Day 182: What God Doesn't Want

1 Corinthians 5; 1 Kings 18; Amos 2:1-3:2

Paul reminds the Corinthians that a little compromise, a little sin allowed here and there, can easily and quick spread and ruin many. He tells them to stop being proud--they need to realize they are susceptible to temptation and sin, just like everyone else. As a church body, we need to stand for righteousness, holiness, and purity. We need to stick to scriptural truths, fight for them, and try to live to the standard of Jesus. When we overlook the sin in ourselves or fellow believers, we are not helping anyone, in fact, we are actually condoning such sin. We need to fight against all kinds of sins: anger, greed, jealousy, drunkenness, etc. Whatever is not of The Lord is a sin and Paul tells the Corinthians (and us) that we need to remove those things from the church. If the church looks just like the world, what's the point of Jesus' example?

Wow, talk about the ultimate throw down! Elijah challenges the prophets of Baal to see whose God is real. The more they pray and dance and cut themselves, the more obvious it is that there will be no answer. They try all day long to get a response from their god--and nothing. All they have accomplished is to embarrass themselves, wear themselves out, and harm themselves with cutting. All the gods we worship here on earth--money, success, substances, people--this is all that will happen. We can cry out to them day and night, give everything that we have hoping for some help, and they will leave us bleeding and empty. Elijah lifts up a short prayer and God responds in a powerful way. Only The Lord of the Universe will answer and give us what we need. When the people realize how fake the other prophets are, they take them and kill them. They realize just how worthless, tricky, and harmful those leaders had been and so they destroy them and their influence. We need to to destroy the influence of worthless gods in our own lives. Do we idolize money? Start giving it away. Do we idolize success? Change your job. Do we idolize another human or a relationship? If it isn't a marriage, end that relationship and focus on The Lord instead. Just like what Paul was saying in Corinthians, we need to chase away sin, chase away false idols, stop worshipping things that don't matter and can't satisfy.

The other little thing that is so cool about what God does in this moment, is he is able to create fire that was able to burn and dry up even water-soaked wood. God didn't just set fire to dry wood, he set fire to soaked wood. God likes to do what is beyond the normal to work a miracle. Yeah, it still would have been cool if God had lit the bull and altar on fire if it was perfectly dry. But how can God show even more power? Light wet stuff on fire. Yeah, that's my God.

Amos is a pretty bleak book to begin with. God is going to destroy all these different groups because of what they have done. Some were "led astray by the same false gods their ancestors worshiped." Others will be destroyed because they "sell honest people for money" and "smear the poor in the dirt and push aside those who are helpless." When God sends a message about destroying a whole group of people, we need to listen to the reasons. In the first few chapters of Amos, we see that God hates it when people sell others as slaves (sex slavery? labor trafficking?). He hates when people kill their relatives and don't show mercy (murder? divorce? domestic abuse?). He will destroy those who rip open pregnant women (abortion?). He despises when people dishonor the dead. He hates it when people are led astray by false gods (money, sex, substances, fame, other religions?). And he definitely hates it when people do not care for the poor and needy. So if we take all this and switch it around, what DOES God want us to do? To treat others as valuable, whether poor, downcast, outcast, pregnant, it doesn't matter. God values human life, and not just being alive, but living.