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Paths

Proverbs 14:22

Do they not go astray who devise evil? Those who devise good meet steadfast love and faithfulness.

Those who devise evil are on a different path than those who are in Christ.

Being in “The Way” the path of right actions does not walk this path focused on the acts but rather the appointed meetings with Christ who is loving and faithful.

The motivation to keep walking cannot be about the work but rather the love and faithfulness of Christ whocalled us.

I often think about how Jesus would call His disciples with a simple plea, “Follow me.” They did not know Him as we know Him, crucified, and yet they dropped whatever they were doing to follow this stranger. In doing that they got to know Him in a way we never will.

On Pentecost the work of building the church began. There was a total focus on the work because in the beginning of any large scale endeavor there is a sense of urgency to lay a solid foundation for all that will come later.

Saul’s conversion to Paul set in motion the articles of incorporation for how the church would function and left us a blueprint to follow which has lasted for thousands of years.

Now as some see these are “the last days” there are two schools of thought. One is resting on the foundation already set for us and the other is in finishing the work of the church age.

Do any of us feel that same sense of urgency as it was on the day of Pentecost? 

Those who have devised evil have set the world on fire. Some of us feel the urgency to save as many as possible before the end of the church age. We can try to put out fires or we can try to save people.

Be careful to stay on the path. How close we are to the end does not change the path.

Morality

Leviticus 18:2-5 English Standard Version

2 “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, I am the Lord your God. 3 You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes. 4 You shall follow my rules and keep my statutes and walk in them. I am the Lord your God. 5 You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them: I am the Lord.

I have said that we need to guard our hearts with all integrity as it pertains to being moral people. Nowhere in the original language of the bile can I find the word moral or morality.

This passage in Leviticus was as close as I could come to demonstrating what the bible has to say about being moral.

Do not allow the legal systems of the lands in which we inhabit dictate how we should live.  The bottom line for me in this is that morality cannot be legislated. 

God has given us statutes that outline how to live a life that is pleasing to Him.

My parents did not teach me how to be moral. They only punished me if I did something that displeased them. That did not lead me to be a moral person, it only taught me to be more careful in what I wanted to do so that I wouldn’t get caught.

Israel was punished over and over again for failing to keep God’s commands. After God bailed them out over and over again they returned to failing to keep His commands. Bailment does not work.

Then God proclaimed “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

They killed Him for it.

The religious leaders of His time said they could not put Him to death and they begged the immoral courts of Rome to do it in violation of Leviticus 18:3.

Laws of men justify sin by making the immoral legal which is contrary to what pleases God.

Soon they will make a law that says it is illegal to please God, or have they done so already?

Morality is found in seeking to please God rather than the world we live in.