OBEY THE KING OF KINGS

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Obey the king’s command, I say, because you took an oath before God. Do not be in a hurry to leave the king’s presence. Do not stand up for a bad cause, for he will do whatever he pleases. Since a king’s word is supreme, who can say to him, “What are you doing?”

Whoever obeys his command will come to no harm, and the wise heart will know the proper time and procedure. For there is a proper time and procedure for every matter, though a person may be weighed down by misery.

Ecclesiastes 8:2-6 

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Obey the king’s command.

These opening words of our scripture passage for today strike at one of the most fundamental elements of the Christian walk. For after we place our belief and trust in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, receiving the salvation promise from God who gave up His Son out of love to save us, we are to get to work becoming the new creations we become (2 Corinthians 5:17), new creations who enter in a life that is in the world but no longer of it.

What is it that separates us from the world?

It’s simply Jesus who is the Way and the Truth and the Life (John 14:6). For as we walk in His way, then we will always walk counter to the world’s ways, ways that are so often laced with sin and evil and wickedness.

When we walk in the Way of Jesus, we walk on the path of righteousness and the path of righteousness will always lead us to be obedient to the commands of our King, the King of kings and Lord of lords, the Lord God Almighty.

Why should we be obedient to the commands of our King?

It would be easy enough to just say, “Because He said so” but our scripture for today gives us the following specific reasons to adopt an attitude of full compliance with the directives and orders God has given:

1. We are to be obedient because we took an oath to do so.

When we choose to accept Jesus as Savior, we choose to live like Him. We make a solemn vow to allow ourselves to be shaped in His image and to adopt His way of living. Just as the earliest disciples walked with Jesus and learned about how He wanted them to carry on His work after He departed, we still walk alongside Jesus today because we committed ourselves to be His disciples, to follow Him and seek His teaching and guidance.

How obedient was Jesus?

Obedient to death on the cross, a terrible criminal’s death to save us because it was God’s will for it to be so. If we live for Jesus, we can’t help but live in obedience. To not do so would mean we have went back on our word when we gave our lives up for Him just as He gave His life up for us.

2. We are to be obedient because His word is supreme.

Who could speak words that are any more important than God?

No one rivals Him, no one. And if you wonder how important His words are, consider just these two truths:

First, His words are what bring us life. The scriptures proclaim it when they say that man does not live by bread alone but only by every word that comes from the mouth of God. His words sustain us.

They also protect us. Take a look at the full armor of God we are to put on every day as we go into the world and face Satan’s attacks. What is our weapon? It is the word of God which is likened to the sword we carry (Ephesians 6:17) and if you check out Matthew 4, you will see Jesus use this weapon to perfection against the advances of Satan, fending off the evil one’s attempts at temptation and in doing so, showing us how to do it as well.

3. We are to be obedient so we can remain free from harm.

Remember that the word of God is our sword. When we fail to be obedient to His word, abandoning it in the way we live, we essentially step onto the battlefield with no weapon and no soldier in their right mind would ever do that. It would simply be crazy. So too is it crazy to turn away from the supreme word of God that is our only protection, the only way we can live and sustain life.

4. We are to be obedient so everything can happen at its appointed time.

Adhering to the word of God leads us to wisdom for He is the only One who can bring it to us. And wisdom, once imparted, leads us into God’s perfect will, His perfect way, and His perfect timing. That perfect timing ensures we do what God wants us to do, when He wants is to do it. We need not guess when that is because He will guide us through His word and spirit, in good times and bad.

Friends, the message here is clear. We are to obey the King’s commands and live for Him with every fiber of our being. For when we do, we will be fulfilling the greatest commandment, the commandment that Jesus provided when asked:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength (Mark 12:30).

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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LIMITED DISCERNMENT

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In Christ, Mark

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** Follow The Christian Walk on Twitter @ThChristianWalk

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

“Look,” says the Teacher, “this is what I have discovered”:

“Adding one thing to another to discover the scheme of things—while I was still searching but not finding—I found one upright man among a thousand, but not one upright woman among them all. This only have I found: God created mankind upright, but they have gone in search of many schemes.”

Ecclesiastes 7:27-29 

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Human beings like to try and figure things out. It’s something that is inherent within us.

Perhaps that’s why we like a good mystery, because it allows our deductive juices to flow as we try and sort out the facts and solve the case at hand.

This desire to figure out why things are the way they are is really at the heart of science, isn’t it? A person of science is one who believes there is a tangible reason for everything and will not rest until they find that reason. Everything has an explanation and people can rely on their own intellect to figure things out, providing answer and hopefully solutions to the matters of life.

There’s only one problem with this mindset. For every person created has limited discernment.

The truth is that we are limited in what we can do and think. No one is perfect in wisdom or understanding of things. Only God is.

And yet, despite this truth, we choose to pursue things that we’ll never be able to comprehend fully and along the way, in our quest for knowledge and perception, we will inevitably draw false conclusions about things and convince others to agree with us. In other words, we are also flawed in our intellect and if we’re not careful, we can very easily get it wrong and then lead others to be wrong too.

Well, looking at our scripture passage today, we’ll see the theme of this devotion brought to life by the very words of Solomon, the one referred to as the Teacher, and be reminded by God of the limited nature of our discernment. Look again at these verses that conclude Ecclesiastes, Chapter 7:

“Look,” says the Teacher, “this is what I have discovered”:

“Adding one thing to another to discover the scheme of things—while I was still searching but not finding—I found one upright man among a thousand, but not one upright woman among them all. This only have I found: God created mankind upright, but they have gone in search of many schemes.” Ecclesiastes 7:27-29

In this passage, we find Solomon trying to figure things out, adding one thing to another to discover the scheme of things and sharing what he discovered with the reader.

Note here that there is an immediate problem. For Solomon is telling us what he discovered, what he learned while searching to discover the scheme of things. There is no revelation that he was asking the Lord to reveal truth to him. No, Solomon was trying to figure it out on his own.

With this, it should be no surprise that he was searching but not finding because Solomon relied on his own understanding and in his limited discernment, he started to draw his own conclusions, some right and some wrong.  

Look at what he claimed to discover:

1. One upright man among a thousand, but not one upright woman among them all.

I’m not sure who that one upright man was or what distinguished him to where Solomon thought he was upright but Solomon was simply in error for not one man or woman is upright, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). No one is righteous (Romans 3:10) and if Solomon would have allowed God to impart understanding, he would have seen the error in his deductions.

2. God created mankind upright, but they have gone in search of many schemes.

Here, Solomon is spot on and he is because he turns his attention to God. For as he continues to deduct his way through the matter of mankind’s uprightness, we see he adjusts his reference point toward the Creator God who fashioned every man and woman to be upright but that was ruined by the very first man and woman who allowed sin to enter in and poison God’s perfection (Genesis 3). The outcome of that first transgression was generations upon generations of people going in search of many schemes, schemes that were wicked, evil, and self serving instead of righteous, holy, and self sacrificial.

The Lord God Almighty gave each of us a brain and the ability to think but He didn’t do so for us to completely abandon Him and lean on our own understanding, our own limited discernment. We would be best served in life to never delve into discovery without first partnering with God who will allow us to know what He wants us to know. He will always lead us to where He wants us to be and to understand what He wants us to understand when we are there.

As my study bible so accurately states, human wisdom and understanding must always yield to revealed truth. I hope you’ll join me by yielding gratefully to the God who always shines light on our quest for truth, ever trumping our limited discernment.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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THE LIBERATING PLEASING OF GOD

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

I find more bitter than death the woman who is a snare, whose heart is a trap and whose hands are chains. The man who pleases God will escape her, but the sinner she will ensnare.

Ecclesiastes 7:26 

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Have you ever been trapped in sin?

I hope your answer is yes for the truth of the matter is that all of mankind has been afflicted by sin since the fall of Adam and Eve in Eden (Genesis 3). What God made as perfect and in His own image became tainted forever and wickedness entered the scene to compete with righteousness. It’s remained that way ever since, throughout all of the scriptures and in the hearts of people today.

Sounds bleak and it would be if we didn’t have a way to set ourselves free from the sin that seeks to bind us up. That way is highlighted in our feature verse from Ecclesiastes, Chapter 7. Let’s take a look at it now.

I find more bitter than death the woman who is a snare, whose heart is a trap and whose hands are chains. The man who pleases God will escape her, but the sinner she will ensnare (v26).

If you asked someone today if anything was worse than death, I’m not sure you would get too many responses. A majority of people love life and despite its hardships and difficulties, living is better than not. But if we look at the words of Solomon, given to him and to us by God, we find that there is one thing more bitter than death. It’s the entrapment of sin.

Within the verse, the imagery for sin is found in an enticing woman who would want to tempt a man into some sort of sexual immorality. The bait for the trap is the pleasure the woman is offering and she seeks to lure the man into her snare using her evil heart and hands to shackle her victim up in his transgression.

Satan uses temptations of many kinds to try and lure us into sin by appealing to any number of worldly pleasures. Go to the list of actions that people are to turn from found in Galatians, Chapter 5 and you will find many of these illicit pleasures listed, pleasure such as sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, witchcraft, selfish ambition, drunkenness, orgies, and the like (v19-21).

What warning does the word of God give us if we choose to live this way, choosing sin as we surrender ourselves to the acts of the flesh?

The holy word of the Lord tells is that whoever adopts these sinful behaviors will not inherit the kingdom of God (v21).

Now you know why falling prey to the inducement of sin is more bitter than death. For it binds us up and drags us away from the kingdom of God. What could be worse than that?

Well, thanks be to God that He didn’t leave us facing a problem without offering us a solution. For although we face the dangerous lure of Satan and the sin he longs to catch us in every day, the Lord has given us a way to avoid failing and falling, a way to be liberated from the looming dangers that we come up against in this world.

Go back to the verse from Ecclesiastes and these words:

The man who pleases God will escape her, but the sinner she will ensnare.

Remember, at the root of temptation is a pleasure that serves as the bait whether it is lust or power or greed to name a few. The way we counter these alluring pleasures is to shift our focus on pleasure toward giving it instead of receiving it.

For when we turn our desire toward pleasing God and seek to carry out His will and way with every fiber of our being, then and only then will we be able to escape the clutches of Satan and sin.

That’s it. It’s so simple. Please God and be set free from sin. Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). If your pleasures and desires are what you treasure, then sin will be in your heart and you will give into the acts of the flesh. But if our hearts are centered on pleasing God as they should be if we are Christians, then we will find ourselves bearing the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) and storing up treasures in heaven as we live like Christ, ever pleasing the Father who wants no more than for us to live for and with Him, now and forever.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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IGNORING WHAT PEOPLE SAY

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In Christ, Mark

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** Follow The Christian Walk on Twitter @ThChristianWalk

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Do not pay attention to every word people say, or you may hear your servant cursing you—for you know in your heart that many times you yourself have cursed others.

Ecclesiastes 7:21-22 

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

How many times a day is someone hurt or offended by something someone said?

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it happens every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every month of every year. For as long as people have the ability to speak and hear, there will be this matter of people hearing words spoken by others that upset them in some way.

So what’s the remedy? How do we keep from being damaged or insulted or repulsed by what people say?

Our scripture passage from the 7th chapter of Ecclesiastes brings an answer from the Lord:

Do not pay attention to every word people say, or you may hear your servant cursing you—for you know in your heart that many times you yourself have cursed others. Ecclesiastes 7:21-22

God calls us to not pay attention to every word people say. We are to filter what we hear, embracing the positive and divorcing ourselves from the negative. There are two good reasons we need to do this:

First, when we allow the negative to enter into our hearts and minds, we are convicted of the way we have talked about others. We can get upset at people for the things they might say but when we get right down to it, we’re just as guilty ourselves. Everyone at one time or another says something wrong to another. It happens because we’re all sinners and in our sinfulness, we do and say wicked things. It’s easy to get angry at someone when they say something bad about us but maybe not so easy to deal with our own past transgressions. This leads me to the second message the Lord is sending us today in regard to not paying attention to every word that people say.

For if we are constantly listening to the things that people say, where is there room to listen to what the Lord has to say? Doesn’t that count more than anything a mere sinful human could say?

I think we all would agree it is, exponentially so.

Friends, we would be so more better off spending a majority of our time listening to the words our Lord wants to speak to us, words that always seek to lead and guide us, words that always seek to convict and shape us to be who He wants us to be, words that edify and assure and love us in a way that no person can.

Next time you are bombarded by verbal insults or rumors or innuendos or attacks, next time you are flooded with propaganda intended to manipulate your thoughts, opinions and attitudes, take some time to remember these words spoken to us by the Lord God Almighty in Ecclesiastes and then don’t pay attention to what the world is saying to you, listening and receiving the Lord’s words instead.

He will always speak words you need to hear, words that will always bring you to His righteousness, words that will always lead you to a life that is pleasing in His sight.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.

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