guilty of them all. Perfection has no measure. Perfect is perfect.
Jesus’ own disciples came to this crisis of conscience and cried out to Jesus in Mark 10:26, “Lord, then who can be saved?!” Our only hope of salvation is found in Jesus’ answer to them, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Salvation is God’s work, and His work of mercy alone. In giving His One and only Son Jesus Christ to die for our sins and rise again, God has done all that needs to be done to satisfy His holy and righteous wrath against sin. Jesus lived the life we could not and would not. He was perfectly faithful to God even unto death. It is faith in His worth and His resurrected life that saves us. It is God’s free gift to us in love that is to be received by repentance and faith in Christ and in the Truth revealed to us in Him.
God did not save us by turning a blind eye to His law and demands for righteousness or by compromising with us. He saved us by coming here to fulfill the law Himself, in Christ, and having lived a perfect life in our place, His perfect death and resurrection would now be the sufficient atonement for our unrighteousness.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not die but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) God did not pick and choose whose sins to die for. He died for the sins of the world. God is and will always be Holy, and His righteousness demands perfection, and thanks be to God that Christ has fulfilled that demand for us.
Saying this won’t make you or I many friends in today’s pluralistic culture with its intolerance for anyone that dares to believe in and confess absolute truth, but, Christ is the only way to salvation. We are called by a Holy God to be holy, to be unwavering in our faith and in our proclamation that Jesus is the Way and the Truth and the Life. Jesus said in Luke 11:23, “Whoever is not with me is against me.” We only have one option; believe in Jesus and be saved.
Thanks for joining me for another daily devotional in God’s Word, and remember, that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
