Living in the Face of God

Isaiah 57:4-8 “Whom do you mock, making faces and sticking out your tongues? You children of sinners and liars! You worship your idols with great passion beneath the oaks and under every green tree. You sacrifice your children down in the valleys, among the jagged rocks in the cliffs. Your gods are the smooth stones in the valleys. You worship them with liquid offerings and grain offerings. They, not I, are your inheritance. Do you think all this makes me happy? You have committed adultery on every high mountain. There you have worshiped idols and have been unfaithful to me. You have put pagan symbols on your doorposts and behind your doors. You have left me and climbed into bed with these detestable gods. You have committed yourselves to them. You love to look at their naked bodies.”

The other day, I was talking to a lady and the subject of Christianity came up. She openly explained how she was against organized religion and felt that a person just needed to live a life aligned with God’s nature of love to be received into heaven. She said that she trusted and believed that God created everything, but accepted the belief that many different faiths around the world worshipped and served the same God, but just called Him by different names. She acknowledged that “all have sinned before God, but she did not believe that just believing that Christ paid for the sins of the world, as a free gift from God’s loving mercy & grace, would save a sinner. I explained that the Bible directly stated that God’s “Plan of Salvation” was through the death of His only son Jesus, to pay the penalty for our sins. Christ takes our place on the cross and we put on His righteousness. This mercy & grace of God is offered to all those who trust, believe and accepted the free gift of forgiveness, regeneration and eternal life. This was clear in the verses of scripture, but she replied that she did not believe that the entire Bible was true, including original sin and salvation by Christ alone. This belief, of course, is not based on comparative religion, but in humanism. It is simply making a god in her image – truly an idol that did not exist. Not understanding that the heart which was once dead to God in sin, being regenerated by the Holy Spirit through repentance and faith in the finished work of salvation in Jesus produces, not a person capable to change, but a ‘changed” person. Changed by God alone.

Isaiah 57:11-13 “Are you afraid of these idols? Do they terrify you? Is that why you have lied to me and forgotten me and my words? Is it because of my long silence that you no longer fear me? Now I will expose your so-called good deeds. None of them will help you. Let’s see if your idols can save you when you cry to them for help. Why, a puff of wind can knock them down! If you just breathe on them, they fall over! But whoever trusts in me will inherit the land and possess my holy mountain (the kingdom of heaven).”

The true battle is between “obedience” & “disobedience” to the one true God that is based in unbelief in the Truth & belief in the lie. She talked about living before the face of God (Coram Deo), but not under the sovereign authority of God and to the glory of God. This is the “form of godliness but denying its power” spoke about in 2Timothy 3:2-5. Why do so people jeopardize their eternal destiny? Truth is their enemy because they do not want to submit to and obey the Truth, but then, in doing this, give their obedience to the lie and to that which is false. One of my co-workers, who is a counselor at Calvary Chapel’s Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California, told me that he was witnessing in open conversation to an unbelieving co-worker about God and Christ. The co-worker surprised him when he said that his greatest problem with belief in God was the Bible verse Romans 1:32 “who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.” Like so many people today, this unbelieving co-worker loves their sinful and lawless lifestyle where they decide right from wrong, but deep inside knows that they are deserving of God’s righteous judgment and wrath for their disobedience. They pray that the God of the Bible does not exist and believe this lie to distract their mind from the truth of their destiny on the wide road to destruction. Living in the face of God through the truth of the gospel of Jesus is the only path to righteousness and eternal life. Spread the Word. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.

1 Corinthians 1:18 “For the message of the cross (the gospel of Jesus Christ) is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

In Christ, Brian