Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

Note:
I have been greatly enjoying these commentaries, and getting a lot out of writing them; however the school term is now bearing down in full force and if I don’t make some changes I will not be able to continue.

From now on, commentaries will be getting considerably shorter as I endeavour to allocate 15 minutes to their writing (until now it has sometimes taken me an hour or more to write a particularly troublesome episode). If I am preaching at church on Sunday, I will continue to publish my sermon’s transcript as Saturday’s edition.

Also, finally, I plan to go away with my family during April. During this time we will be camping, so there will be no computers! I considered bringing my notebook computer so that I could write entries during that time, but I have since decided that I should instead concentrate on enjoying the time with my family; so from April 21 – 24 I shall be off line. Sorry for any inconvenience; You’ll just have to find another source of borderline heresy for those dates!

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I have a book that was given to me in hard times. It’s called the Bible Promises book, and in it the author goes through and finds all God’s promises. The idea is that when you’re facing difficulties, you open up this book and you find what God has promised you.

It’s a good book, and has been helpful to me.

Yet there’s another side to God’s promises; one which will be unlikely to turn up in Christian books aiming to encourage people. And this is that God ALSO gave us a bunch of other promises.

We’re quick to look up the part of Deuteronomy where God describes the blessings He will raind down on His people if they obey His commands. We’re good with that, because we want to be blessed also; so we learn what God has said, and attempt to hold Him to it.

But there are other promises, and they are much more frightening. God promises that if people DON’T obey Him, a whole bunch of other things will happen. Shocking things. A lot of them are the very OPPOSITE of the promises God gives if His people pray.

There are a lot of concepts in the Bible that are hard ones today (just to be clear, this is no different from any other time in history. Don’t get the idea that life is any more godless now than always! Which concepts are hard may change.).

The concept of Hell, for example. The idea that someone may be consigned to eternal punishment for sin seems horrendous to us. Yet this is a promise – that one day the wicked will face judgement.

But God’s promises, be they pleasant or unpleasant, are promises; and God is faithful to keep them.

That’s good news if you’re looking at God’s positive promises; but as God tells Jeremiah in vs 1 – 5, God’s unpleasant promises are also true. The people need to realise that God isn’t playing around here.

This should galvanise us into action. Let’s face it, we all know people who are not friends of God. Are they to simply face God’s judgement without preparation[1]?

No. Never. A thousand times no.

We need to get out there and be prepared to share what we know of Christ to ANYONE who is yet to know Him personally.

[1] As I have previously said, God’s power is greater than our stupidity. This is not meant to be saying that God will automatically ignore anyone who is not a Christian, and that without us all these people will go to hell. Rather my model leaves the results to God – but the thing is, we don’t know.