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Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Let him become a fool

Why do you provoke me to anger with the works of your hands, making offerings to other gods in the land of Egypt where you have come to live, so that you may be cut off and become a curse and a taunt among all the nations of the earth?
(Jeremiah 44:8 ESV)

Nothing angers God more than this sin: making false gods and worshiping false gods. Sure, God is angry at our other sins: lying, stealing, hating, lusting, etc.

But nothing made God angry more againsst Judah than their making of their own religions and worshiping their own ideas of God. This was the primary reason that they were thrust out of the Promised Land.

Are we also provoking God to wrath? Do we also make our own versions of Christianity and our own images and ideas of Jesus Christ and God and worship them? Then let it be known to us that God is ANGRY with this more than any other sin. YOU SHALL NOT HAVE ANY OTHER GODS BEFORE ME. YOU SHALL NOT MAKE IMAGES. These are the top two commandments of His Holy Law.

God hates nothing more than our presumption of who God is. To say, "I know God!" while not knowing Him at all, and worshiping instead a selfish representation of the God of the universe, is the greatest sin a man can commit against Him.

The Jews thought they knew Jesus. The Jews thought that Jesus was just a poor carpenter from Nazareth saying some crazy things they didn't like. They thought they "saw" Jesus. So Jesus gave them this terrible warning:

Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, “Are we also blind?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.
(John 9:39-41 ESV)

See what Jesus is saying:  "Now that you say, 'We see', your guilt remains." If we act like we "see" God and Jesus Christ. If we THINK we know Him, just because we have made for ourselves images of God, whoever we THINK He is, then this is also what Jesus says to us: YOUR GUILT REMAINS.

What shall we do then? We must become fools. We must admit our lack of knowledge of Him! We must say with the blind man: "I don't know" (John 9:12)! As it is written:

Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.
(1 Corinthians 3:18 ESV)

Once we humble ourselves, and get rid of all our idols, our ideas of who we think God is, and submit ourselves under the Scripture, and pray to God to reveal Himself to us, then shall our eyes shall be opened, and we shall see Him as He is.

And then we shall truly worship Him, just as the once-blind-but-now-seeing man began to worship Him in spirit and TRUTH:

Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.” He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.
(John 9:35-38 ESV)

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