Exodus 10:26 English Standard Version (ESV) “Our livestock also must go with us; not a hoof shall be left behind, for we must take of them to serve the Lord our God, and we do not know with what we must serve the Lord until we arrive there.”

Seeing the title Left Behind might have brought into memory a few movies about future events. This is about a life left behind when we began to follow our Lord as new creations in Christ.

We drag the carcass around with us. As much as we would love to embrace this new life, the old body is still being dragged around with us. People we have not seen for some time after our conversion might recognize our corpse and think we are still the same.

When looking for a bible verse containing the exact phrase “left behind” I found it here in Exodus. It is pertinent to our discussion in a couple of ways. We will have to take sacrifices of our old life in order to live for Christ. We will not be allowed to perform the old rituals of a sinful life if we are to follow Christ. The second part is that we do not know when we will have to make those sacrifices.

We leave that life behind us so that at some future date we will not find ourselves “left behind” in a different way. That is the message of those movies. The faithful will be snatched away.

Those movies try to shock people into accepting Christ. No one wants to be left behind. One of the more dramatic scenes in one movie was of a church where only a few were taken and there was shock among those that thought they should have been taken, including their pastor.

It is a telling tale for sure but the worldly will accept the movie as being a work of fiction that has no reality in it for themselves. They only care to be entertained. A Star Trek movie holds more possibilities for them than eternal life.

When witnessing to the lost, the life we left behind holds a real tale of real people and a real need for change. We will make a better impression on them than a poorly written screenplay.

We are real people with real stories about lives that were unsatisfying, painful, and headed for destruction in a real and painful way. They stand a better chance of seeing their own lives in us than in a movie.

People do not change all that much in their sin behaviors. Labels change but the sin does not. What does change is the speed in which some sinners die before they hear the truth. Some of the drugs today are more deadly that what was circulating back in the 60’s.

“Times a wastin.” “We’re burning daylight.”

Matthew 6:19-20 English Standard Version

Lay Up Treasures in Heaven

19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.

Rust is only seen twice in the ESV and the KJV uses the word worm. It is not surprising to discover that the issue of rust is not often used in teaching. 

Think about farm life and relate that to an old tractor that is no longer in use. Sometimes it is sitting around as a reminder of a former life when things were different. It might be fondly remembered and not sold off for scrap metal. It might even be an antique set on display like horse or mule drawn plows are kept to remind us of a harder life. They gather rust from lack of use.

Given that we might not ever go back to that old life before Christ, that life is our witness of rust. It is what we were but has been replaced with this new creation.

At 76 I will not act like a 20 year old. Thank God for that. Not because I can’t but because that man is long gone and sitting on display in faded photos in long forgotten albums somewhere in the attic.

My daughter sent me an email with an attachment of me back when I had a head full of hair. Hair wasn’t all I was full of back then. The photo doesn’t tell the tale, but it dragged up memories long forgotten. It was my rusty tractor photo, me before I died to sin.

Being dead to sin isn’t an easy concept for some of us because sin is sin and it does not die just because we did and became this new creation in Christ. It’s the rust that gets on us if we get close enough to that old life and let it rub off on our new clothes.

Here is another piece of advice. Leave it to rust, don’t try to clean it up.