Day 177: God's Whispers vs. Other's Messages

1 Corinthians 1:1-17; 1 Kings 12:32-13:34; Joel 1

In Paul's first letter to the Corinthians he makes what I think are some interesting points with some subtle statements. For instance: "And until the day Christ does return he will keep you completely innocent." What strikes me about that is how we have been made completely innocent. We are saved from most of our sins. We aren't saved from just the big ones or little ones. We are saved from all of our sins and made completely innocent. Pretty incredible if you think about all the sins we have committed and will commit in our lives. And how long will Christ's death cover us? As long as it needs to; until he returns a second time. That's big stuff.

The other statement that sticks out to me is when he writes that "he sent me to tell the good news without using big words that would make the cross of Christ lose its power." I think what he might mean is that the cross of Christ speaks for itself. When we try to explain it away or figure out how such an act can actually save the whole world, we complicate it and it can lose its significance in our lives. When we think about it simply as Jesus, God's son, suffered the wrath of God and died on the cross to save the world from their sins, and was raised to life so that we can have life in him--that's all that needs to be said. Yes, you could talk about the significance of the darkness, the two criminals, the words he spoke, the people that watched--and I would love to spend time looking at that--but what does it all really mean? That God loves us so much and wanted to make us acceptable that his son took our place on the cross. When you focus on the simple act of love and justice, it makes it a whole lot more powerful.

In Kings, Jeroboam is sacrificing to idols and even when God punishes him momentarily with a stiff hand, when he asks the prophet to heal it, God does! It's crazy that God would have that kind of mercy. If it were me, I would have told him to deal with it, that that is part of his punishment for disobeying. But not God! Even to those who have rejected him, he still shows mercy.

Then you have the mix up of the prophets. The old prophet lies to the one from Judah in order to provide hospitality to him. That's not a bad reason to want someone to come to your house (to serve them dinner), but to use God as your trump card IS wrong. So when the prophet from Judah hears this, he goes against what God told him and follows what this old dude says. We need to be careful to follow God's whispers in our own hearts. Other people may think they get messages from God about us, but what God places in our hearts should be our first priority and focus. The disobedient prophet from Judah unfortunately got attacked and killed by a lion right after this. Not cool. So, the message here is clear: obey the Lord's word in your heart so you don't get mauled by a lion.

Joel and the people there are experiencing the worst drought ever. God has dried up all of their crops and water, and they have nothing, not even things to sacrifice to The Lord. It doesn't say in this chapter, but my guess is that in later chapters, we will learn that it is because of their disobedience to The Lord that this has happened. That's speculation and we will find out.