In Scripture we see God at work humbling His own people, Israel. He did this throughout the centuries with nations like, Egypt, then the Babylonians, Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Greeks ,Romans. These nations each were also conquered by said nations. None ever returning to the glory they once had. Each of these nations sent aganist Israel, God's chosen people, "To whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises;"(Romans 9)
God hates and resists the proud....
"God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." (James 4)
"The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate." (Proverbs 8:13)
"There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers." (Proverbs 6:16-19)
"Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the Lord; be assured, he will not go unpunished." (Proverbs 16:5)
"He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:8)
"But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! (2 Tim 3:1-5)
Have we not been a prideful and arrogant nation? Our inheritence of a blessed prosperity unlike any other nation before it, taken for granted, that somehow we deserve such blessings. Have we not shoved into the Holy Face of God the flaunting of our increasing immorality, our snubbing of the God of Scripture who has blessed us, calling good evil and evil good. Embracing every deviance, and corruption, those things which are an abomination to God, and acceptance of every sort of disgusting act of wickedness, a perversion of the created order, the murder of our progeny, behaviors never intended for His creation when on the sixth day He looked upon all He had spoken into existencer and said, "it is very good."
The psalmist declared this of those he observed around him proclaiming in Psalm 73 "They say, "How does God know?And is there knowledge in the Most High?" "They set their mouth against the heavens," God wasn't seen as having any say in the matter of their wealth, their prosperity, their lifestyles. They called evil good and good evil.
Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, (A WARNING) upon whom the ends of the ages have come. Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. (1 Cor 10:11-12)
"When I thought how to understand this, It was too painful for me— Until I went into the sanctuary of God; Then I understood their end. Surely You set them in slippery places; You cast them down to destruction. Oh, how they are brought to desolation, as in a moment! They are utterly consumed with terrors. (Ps 73:16-19)
God owes us Nothing. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Yet He gives us everything...Life Breath and all things.
"There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; They have together become worthless; There is none who does good, no, not one." (Romans 3:10-12)
We are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners. We were born that way. It's in our nature. (Ephesians 2)
Salvation is a gift of God. No amount of works, can get you into the Kingdom of God. But only one sin can condemn you to an eternity from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His power. (2 Thess 1:7-10)
For we are by nature....children of God's wrath. (not children of God Eph.2)
The world is wrong. Its purveyors of wickedness "look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and every impurity." And they drag those with itching ears into the abyss clinging to the falsehoods of these blind guides who make them twice the son of hell. (Matt 23:27)
And what about the church? The time has come for judgement to begin at the house of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God?
Jesus the Christ said, "Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him." (John 14:21)
Salvation is not saying a prayer then continuing in the lifestyle you once led. It is a radical "change of heart" ...a regeneration that encompasses every aspect of a persons life. Not just a one day a week acknowledgment .
God the Father sent God the Son that we may be righteous as He is righteous. (2 Cor 5:21) The cost? The Cross because sin is that bad. Sin is repugnant to a Holy Righteous God. For without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. (Heb 9:22)
All those animal sacrifices by God's chosen people in the Old Testament were pointing to the One Sacrifice that was to come, the suffering servant of Isaiah 53....(proclaimed and written down 750 years before Jesus the Christ's birth)...led like a lamb to the slaughter; pierced for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities; cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished; Pleased the Lord to bruise Him; For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
The book of Hebrews in the New Testament explains that ... "Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption... now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation. (Heb. 10:11-12; 26-28)
Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 8:18; 8)
Why? For everyone born of flesh and blood and bones, inherits a sinful human nature, predisposed to act upon their sin nature. It is in our nature to sin.
Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. (Gal. 5:19-21)
Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Cor 6:9-11)
Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind, for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God. For we have spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles—when we walked in lewdness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries. (1 Peter 4:1-3)
And Jesus said, "What comes out of a person, that defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a person." (Mark 7:20-23)
O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:24)
For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God. For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness....For the time has come for judgement to begin at the house of God.... Therefore he who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who has also given us His Holy Spirit. (1 Thess. 4:3-8)
I am not suggesting a sinless perfectionism. I do not believe that is possible in this corrupted human form. But I do believe that our desire will be to leave our past behind us, strive to please Him who so loved us, that He by His grace (giving us what we don't deserve) and mercy (not giving us what we do deserve) calling us from the darkness of this present evil age to the light of the gospel of the glory of God that is, was and always will be in Jesus Christ...the only Savior, Lord, Way, Truth and Life.
