Micah 1:1-4:13
Revelation 6:1-17
Psalm 134:1-3
Proverbs 30:1-4
"Do not prophesy," their prophets say.
"Do not prophesy about these things;
disgrace will not overtake us."
Clearly, denial wasn't just a river in Egypt, even during the time of Micah. This is the 50th Monday I am writing this blog, and I thought I had to get some bad humor into it before year end.
Ok, I admit, it isn't funny. But neither is sin - worse, the denial of the basis for sin- God's law. I don't know when I realized it - that sin was difficult when one acknowledged God and His dominion, so the easiest way to justify sin was to deny God and His dominion in the first place. And while the denial of God is the basis for all individual sin, it is frightening how much that has permeated a culture that once provided the external motivation and incentive for good behavior. The question of right and wrong appears to have disappeared - or become that much easier to ignore, in favor of "if it feels good, do it". Today, the little child who observed that the emperor had no clothes would have been called bigoted, intolerant, insensitive to the clothing-impaired and shushed. Not that that would have put a stitch of clothing on the emperor, mind you.
The world makes it increasingly difficult to be true to one's beliefs. How then to stand firm? I struggle with that quite a bit, quite frankly - and, interestingly enough, not when faced with failure, but when bathed in success. It is then that gratification becomes so much more appealing, and the temptation to deny God's existence and His law much greater.
So how then to overcome? Not by our own strength, certainly. Thankfully, further down the reading, we see that "as for me, I am filled with power, with the Spirit of the Lord, and with justice and might, to declare to Jacob his transgression, to Israel his sin." Thankfully, we have a God who "will give you horns of iron; I will give you hooves of bronze, and you will break to pieces many nations."
Come, Lord Jesus.
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