Jeopardy

Close to 300 years ago, Connecticut preacher, Jonathan Edwards delivered his famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”. It was riddled with horrific imagery of Hell and firmly founded on proper exposition of The Scriptures in regards to the well-deserved culmination of sin and everything unholy - Ultimately pointing to the reality of the richness of God’s merciful grace and work of Salvation on the Cross.

Today, it seems we’ve entered a peculiar time: You don’t hear much about the reality of hell and the full deservedness of all mankind to be discarded there due to our fallenness. On the contrary, having retreated from such an ill-received perspective, we inadvertently reimage God according to what’s left.
This “new” kindler, gentler God, Whose anger with wickedness has been ‘lessened’ is not the God we all will meet in judgment. It is then of ultimate importance that we return to Scripture and let God be who He says He is, rather than what we’ve remade Him to be. This is the sort of thinking that puts us in jeopardy.



Here’s the word:

Psalm 7:11 God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day.

Proverbs 6:16 These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him

Isaiah 13:9 Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.

Matthew 5:20 For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 7:21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

Luke 6:46 And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?

I can’t even begin to imagine without tearing up what it cost the Father to ‘shed His grace on thee’: Just look at the fact that The Father had to experience Jesus leaving Heaven and witnessing His brutal torture on the Cross, innocently at the hands of evil and wicked men.
Yet, He did that for us.
Again, I know the common comeback “None of us are perfect”, but that old argument loses its footing when held up to Scripture. God Himself is providing us the strength through His spirit to actively work toward perfection – since that’s true; why should our desire to live appreciatively and walk in the strength of the Spirit provided, look any less “committed” than all He did to provide it? This isn’t about being perfect, it’s about where our affections are set and a true understanding of how sin affects God. If there's any question, look at how God feels about "lukewarm" (commitment) - Revelation 3:16.

Here’s where we need to be exceedingly careful: Often times we see things in extremes: We’ll see a known figure like Adolf Hitler, or something as heinous as atrocities against children and we know for certain “Oh, that person is going to hell”, but The Bible doesn’t reserve hell just for the worst of us. We're quick to remove the idea of works when judging ourselves but it's the first thing we see when judging others. Do you think that everyone who died in the flood in Noah’s day was as bad (or worse) than Hitler? We need to look at our lives and be concerned that we are really doing (or as is written “Giving every effort”) to do what’s expected of us…. If we don’t, it stands to reason that our situation may not be as ‘safe’ as we think it is; we may be in jeopardy.

It's not personal - I'll close with this little story:

Have you ever had an MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging)? If you have, then you know – but if you haven’t, the MRI technician always gives a briefing that goes something like this; Do you have any reason to believe or suspect that you may have even the smallest shard of metal in your body? Maybe an accident or workshop environment where metal or metal filings may have found their way into your body. If so, I need to know now and we cannot proceed as this machine is a huge magnet and it will indiscriminately pull the metal out of you via the shortest distance, likely causing severe damage as it passes through bodily tissues on its way to the machine.

What if that’s JUST the nature of Heaven, and sin is the metal? As “nice” as you think God will be in excusing you, He and Heaven are just SO holy that any sin in the presence simply destroys your body as reacts to and is repelled by extreme holiness. That’s why what we do here is so important. Jesus came here to set up the purification station – now all that needs to happen, needs to happen here. Think of sin being 'metal' in your eye or hand


Matthew 5:29 - 30 And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

When you think about it, it actually does make pretty good sense. I mean, Adam could walk with The LORD in the garden (face to face) until sin entered.
You may not be able to be perfect, but it’s not about YOUR efforts, it’s about your surrender. In this life as Christians, we let Christ search us out and “find if there be any wicked way in us” (Psalm 139:24) and to purge us (Psalm 51:7). And that should be our concern. A concern that solidifies our position in Him, rather than being in jeopardy.


In Him,
Cros