The Real Deal...Part 1
Writer Author Jerry Lee Kay Sr.
Christian Article
:
Christianity
- Fiction No
"I shall be anointed with fresh oil" (Psalm 92:10)
Even though I was to be the speaker for the service that evening, I entered from the lobby doors and sat next to a brother in the Lord I had known all my Christian life. A woman in her thirties, I had never seen before scooted down to make room for me. He and I had a lot in common and I loved to be in his presence. Some used to jokingly call him "The Deal" and me "The Re-Deal", mainly because we both were know to be weepers and shouters. A good gospel song or hearing a good speaker would set either one of us off.
An older man that truly loved the Lord and had given his life to Jesus many years ago, I mean literally gave his life to Jesus. He was one of the most tender hearted men I have ever known, a lot of women are like that but it is a rare find to know someone of the male gender that is so utterly in love with the Lord that when they even hear His name big tears start flowing down their cheeks. I only knew him as brother Deal, his wife was just as tender as he, they had one child, a young man that was killed in combat during the Korean war. Brother Deal was a very large man with rough features and hands the same, big and rough. He worked all his life in the outdoors as a rancher, and didn't talk very much. His wife was a little bitty lady with a smile as warm and big as her husband was tall. Many times over the years when I was preaching, brother Deal wept all the way through the message. Not an open display trying to draw attention to himself, just a tender sweet love of hearing the word of God. I broke bread with him and his family many times over the years and he was the same at home as he was at church. Brother Deal truly was the "Real Deal", a Weeper of joy, a Reaper of peace, sweetness, and full of the Holy Spirit...Needless to say, he would never have fit in at some churches...Brother Deal was not only a 'Weeper', he also was a 'Reaper'.
I stepped into the pulpit announced what my subject was for the evening but prior to my message I asked the choir to sing a song that I dedicated to brother Deal..."There is A Fountain Filled with Blood, Drawn From Emmanuel's Veins"... When they finished the song, the young woman that was sitting next to the Deal and I, stood to her feet and asked if she could give a word of testimony to the congregation. I hesitated for a moment, but the Holy Spirit nudged me to give permission. She began to weep and tell us that she had been raised in church, and was present every time the doors were open until she went away to college, she said she was full of the joy of the Lord all her teenage years, worked at a local mission outreach and even traveled to an overseas mission field during the summer months. She said, at school she met a man, fell in love and married him. He was agnostic and led her into some really serious philosophy and she began to major in a belief that had no room for God. She said the Holy Spirit was constantly pulling her back and talking to her about her first love. But she was so in love with her husband she refused to heed His voice and even got angry because He would not leave her alone. She began to harden her heart and became full of anger. After a long period of time she realized she had quenched and grieved Him and no longer was bothered by His conviction. She said she also had become agnostic, as she wept openly she told us that her husband had committed suicide,She said her father was a preacher of some sort and he told her she had become reprobate and there was no hope for her. Her appeal was to the young people of the church, she said, "I have lost the feeling I once had for the Lord, and it seems no matter how hard I try I can't get it back. She said a few words that stuck in my memory and will be there me-thinks forever. "Children of God, Hold fast to what You Have. Do not ever let anything nor anyone come between you and what you have, I would give all that I possess to have those feelings once again, I would pay any price to have what this man has, that I have been sitting beside. But I fear I have become reprobate!" ......And then weeping she ran from the building. No one knew her nor where she came from.The Greek word for "reprobate" is adokimo which means "to be Castaway" or "Rejected".
The great Apostle Paul said in Romans the first chapter...."Because that, when they 'KNEW' God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; (Which are not fit or proper; which are disgraceful and shameful)...Take notice the statement is, "They knew God" or had a relationship with Him. The Apostle continued...For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who 'HOLD' the truth in unrighteousness; The word translated "hold" here can also be translated "hold down, suppress, imprison; bridle."
She knew the truth about God, but she did not allow this truth to work in her life. She suppressed it in order that she might live her own life and not be convicted by God's truth. The result, of course, was refusing the truth (Rom. 1:21-22), and then turning the truth into a lie (Rom. 1:25). Finally, she so abandoned the truth that she became like a beast in his thinking and in his living. These folks did not want to retain God in their knowledge.....Their attitude was, "God, leave me alone!"... He did, and He will.
Aaron Burr, the third Vice President of the United States, was reared in a godly home and admonished to accept Christ by his grandfather Jonathan Edwards. But he refused to listen. Instead, he declared that he wanted nothing to do with God and said he wished the Lord would leave him alone. He did achieve a measure of political success in spite of repeated disappointments. But he was also involved in continuous strife, and when he was 48 years old, he killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. He lived for 32 more years, but through all this time he was unhappy and unproductive. It was during this sad chapter in his life that he declared to a group of friends; "Sixty years ago I told God that if He would let me alone, I would let Him alone, and God has not bothered about me since.".... Aaron Burr got what he wanted.
I do not know whether Oscar Wilde was reflecting more on the divine nature or human nature in saying, "When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers." But, according to the Book of Romans, he may well have been doing both, and have been correct in both instances. Romans here is concentrating on human rebellion against God, and we see...Paul has explicitly told us..that the wrath of God "is being revealed from heaven" against men and women because of this rebellion. In what way is God showing wrath? It is clear what we have done. We have.... suppressed the truth about God;....refused to glorify, or worship, God as God;....and declined to be thankful.
I once had a man working for me and I could always tell when he was lying to me. He was a very superstitious religious man, and when he lied he would always flinch, sometimes even duck. I asked his son why he did that, his answer was, "he is afraid of lighting from heaven." In Romans, Paul marks this downward rush of the human race. Because of their sin "God gave them up" (Rom. 1:24, 26) which means that He permitted them to go on in their sins and reap the sad consequences. They received "in their own persons the due penalty of their error" (Rom. 1:27, nasb). This is the meaning of Romans 1:18, "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven" (literal translation). God revealed His wrath, not by sending fire or lightning from heaven...but by abandoning sinful men to their lustful ways.... They become reprobate.
As a result many I fear have become "darkened" in their thinking. They have become fools. Nevertheless, up to this point we have not been told specifically of anything that God has actually done to unleash his wrath upon humanity....Now this changes. For the first time in the letter we are told˜three times in succession˜that God has abandoned men and women to perversion. The sentence says, "God gave them over." It is found in verses 24, 26, and 28. But here is the irony. And here is why I quoted Oscar Wilde. Man's punishment is to be abandoned by God. But, of course, this is precisely what man has been fighting for ever since Adam's first rebellion in the Garden of Eden. Man has wanted to get rid of God, to push him out of his life. In contemporary terms he is saying, "God, I just want you to leave me alone. Take a seat on that chair over there. Shut up, and let me get on with my life as I want to live it."......And so God does!....Like the father of the Prodigal Son, he releases the rebellious child, permitting him to depart with all his many possessions and goods for the far country.....Adrift in God's Universe.
You see,we can get what we want, the problem is that it doesn't turn out as we anticipate. In fact, it turns out exactly the reverse. We think of God as a miser of happiness, keeping back from us all that would make us happy. We think that by running away from him we will be happy, wild, and free. But it doesn't work that way. Instead of happiness we find misery. Instead of freedom we find the debilitating bondage of sin.
Many who have studied the Bible for a long time know the phrase I have quoted in the King James wording, but this is a case in which the modern translations do better in capturing the meaning for our day. The King James Version of the Bible used the words "God gave them up" at this point. The King James translators knew what they meant, of course. They meant a judicial abandonment of the human race to the consequences of its rebellion. But, unfortunately, for most of us today those words sound like a simple hands-off policy in which men and women really are freed up to pursue and practice whatever they think will please them. That is not quite the idea. "God gave them up" sounds as if God simply let people drift off to nowhere, like releasing a piece of fine china in space. The actual idea is seen much better in the New International Version. For it is not that God gives the human race up to nothing, but rather that he gives it over to the consequences of the rebellious, sinful directions it has taken.
It is like releasing the china on earth rather than in space. When you let go of it, it does not drift off into nowhere. You release it from your hand to the law of gravity, and when you do that it falls downward and breaks....if the fall is far enough and the ground hard enough, the results is a broken life.
The reason for this is in the very nature of things, and in the fact that what they are can never be otherwise. you need to see this. If you or I were God, then we could get away with the kind of rebellion or sin without consequences that we seem to want. We could make the universe run the way we want it. But we cannot do that. The universe with all its laws, physical and moral, is a given...because God is a given.
Since God can never be other than he is, the universe will always be as it is. And this means that when you and I rebel against God, we must by the very nature of the case do it on God's terms and according to God's laws rather than our own. When we run away from God we think our way will be uphill, because we want it to be so. But the way is actually downhill. We are pulled down by the law of moral gravity......when God lets go.
What happens is illustrated in the case of Jonah, the prophet who tried to run away from God. He rejected God's call for him to go and preach to Nineveh and instead set off for Tarshish at the far end of the Mediterranean. But he didn't get where he was going, and his path was constantly downhill until God turned him around and got him going to Nineveh. In the King James Bible, which makes this point a bit neater than the New International Version, we are told four times that the prophet's path was downhill. We read that he went "down to Joppa" and that when he found a ship bound for Tarshish he went "down into it" (Jonah 1:3). Then we are told that he had gone "down into the sides of the ship" (v. 5). Still later, after he had been cast overboard, he recounted the experience, saying, "I went down to the bottoms of the mountains" (Jonah 2:6). Down! Down! Down! Down! It is a sad life history, but it is the experience of all who run from God, and Paul says some do run from God, trying to rearrange the universe to fit their own desires.
After the death of Saul, when David had returned from the slaughter of the Amalekites, David remained two days in Ziklag; And David lamented with this lamentation over Saul and Jonathan his son, and he said it should be taught to the people of Judah; behold, it is written in the Book of Jashar. He said:
"Thy glory, O Israel, is slain upon thy high places! How are the mighty fallen! Tell it not in Gath,publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon; lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised exult." Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew or rain upon you,nor upsurging of the deep! For there the shield of the mighty was defiled,the shield of Saul, not anointed with oil."From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the bow of Jonathan turned not back, and the sword of Saul returned not empty."Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely! In life and death they were not divided; they were swifter then eagles,they were stronger than lions. "Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul,who clothed you daintily in scarlet, who put ornaments of gold upon your apparel." How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! "Jonathan lies slain upon thy high places. I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant have you been to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women."How are the mighty fallen,and the weapons of war perished!".. 2 Samuel 1.
Part of the spoils of battle were to strip the slain of their shoes, clothes, weapons, and money. Saul and his three sons are found and they cut off Saul's head, and paraded it through the streets like a great trophy. That precious head that once was anointed and full of the Spirit of God, I can see in my minds eye the enemy jeering and laughing saying, where is your God now Saul? This is a reminder that Satan is searching to destroy us and desires our head, our mind and thoughts. Satan wants our armour too. He wants the helmet of salvation so we will doubt our salvation. He wants our shield of faith so we will distrust the Lord. He wants the sword of the spirit so that we will be defenseless, weak, and ignorant of God's life changing, powerful truths. He wants the girdle of truth so we will be insecure and open to deception and lies.
They published what they did to Saul which means "to be fresh, rosy, and cheerful." Look everyone, this is Saul's armor! They put the armor on display like a team displaying their trophies. It was put in the temple of Ashtaroth which was the temple of Astarte, the Canaanite fertility goddess. They gave glory to Ashtarte, the sex goddess.
Saul's body was fastened to the wall of Bethshan. It was a city of barbarians. Now it was night, a dark Philistine night. The headless bodies of Saul and his sons, deserted by all, are swinging in the wind on the walls of Bethshan amid the hoarse music of vultures and jackals. Saul's bitterness, rebellion, and disobedience lead to his destruction and ruin. He became a trophy of Satan, a source of laughter and rejoicing for Satan and his crowd. If Satan ruins your life, he wants others to know it, and he will make a big show of it.
From its beginning to its end, this scripture is mournful. Lostness and grief drip from every verse. Personal grief is expressed here, as well as a call for national grief, and even for nature to groan over the loss... The question arises here, "Is Satan laughing at you now? Is he rejoicing because you are bitter, disobedient, and rebellious toward God?" If you are living this way, he is laughing. Will you allow yourself to become one of Satan's trophies? Satan takes great pleasure in the fall of a Christian. Don't let this happen. Walk in the Spirit each day. Study His word! Stay in church! Hang around godly people! Don't play with temptation and sin! "There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death." (Pr 16:25)
Continued....
God Bless You
Poppa
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