Your Choice: Good, but Serious

This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture, rejecting fear and embracing faith. Sin separates us from God, but Jesus paid the price for our sins and opened the way to righteousness. God wants to do good for us and loves us unconditionally. We have the choice to accept His grace and live in His love. Welcome to Fear No Fear. Grace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. May the Holy Spirit embrace you today. This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture. We reject fear in any and all forms. Fear is a spiritual force, the currency of darkness and ignorance. It's what we inherited when Adam gave up his faith and Satan uses it to keep people down. His only weapon is words. If he can get you believing or looking at words of fear, he's got you. Instead, we champion faith as an allegiance to God, as a belief and trust and loyalty to the Lord God Almighty. We accept the evidence of His word as unvarnished truth, as is, just as it's written. We get close to His perfect love through the word, and perfect love casts out fear. 1 John 4.18 All scripture is taken from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Visit eBible.org Zechariah 8.15-17 So again, I have thought in these days to do good to Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. Don't be afraid. These are the things that you shall do. Speak every man the truth with his neighbor. Execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates. And let none of you devise evil in your hearts against his neighbor. And love no false oath. For all these are things that I hate, says Yahweh. The Lord is a God of fairness. He's not unreasonable. He's not contrary. I do not believe the word contains any true contradictions. He is clear in what He says. He is consistent in His expectations. And He provides for us so that we can achieve it in Him. First imperfectly, and then perfectly. First with animal sacrifice to show us that sacrifice is necessary and only blood can pay the price. Then Jesus laid down His life as that sacrifice, breaking His body and shedding His blood. To be resurrected again to life, breaking the power of sin forever and freeing us, under His blood, from the curse. Providing us the faith to accept the grace of His salvation. In the old covenant, when His people sinned, they had a price to pay. When they refused to offer sacrifice and obey the law, they paid the price in captivity. Because they removed themselves from the blessing, they were subject to the curse. But when the penalty was paid, the Lord led them back into His land, back under His blessing. Back to where His grace could protect and bless them if they obeyed His words. Sin has a terrible price. It keeps us from God. It's like a lock on the gate leading to the door of heaven. If sin isn't dealt with, you are never, ever, ever going to get to God. This isn't God keeping you out. This isn't a punishment for the way you are or are not acting. This is truth. If you were in sin, you were not getting to Him. It's the nature of humanity. It wasn't, but Adam committed treason and knowingly listened to and obeyed the devil instead of God. 1 Timothy 2.14 Adam knew there was a lie happening in his spirit. This isn't an undeveloped human brain. But he liked the idea of doing things himself, of lifting himself up, which is what he was told the fruit would do, Genesis 3.4-6. He also knew that it was wrong because God had said not to do it. This was sin. Now, if you mate two pandas, you're going to get a panda cub. You don't get an ostrich or an eel. You get a panda. Well, once Adam and Eve fell, they had a sinful nature. They had a child and got a sinful nature child. That child also got a sinful nature child, and so on, and so on. Like begat like, and we are all sinful in nature. Now, I'm not talking bad people. I'm not talking about total jerks who are horrible to everyone, though those do exist. I am stating the simple fact that humans are not righteous, and God is righteous. We cannot meet face to face. Humans cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. That is bad because we are eternal spirit beings. That means that if the situation doesn't change, we will be living our forever away from the righteousness of God. Now, the only place in the whole of everything that is away from the righteousness of God is the lake of fire, hell. It was not made for humans. It was not meant for humans. It was made for the devil and his angels, Matthew 25, 41. Humans were meant to keep out, which is why we were given dominion on earth, since that protects us from the spirit world interfering with us, or it would have if we would have listened to God, that is. Humans were meant to be with God, choosing to let God in and to work in our lives, choosing not to let others in and work in our lives. So, we were meant to be with God and the devil by committing treason and convincing others to as well, is meant to not be with God. Unrighteousness, separate forever from righteousness. This isn't fear to get you to obey. This isn't doom and gloom to control you. This is just the truth, period. Black and white, no embellishment. That means that God isn't sending anyone to hell. Sin is sending humans to hell, because as long as we have a sinful nature, we cannot get into the kingdom of heaven. This is a major problem for us. Who wants to spend their forever in the utter torment of sin? Oh, it's not so bad, you say. Better to rule in hell, huh? That is an idea popularized in our culture, but it is not a good one. Sin is everything bad, from disease to emotion to feelings and sensations. Every bad thing in those categories, and every other category that exists, is from and because of sin. While we are here in our body, our spirits can interact with our souls and deal with our flesh. It's called choice. If we ignore sin, we get to deal with the curse, sickness, depression, anxiety, fear, loss of control, pain, nightmares, you name it. Everything bad. It's why the world looks like a pile of garbage half the time. It's polluted by sin and populated by sinful people. It's our nature. Once we die, though, we lose something. We lose the ability to choose. Once we're dead, our spirits will inhabit whatever nature we have. If that is sin, we go away from the presence of God. Since God is the source of every good thing, James 1.17, when we get to the away-from-God place, there will be nothing good. Choice is a good thing. Self-control is a good thing. That means you will not be able to choose what you do, feel, think, or experience. Every bad thing will come upon you, rise up inside you, and rain down on you. You will not be able to control your body, spirit, or mind in any way, shape, or form. Not a coherent word, not a coherent thought. You will not be in control. That is not ruling, partying, or dealing with things the way that it is portrayed in entertainment. The devil will not be there in charge of things, punishing you, tormenting you, or in any way running or ruling things. Every being there will be in the same situation, experiencing the same horror. This is unrighteousness. This is the lack of the presence of God. That is why there is good in the world. That is why we have the ability to shine even in unbelief from time to time. That is why even the evil of this world get to experience goodness. God is among us. His spirit moves among us. His angels stand beside us. They minister to us. God has in no way abandoned us. Paul don't believe that, you may say. How could a loving God do that to us? The answer is simple. He isn't. He isn't making the choice. He isn't sending us there. He doesn't want it for us, never wanted it for us. He doesn't and hasn't held it over our heads. He isn't trying to scare us into heaven. He isn't trying to keep us out. From before creation was created, God made a plan. A plan to save us. A plan to provide for us. A plan to keep us out of hell. A plan to get us into his kingdom. A plan to keep us in righteousness. It was a simple plan. Sin is unrighteousness. It needed to be taken care of. There was a cost to disobedience. Ask any judge, lawyer, parent, teacher, or child. We all accept that. This is a universal truth. We may weasel out of it, avoid it, or have to pay it, but we all know it's there. And we're cool with that. You have rules in your house, and if people want to come in, they have to respect that. When they don't, you make them leave, and you don't ask them back. When criminals go against the rules of society, society punishes them. When an employee violates company policy, there are repercussions, including the possibility of being fired. We're all on board with this. When it comes to eternal things, nothing changes. There is righteous behavior, and there is unrighteous behavior. Unrighteous behavior is punished. Simple. We should recognize it as the truth and accept it. We do in our society and lives. So why not when dealing with God? Jesus volunteered to pay the price of sin. The price of sin is death. Romans 6.23 God was clear right from the beginning. Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, You may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but you shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you eat of it you will surely die. Genesis 2.16-17 Simple. Obedience is life. Disobedience is death. We disobeyed, we had to die. We have the sentence of death over us because our nature is sinful, and sin carries the price of death. A price that is an ending of that which is horrifically wrong. This is also a principle we accept in the natural, isn't it? Food gets burnt, we don't eat it. Vehicles fail safety checks, they get recalled or not produced in the first place. We try things out and we don't continue to do those that don't work out. We discontinue products, we scrap production of things, and we close down failures in the business world. We should recognize this as a principle of universal law and accept it. We do in our society and in our lives, so why not when dealing with God? Jesus came and paid the price for sin. The Father resurrected Him to life because He had paid the price and no longer was under the curse of sin, which He took on Himself even though He didn't deserve it. Galatians 3.13 Jesus volunteered because the price couldn't be paid by someone without currency. If we don't have money, we can't buy things. If we don't meet the requirements, we don't get the position. If we fail to provide the proper documents, we don't get access. Sin had a price to be paid. Those that incurred the debt were no longer in a position to pay it away. They couldn't just pay it. Only someone outside the situation could intervene. If you owe money, you can't pay it off unless you have money. We accept that. It is no different with sin. We owed, Jesus paid. He was righteous, so He had currency. He was totally pure and became our sin. He took it on Himself. He entered the place without God. He experienced it. He did the time. He paid the debt of humanity. And when He was released, He was in a unique place. Now He could point to that bill of sale and say, He paid it. Now no one needs to be separate from God. Now no one needs to worry about sin. It is paid for. God isn't mad about it. God isn't looking at it. It isn't a factor for God at all. It's been paid. It's done. Gone. Finished. Over. Now the Old Covenant was a series of laws to show the framework of what righteous behavior is. Not eternal righteous behavior, but righteous behavior within the human system on this planet, although it is based on heavenly morality. It was put in place to show that we don't have it. We aren't righteous. We do not have the qualifications or the currency to deal with it. We aren't even able to follow the rules, because as soon as we know what a rule is about, we want to break it. I mean, we might not, but we get tempted. It wouldn't be a temptation if we didn't want to do it. Sacrifice was put in place to show us how the price was going to be paid, how serious this is, to get enthusiastic about the coming Savior, to get us expectant of receiving the blessing of someone paying our debt. That's the good news. Sin is dealt with. We don't have to sin. We don't have to be separate. We don't have to have the negative forever. If we want to, we can accept his payment for it. Like if you were in a restaurant and someone wanted to pay your bill, you could refuse. You could leave money on the table and walk away having paid for it with your own currency. You have a choice. Same thing here, except we have no currency. We either let Jesus pay the price or we refuse to let Jesus pay the price. You aren't going to be forced. You are not going to be pressured. You aren't going to be guilted. The Lord God Almighty is going to do everything in his power to get the message to you that you don't have to go away from him, that you have a way in, that Jesus paid the price. There's only one way in, because only one person had the currency to pay the debt. He's asking you to accept the freely given gift and come in. We don't have rules. We have relationship. That relationship means we will choose not to do things that hurt him. It might take some time, but it's a process. We will choose to model ourselves after Jesus. The same standard of righteous behavior exists for us as it did for the Old Covenant, as it did for from forever. It has existed since before the creation of the universe. The difference is that with Jesus paying the price and wiping away sin, he enables us to achieve it. That is the real blessing to us. The Lord God gives us the tools to achieve righteous behavior in and through Jesus. We have become his righteousness in the Spirit, 2 Corinthians 5.21. No sinful nature anymore, Romans 6.18. Instead, Jesus' nature, Galatians 3.26. So we exercise our new spirit of Jesus' righteousness through the gifts and baptism of the Holy Spirit. Without Jesus, nothing could be done, John 15. Jesus does nothing without the Father. So God the Father provides for everybody everything we need to do to do everything he asks of us. It's a wondrous circle of God's loving kindness and blessing to all humans because of Jesus' sacrifice and the Father's resurrection of Jesus back to life, we never, ever have to fear God's wrath. We get to live under the perfect love that he has for his creation because we are perfected in Jesus and can stand before a perfect righteous Father with smiles and open arms to worship him. Our decision to accept his grace by faith opens the lock to the yard. Jesus is the door of the kingdom waiting on the other side of that lock. And through him, we enter the righteousness of God and get to stay with him forever. Simple, basic, black and white, true. Now, we don't always feel this way. There are times we feel attacked and surrounded. We know we aren't doing what we're supposed to do, and we feel like God is mad at us, that we're going to be struck and struck hard or worse, that something bad is happening, be it depression or sickness or lack, and we think God has either brought it on us or allowed it to happen to teach us a lesson because we've sinned. None of this is true. All of it is a lie Satan desperately wants the church to believe. God sends nothing bad to us. God doesn't use the curse to teach us lessons. He doesn't condemn us or get mad at us. He doesn't allow anything like that. We choose. We bind him by our disobedience, or we release him to act in our life by our obedience. This isn't religious debate or religious doctrine or religious thinking or religious anything. This is the truth clearly presented throughout the Word. The Word contains everything we need to learn about our now as well as our forever, about the authority we have in the name of Jesus, that we've been given that authority to use by faith, through grace, by the sacrifice of Jesus and being reborn into him, that it is Jesus' authority that can remove sickness, depression, and every other symptom of the curse. Do you feel lack? The principle of sowing and reaping provides for us. Luke 6, 38. Do you feel sick? There's healing in his wings. Malachi 4, 2. His Word itself is healing. Proverbs 4, 20-22. Do you feel anxious or depressed? Peace that passes understanding is waiting for you. Philippians 4, 6-7. The Lord can be our source. It's one of his names. He who sustains us. We can trust in him and he will provide all of our needs. We can ask for our wants as long as our wants aren't selfish and full of worldly, take us away from God pleasures, James 4, 3. And let's face it, there's a lot more things that we want that are good and can be a blessing than things that we want that are bad and a drain to our spiritual well-being. God doesn't want any of that for us. He wants the best for you. He will strengthen you, help you, and uphold you when you've chosen to accept him and walk in his ways. Psalm 91. The decision is ours. He will back your decision. Whether you are deciding for his gift of life or whether you're deciding against it, he will not send you anywhere. He'll let you choose where you want to walk, where you want to go, and where you will stay. Sadly, there are no take-backsies on this. Once you're there, it's done. Now, the Lord wants to do good to you. The Lord wants good things for you. Don't be afraid of where you find yourself. Don't be afraid of the problems arrayed against you. Don't be afraid of bad habits or the occasional missing it. Focus on the Lord. Choose to make him your source. Choose to trust him and believe his word. Confess your sins to him and let his righteousness wash over you. Remember, the price for them has already been paid. You just need to repent of anything you do that's not righteous and then learn to do the righteous thing. You can choose to praise him no matter how you feel. You can do it. Consistently, daily, praise the Lord. Read the word. Feel his love for you. Praise the Lord. Think about the word. Keep on doing it. Do what is good. Trust in him. He wants to do good in your life. Desperately wants good things for you. Good favorite food, fun activities, good fellowship with other people, as well as with him, the whole package. He loves you so much. Love him back. Decide to do good to God. It's worth it. Enter the place of his righteousness today and for forever. Trust in his love. It's perfect, and it's for you. Our daily affirmation of God's love is Philippians 2, 1-11. Jesus wasn't proud. He was God and equal to God, but he wasn't proud. He didn't use his position as the only son to his advantage. He wasn't spoiled. Instead, he was humble and full of love, love for us, love for you. He put off his glory and became flesh, and he sacrificed himself, and he was raised again to glory, upheld and lifted above all other names. Jesus did something truly incomprehensible to a human mind. It takes the Lord renewing our mind for us to really grasp this. Jesus put away his only begotten and became the first begotten. He enabled us to be sons and daughters of the kingdom alongside him, his brothers, his sisters, his bride. But he still did it. We might not understand it, but he did it. He did it for you. He did it for me. He did it for all of us. He loves you so much. He truly does. Please, never lose sight of that. As we close, remember that you have worth. You are precious and valuable. Declare this, today, God loves that I, now you, fill in the blank. Was it a meal you made? A smile you gave? Did you get out of bed? Read? Put on socks? There's no wrong answers here. There is no end to God's love and no end to the things about you that he loves each and every day. Pick one. And remember, the Lord loves you just because you're you. First John 4, 9 to 10 tells us, by this, God's love was revealed in us that God has sent his only born son into the world that we might live through him. And this is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. His perfect love turned away God's wrath because of sin. And it casts out our fear, too. See verses 18 and 19. We love because he first loved us. He just loves us. Can't get enough of us. And that is wonderful. See you next time.