“If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and the LORD’s holy day honorable, and if you honor it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words..." Isaiah 58:13 NIV)
Preface: We might as well cut this verse out of the Bible and throw it away as Thomas Jefferson liked to do.....for it means nothing to us today....we....having already deleted one of the Ten Commandments. It was partially a hedge of protection for us....but we brush hogged it to build a playing field of some kind. Bottom line....we weren't about to give up half of our weekend.....so we set out to find an interpretation for the Lord's Day today that could assuage our guilt.....but God will not be fooled....and those pastors who have not preached the warnings and the delights of The Lord Day....or the warnings even to be vigilant....they will be held accountable in the last day. They may have their big church.....and everyone honors them as well-known pastors of big churches.....but they have their reward.....and that is it. So when we read the horror in the news….and of the collapse of America….we need to know that we ourselves contributed greatly to this….as we corporately were not faithful in keeping this day that was given….even commanded….to be a delight…and a hedge of protection.
We know that the earth was....'corrupt'.....and that violence was everywhere....and yet we know also that the people just went on with their normal lives. These were the days of Noah....and are they not the days today also? Tell me where they are not. Is not corruption literally everywhere? I rarely watch the local 11 o'clock news but did so the other day....and the first story was on local violence....and then the second story....and then the third story.....and it went eight short news stories on violence of some kind or other until they broke for a commercial!
Noah was a preacher of righteousness....a Billy Graham type if you will. We like to schedule little trips throughout the summer.....and Noah's Ark....the Ark Encounter....in Kentucky is on our list....but God has His church building what could be considered an ark today....through His faithful preachers. That ark is a resurgence of our awareness of the glory of God....and it comes with warnings that are very clear.....to enter that ark....but just as in the days of Noah.....everyone is ignoring it. Only eight people entered Noah's ark....and there is only a remnant today....I'm talking among evangelicals.....who are not going about their business as usual.
Lot's wife delayed escaping.....and kept looking back.....and a lot of evangelicals are doing that today....and the result will be the same. Few actually want Jesus to return. We bless Jesus up and down....confident that we are surely in His will....that we know what love is....and what salvation is....but this is all from our own mind. The pandemic did nothing to awaken us as to God's judging us or His near return. We have had more than a century of war and plague and famine and earthquakes....but we remain unmoved. We are into our sports and entertainments as much if not more so than we ever were....but when the birth pains become so unbearable that even the mega-church pastors get worried....the door of the ark will be shut....also just as it was with Noah.
