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In Christ, Mark
In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy
word.
This is what the Lord says:
“You false prophets are leading my people astray! You promise peace for those who give you food, but you declare war on those who refuse to feed you. Now the night will close around you, cutting off all your visions. Darkness will cover you, putting an end to your predictions. The sun will set for you prophets, and your day will come to an end. Then you seers will be put to shame, and you fortune-tellers will be disgraced. And you will cover your faces because there is no answer from God.”
Micah 3:5-7 (NLT)
This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks
be to God.
When you are a servant of the Lord, you thrive in walking
in His light through all He calls you to do. He has promised those called to
His work that He is with and for them through whatever comes their way in the
course of carrying out His purposes. He has also assured anyone who would speak
on His behalf that He would provide the words to speak, that a messenger of the
Lord need not worry about the message because that message would be provided to
them.
This truth was played out over and over through the
prophets we read about over and over again in the scriptures. In each instance,
we find the Lord choosing them and then giving them the words to say.
Essentially, these selected people of faith were simply spokespersons for the
Lord.
Here’s something else we find in the scriptures: there
were messengers in play amongst the people of God who were not speaking on His
behalf or even connected to Him for that matter. God called them false prophets
and provided staunch warning to His people to avoid them at any cost as these
counterfeit heralds were only leading their listeners down the road of sin and
its associated devastation.
Well, as we continue to look at the scriptures for today,
we find that there are false prophets at work even while God is speaking
through Micah to the Israelite people, false prophets who God addressed with a
message of His own:
This is what the Lord
says:
“You false prophets are leading my people astray! You promise peace for those who give you food, but you declare war on those who refuse to feed you. Now the night will close around you, cutting off all your visions. Darkness will cover you, putting an end to your predictions. The sun will set for you prophets, and your day will come to an end. Then you seers will be put to shame, and you fortune-tellers will be disgraced. And you will cover your faces because there is no answer from God.” Micah 3:5-7 (NLT)
Note here where the false prophets had placed themselves
at the heart of their work, tailoring their prophecy to the way they were
provided for by the listeners. If they were given food, satisfying their needs,
then they would send a message of peace to the provider. If nothing was
provided, then the false prophet would transmit a declaration of war toward the
ones who did not give them what they desired. The object at the center of
attention was the prophet and God was not in the picture at all.
And so He inserted Himself into the matter and with
authority.
For we find the Lord essentially telling the false
prophets that their days of deceiving were coming to an end, promising that the
night would close around them and cut off their visions. In other words, God
would remove their ability to foretell anything, forcing the sun to set on
their lives and casting their minds into utter darkness, essentially putting an
end to their predictions.
If the bogus prophets wanted to work in the dark recesses
of sin, then they could just remain there but this wasn’t the only penalty God
was going to bring. For we read that the Lord would put the prophets, the seers
and fortune tellers, to shame. They would end up so disgraced among the
Israelites and before God that they would cover their faces because they would
be shunned by Him.
You see, sin, no matter its form, will always take
someone into darkness and that darkness serves to separate us from the light
and the Lord, its source. Many are walking in this darkness and maybe you are
as you read this today.
It’s a good thing we serve a Lord who is in the business
of forgiveness and redemption, a Lord who is always ready to bring us out of
the darkness and back into the light of His love and favor. All we are asked to
do is repent and turn away from our sins, recommitting ourselves to following
the Lord’s word, will, and way which will always bring us to righteousness.
If you, like the false prophets at the center of today’s
scripture, have allowed sin to live in darkness and apart from the Lord’s
light, I pray today you will decide to change your ways, casting away the
wrongs you are committing or have committed and rededicating yourself to the
Lord and Him alone.
When you do, rest assured He will never lead you astray but
rather always place you on the right and righteous path in life, the path that
He is walking with you as you carry out His purposes, the path that is always
illuminated by His magnificent, glorious, holy light.
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
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