The Fiery Furnace

Posted on by korgrocker

“You will capture all your enemies. Your strong right hand will seize all who hate you. You will throw them in a flaming furnace when you appear. The Lord will consume them in his anger; fire will devour them.
Psalm 21:8-9 NLT

‭‭Apocalyptic language from David. He set out a terrible end for God’s enemies, graphically describing their end in life, “devoured by fire”. There is no escape for the God-haters in this world, because God has a “strong right hand” that will “seize all who hate” Him. Notice too that there will be a “flaming furnace” ready and waiting, and it is there that God’s enemies will be consumed. But who are these “enemies”? The thing about God is that He is not a physical, natural, Being, who walks around Planet Earth in Person today. For many people it would be a relief if He did, because it would bring encouragement for His people, and provide a focus for all those who decided that they didn’t like His goodness and holiness. But then we pause, because God did walk around this earth two thousand years ago. His Son, Jesus, the second member of the Trinity, came to this earth, and God’s enemies soon came out of the woodwork with accusations and aggressive antipathy, a triple-A package of hate. But how could anyone, no matter how bad they are, ever resent and even hate the Man who brought love and forgiveness to a world steeped in sin. However, a mob stirred up by the Jews’ religious leaders ultimately engineered His death on a Roman cross, thinking that they were bringing religious stability to a fractious region in the Middle East, but instead bringing God’s plan for the salvation of mankind to a momentous and complete conclusion. Why was Jesus so contentious, and how did He become such a figure of hate? Because those people who were quite happy living a life of sin became very uncomfortable when faced with the sinless Man Jesus. A Man who pointed out to them their hypocrisy, their devil-inspired ways, their hatred of the God that Jesus represented. As Jesus once pointed out, their God was the devil and he called him the god of this world. And so, Jesus died as he predicted and as the Old testament prophets foretold, lifted up above the earth nailed to a cross.

Jesus said to the Pharisees and the other religious leaders, “For you are the children of your father the devil, and you love to do the evil things he does. He was a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). God’s enemies emerge as those who love evil, and hate good. There is no middle ground, however, because human beings are natural sinners and by default are God’s enemies. After all how can a perfectly pure and holy God ever allow evil of any kind into His presence. Intuitively, people know that but it doesn’t stop them changing their ways. The pull and attraction of sin is too strong for most. It is only by the acknowledgement, confession, and repentance from sin that forgiveness and righteousness can result. And then, at this point, people cease to be God’s enemies. 

There will come a day when God’s enemies will be dealt with. Thankfully, the eternal flaming furnace has not yet been lit. Its first inhabitants will be the devil and his minions, but they will be followed by God’s enemies. We can read the account in Revelation 19 and 20. Grim reading, but even then God’s enemies have rationalised that such an event will never happen. After all, many claim, how can a God of love even treat a person in that way, human thinking that underpins the doctrine of Universalism. But the Bible is clear, that although God is indeed a God of love, full of mercy and compassion, He is also a God of holiness and righteousness. So how can sinners steeped in evil ever appear in His presence? 

But enough of the negatives of how God will deal with His enemies. We start with Romans 3:23-26, “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just, and he makes sinners right in his sight when they believe in Jesus”. These are forever words, simple but eternally effective, and difficult to present in any other way. We move on to Romans 10:9-10, “If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved“. ‭‭The process of acknowledgement and repentance from sins and believing in God, will transform an enemy of God into His friend. At a stroke. But a decision made to believe in Jesus will insure that we will never have to be thrown into that fiery furnace. Ever.

Dear Father God. The thought of the flaming furnace is surely enough to convince all of Your enemies of their sin. Please help us to share Your love and justice with those around us, in a way that helps them realise that You are the only way to eternal life. Amen.

The Ultimate Fate

Posted on by korgrocker

“Yes, you who trust him recognise the honour God has given him. But for those who reject him, “The stone that the builders rejected has now become the cornerstone.” And, “He is the stone that makes people stumble, the rock that makes them fall.” They stumble because they do not obey God’s word, and so they meet the fate that was planned for them.”
1 Peter 2:7-8 NLT

The context is that, as prophesied by the Old Testament prophets, the Messiah is to become the “cornerstone”, the “rock that makes them fall”. But when Peter wrote these verses, the Messiah had already come, and His coming produced a dichotomy that has been with us ever since. The choice is dramatic and stark – people either choose to follow God or they reject Him. They are either obedient to His Word, or they are not. There are consequences to both choices; eternal life or eternal death. Heaven or hell. There is no middle ground. No grey area between them.

When it comes to obeying God, there are those who truly and diligently search the Scriptures and sincerely do their best to follow Him, applying His Word to their lives. Such obedience is based on our love for God. “Jesus replied, “All who love me will do what I say. My Father will love them, and we will come and make our home with each of them” (John 14:23). Then there are those who go through the motions, claiming to be Christians, but who do not have a heart to follow Him. Jesus spoke about such people in Luke 6:46, “So why do you keep calling me ‘Lord, Lord!’ when you don’t do what I say?” The Pharisees fell into this group of people who externally claimed they were obedient to God. They diligently obeyed the Law, and claimed that because of that they would get to Heaven. Their self-righteousness was what Isaiah warned about in Isaiah 64:6, “We are all infected and impure with sin. When we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags. Like autumn leaves, we wither and fall, and our sins sweep us away like the wind”. 

The disobedient, those who have rejected God and His Word, are in a perilous place. As Peter wrote, “they [will] meet the fate that was planned for them”. Jesus said to Nicodemus, “God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him. There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son” (John 3:17-18). Judgement is the consequence for all those who fail to believe in Jesus and follow His ways, for those who are disobedient.

So what is the consequence of the judgment Jesus warned of? For the answer to that we turn to Revelation. The Apostle John wrote what he saw in his vision. “I saw the dead, both great and small, standing before God’s throne. And the books were opened, including the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to what they had done, as recorded in the books. The sea gave up its dead, and death and the grave gave up their dead. And all were judged according to their deeds. … And anyone whose name was not found recorded in the Book of Life was thrown into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:12-13,15). That was what Peter was referring to when he wrote “the fate that was planned for them”. A daunting thought but strangely one that most people I know in my community have apparently disregarded. 

So what do we pilgrims think? It’s not altogether healthy to live under a mantra of fear, fear of what might happen to us. But we are in a relationship with our loving Heavenly Father. John wrote in his first letter, “We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them” (1 John 4:16). A couple of verses further on John wrote, “Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love” (1 John 4:18). As we live and move in obedience to God and His Word we have nothing to be afraid of.

Dear Father God. Thank You for Your love and grace. We worship You today. Amen.

Trustworthy and True

Posted on by korgrocker

“And the one sitting on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new!” And then he said to me, “Write this down, for what I tell you is trustworthy and true.””
Revelation‬ ‭21:5‬ ‭NLT‬‬

God takes over from the angel with the narrative for John’s vision, and He tells John to write down that what He says is “trustworthy and true“. But those of us who are Bible readers will know that. So why does God need to repeat it? After all, we have read Psalm 111:7-8, “All he does is just and good, and all his commandments are trustworthy. They are forever true, to be obeyed faithfully and with integrity.” And we read what Jesus said in John 14:6, “Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” Everything about God is truth, and what He says can be trusted.

There is an emphasis here for a people who are prone to forget. We live in an age of scepticism. Even Christians become tainted by a spirit of disbelief. Having just picked our way through all the End Times events, there will be a tiredness creeping in and this is God giving us a wake up call, reminding us of His infallibility. Reminding us that all the things that have happened in John’s vision are true. If they haven’t happened yet, they will do.

God is love personified. It must have broken His heart to see so many end up the fiery lake through their own poor and devil-inspired choices. That wasn’t why He created Planet Earth and mankind. But here He is saying once again that this is a new beginning. He can finally realise the one thing He has desired for all time – to spend His time with mankind in our future Heavenly home, with those who love Him and want to spend eternity with Him.

Once again, we pray for our loved ones, that they too will discover God, the One who is true and trustworthy.

Dear God. We are so grateful that in a world of turmoil You are trustworthy and true. A Rock to which we can flee in times of trouble. Amen.