The Wrong People, Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Thing

“Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”  James 4:4

I have seen so many rational people who know better do the most insane things imaginable under the power of sin, thinking that they can handle it; of course they never do.  When you hang out with the wrong people at the wrong place at the wrong time, then it is only a matter of time until you do the wrong thing.   Consider Peter and Judas.  

Peter, after Jesus has been betrayed, followed at a distance; he was trying to blend into the woodwork.  Hours earlier he had declared that He would never deny Christ, yet we find in Matthew 26:58 that he had been following Jesus at a distance and became cold, so he was attracted to the warmth of the enemy's fire.  At this point, Peter was worn down, defeated, weak, and vulnerable. Why was he even in the high priest's courtyard? "he went in and sat with the servants to see the end." Peter had forgotten all that Jesus had said about His resurrection from the dead. Now he was just waiting for the end—the end of Jesus' life . . . the end of his dream . . . the end of everything he held dear.  But it was not the end.  It would be a new beginning.

Judas has made the decision to betray Christ, and in John 18 the betrayal is carried out, it must have looked something like this.  A small army was marching toward Jesus. Swords and spears and shields and torches moved toward Him in the dark as a mass of people came to arrest Him. They were in a frenzy, spurred on by their mob mentality: Yeah, let's get Him! Who are we getting again? You know how mobs are, they kind of play off each other; they don't even know what they are protesting. They get caught up in the emotion of the moment.  That is probably what was happening as the mob closed in on Jesus. However just to show that Jesus was not a helpless victim, but a powerful victor, He stood up and said, "Who are you looking for?"  "Jesus the Nazarene," they told Him.  So He said to them, "I am He." And at those words, all of the people who had been pressing in so close to each other "drew back and fell to the ground!”.  Have you ever played dominoes?  That is probably what it was like as this crowd flattened out.  This would have been a good moment for Judas to reconsider his decision to betray Jesus.  But Judas apparently could not wait to do what he was about to do. 

Here was Peter and Judas’ problem: they were both in the wrong place with the wrong people, about to do the wrong thing. And when that passion in our heart begins to die, the fire we had for Christ will grow cold, and we will look elsewhere for warmth.

“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper.” Psalm 1:1–3

Old saying get to be old sayings because they are the truth, and this is one of the oldest - When you hang out with the wrong people at the wrong place at the wrong time, then it is only a matter of time until you do the wrong thing.  The difference between Peter and Judas?  One wept bitterly which lead him to repentance and the other bitterly and blindly followed his course to hell.   Which are you?

The Atheist, the Agnostic, and the Sophisticated 'Christian'

What path are your decisions taking you?    

       

I have met a lot of people like Jonah in the Old Testament in my life, and truthfully so have you. They are easy to spot, they are the ones are openly running away from God, racing as fast as they can in the opposite direction.  They know that they have rejected God’s calling, they know that they are disobedient, and they can’t run away far enough.  

However on the other hand I have meet far more people who just kind of do the "Christian Sidestep" from the will of God.   They, like those who run from God openly, know that they are out of God’s will, out of His plan for their life, but they do it in a little more ‘sophisticated’ manner.  In a method they believe that perhaps you and God won’t notice.  Of course deep inside they know that while maybe you won't notice their sin, that God does. 

They still attend church, talk about spiritual things, even give to the church, and perhaps even serve in the nursery or so other area at church.  However deep down inside they know they are running under cover; living with secret (or not so secret) sin, rationalizing their sin and their conduct, giving an excuse for their Sins.   

They say things like ‘nobody is perfect’, ‘I am facing this temptation, and I just can’t seem to overcome it’ they get to the point where they rationalize their sin, by professing that ‘God understands, he understands the difficulty I am facing, the financial issues I am facing, he understands the needs I have that my spouse is not fulfilling, the stress I am under’ etc. etc.   Or they emphasize the good things they have done, stressing that they a ‘NICE’ person.   All the time, deep within their soul they know the truth that they are refusing to obey God’s commands and are running away from His will for their life.   

They have stepped out of God’s will to do their will, in their way, in their time, all the while claiming to be covered by God’s grace.   They think that by going to church, by giving money, by appearing to others to be ‘nice’ and to appear to be serving God, that they are not that bad, that they are somewhat obedient, so God will overlook their non-obedience in all the other areas of their life.   

What they chose to overlook is that the price is expensive, the consequences are far more than they realize, far more than they can pay.  The amazing thing is that when/if they were to stop and look down the road and ask themselves where does this sin take me?  What  I have discovered is that, they tend to rationalize it and pretend that things are going to turn out better than they will.  When the truth is, eventually it leads you to the place where you are thanking God for the sin that you commit.  Eventually you forget that while God is a loving God, He is also a just God; and as Jonah can attest to, the longer you run from God, the longer you refuse to obey, the higher the price.  

The Selfish Christian

Most people who claim to be Christians recognize Christ as Savior, but few recognize His authority as Lord of their lives.  Truthfully I admit that I am still work in progress in this respect.  However have you noticed that many Churches and most Christians today seek primarily God’s personal blessing for themselves (see - Joel Osteen, Tim Story and the prosperity gospel) rather than discovering His purpose and allowing their lives to fit in to that purpose? 

What about you?  Did God really call you to divorce your spouse,  cheat on that exam, steal that shirt, talk behind your co-workers back, sleep with your friends wife, or if you are busy patting yourself on your back for not doing any of those, did God really call you to come and sit in your seat every Sunday and then leave? 

Isobel Kuhn, a missionary to China, once said: “Everywhere I go, I constantly meet with men and women who say to me ‘When I was young, I wanted to be a missionary but I got married instead, or my parents dissuaded me, or some such thing.’ No, it is not God who does not call; it is man who did not respond.”   

Matthew 19:16-22

Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”

“Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments.”

“Which ones?” the man inquired.

Jesus replied, “Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

“All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”

Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

The meaning of this story probably seems obvious. The rich guy loved his stuff more than he loved God, right?

Well, yes, that is part of it, but there is more.  I think it illustrates what I have been trying to say in post after post about selfishness.  Let me ask you this: If the young man did what Jesus said and sold his possessions and gave to the poor, would that mean he was not selfish?

I don’t think so.  If he had done as Jesus said, it would have meant that what he REALLY wanted was eternal life and a relationship with God, and he would have shown he was selfish enough to sell all he had to get what he wanted.  As it turns out, what he really wanted was his stuff.

But in the words of the infamous info-commercials 'But wait there's more'. I think this story demonstrates the importance of trust.  If what we really want is Jesus, there are things we will have to stop trusting in, and the only way we can do that is to trust in God — to abandon ourselves to Him. The young man in the story trusted in his riches and was not able to shift that trust to where it really should be– in God.

In your life, it doesn’t have to be money that you trust in. It could be your own cleverness, a relationship, it could be a person, a job, a hobby, and it could be any number of things.   It could be what we see as our own righteousness. Desiring and trusting in these things keeps us from the relationship with God that we really want; or perhaps if the truth were admitted to, you really don’t want that relationship more than you want your stuff.  They are barriers. They are walls between us and God.

There is no doubt that most American Christians are selfish and self-forgiving about that selfishness, Jesus however is not so accommodating.  Ask yourself this question, when it is your turn to kneel before God for judgment, do you believe you will find the young man in Matthew 19:16-22 in Heaven?  

We need to get selfish about wanting God. Selfish enough to abandon ourselves to Him.