Good morning!
Welcome to your morning coffee! May our Heavenly Father call us closer to His side. Father, we do not understand your holiness. We do not understand our sin. Like children in our Father's arms, we swim with you in deep waters, unware of the great depths beneath us, and within us. Help us to hate our sin and hunger for your holiness in new ways today, Father. In the name of your Son Jesus, call us to new depths of repentance today, that we might reach new heights of your joy that you long to share with us. By your Spirit mature us in all things Father. Amen.
Your Morning Song: "Hope to Carry On" by Caedmon's Call
Your Morning Scripture: Revelation 2:18-23
“And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write: ‘The words of the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze.
“‘I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first. But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works, and I will strike her children dead. And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works.
...
Some have said that the God of the Old Testament is a vengeful, violent, un-loving God. And these same people say that the God of the New Testament is the very opposite. For those who have the Spirit guiding them in reading God's Word, we know this is a foolish lie.
In the Old Testament we see the truth and not the lie. In Adam and Eve's first breath after our Fall, God gave them grace. He covered their nakedness with shed blood. He promised to Abraham that He would bear the full weight of their covenant. He chased lovingly after Israel for generations. He has used all of creation since the beginning to reveal Himself graciously and patiently to all people.
In the New Testament we see the truth and not the lie. Here in the book of Revelation John speaks to the church in Thyatira this seemingly vengeful, violent, harsh word. God will make the woman Jezebell deathly ill. He will harshly punish those who have listened to her teaching. And He will kill her children. And this is in the New Testament.
What is really going on here? Have we, God's children missed something important?
We have. We do not rightly understand God's holiness. And we do not rightly understand our sin. And so we often read the Bible, in verses like these, and focus on the wrong parts in the wrong way. Even my heart recoils at the thought of God making someone sick, punishing those who listen to her, and killing her children. But why would God, who I know for a fact is full of grace and mercy, do this?
Both the woman and those who follow her are given more time to repent than they deserve. God calls out to them to repent and turn from sin. And the terrifying action God promises to take only comes after He calls them to repent.
We do not understand how horrible our sin is. And we do not understand how "other" God's holiness is. We should focus on the offer to repent. We should focus on God's loving call to this woman and her followers to ask for His forgiveness, which He would joyfully give! And we should feel the true terror, the hot horror at those who have been offered forgiveness by God, and still reject Him.
And we should see our lives in this way. We should join God in hating sin. We should join God in graciously calling others to repent. We should join God in eagerly offering forgiveness and restoration to those who ask for it. We should join with God in seeing ourselves and the world and His Word as He does, and not only with our own hearts and minds.
The more time we spend in the Bible, the more we will see sin for what it is, and God for who He is, and be mature in the Spirit.
May our lives be filled with a hatred of our sin.
May our lives be filled with a hunger for God's holiness.
