Many churches throughout the world use a Bible reading schedule called a "lectionary." It's just a fancy word meaning "selected readings." Posts like this reflect on the readings for an upcoming Sunday or other Church holiday, as found in the three-year lectionary.
Psalm 5:9-10 speaks of those who oppose God and His people. It calls them untruthful, destructive like death, flattering, and guilty. They are to be cast out because of their transgressions. These are harsh words. Are they words we can buy into?
I’ve observed more than one election cycle in my home country. There’s always deceit. One or more candidate is always misleading people about something. In fact, most of the time, we all realize that campaign promises and even policy stances are not to be taken as an accurate reflection of future hopes. Really. I am thinking of running for the Senate and promising all my constituents a unicorn and a balloon. On the off chance of becoming elected, I might just have to buy a lot of balloons. Maybe there’s a balloon manufacturer who will support me. But the unicorn? Nope. Not going to get it.
The opponents of God are untruthful. They will re-invent God to get their own way. They will say that the all loving God would never punish anybody (except their enemies). They will say that generation after generation of Christians got everything wrong, because times have changed. Religion needs to change too. After all, they think religion was invented by humans.
A biblical view will see that Christianity is not a man-made thing. It is divine in its origin. It has consistency, and that consistency is predicated, at least in part, on the idea that God doesn’t change. When we try to paint the Christian faith as something else we bring death, not life. We kill and destroy, and our end is self-destruction. We run into the consequences of our sin. It isn’t pretty.
On the other hand, our Psalm speaks of God blessing the righteous and being their refuge. In the end, the real question is whether we want to let God be God, the one who cares for His people, or do we want to make God over in our image and trust that he will act like us. May we never pursue that plan. The consequences look terrible. Thanks be to God who gives us life and hope.
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