Psalms 94:16 ESV
“Who rises up for me against the wicked?
Who stands up for me against evildoers?”
Who are The Wicked?
Who are the evildoers? Well, the wicked are vast in number,
and they create evil in many different ways, but today the Lord is directing me
more towards the wicked and the evildoers who take advantage of the weak and
the vulnerable, and who trick, manipulate, and deceive those who are naïve and
trusting in nature. The wicked are thieves who rob people of the truth and who
feed them lies, instead. And many follow them.
And where do these evildoers exist? They are everywhere – in
people’s homes, in the gatherings of what are called churches, in marketplaces,
on the internet, on TV, in the movies, on the news, in healthcare and in politics,
etc. And they are very big on social media where they are captivating and
manipulating and deceiving many naïve and trusting individuals who don’t
realize that what they are believing are lies disguised as truth.
These evildoers are those who are full of greed and lust,
whose hearts and minds are hardened to the truth and to God, who are living one
way while professing another, and who live deliberately secretive lives. They
are the addicted to all sorts of evil behaviors and they are many in numbers.
Many of them are highly respected and are considered righteous but they are
those who are devising evil in secret and who harass and trouble the godly.
They are leading many astray for they take the truth and
they manipulate it and they twist it to their advantage to make it say what
they want it to say and what will tickle itching ears. And they do this so cleverly
that the unsuspecting do not notice. And many of these liars are being raised
up to godly and almost worshipful status while many of the Lord’s true servants
are dishonored and devalued and are being accused of being legalistic.
The Honored and the Dishonored
But it isn’t just the Lord’s servants who are being
dishonored while these charlatans are getting great honor and respect, but it
is that these charlatans are being given great honor and respect while
God/Christ is being lowered and dishonored and disrespected. The lies are being
raised up and accepted as truth, too, while the truth is being devalued and
accused of being hyper-religious, legalistic, hateful, harsh, and/or works
salvation.
For the lies tell people that they can “believe” (not
defined) in Jesus, be forgiven of their sins, be delivered from hell, and have
the hope of heaven when they die regardless of how they live while they are on
the earth. They teach that God is with them caring for them and watching over
them even while they are deliberately and habitually sinning against the Lord. And
they teach that God does everything for us so nothing is required of us.
The lies tell people that their salvation from sin is all
about forgiveness of sins but they don’t teach that Jesus died that we might
die with him to sin and live to him and to his righteousness. They don’t teach
that Jesus died on that cross to put our sins to death in order to deliver us
from our slavery (addiction) to sin so that we will now live holy and godly
lives, pleasing to him, and so that we will now honor God with our lives.
And they don’t teach that if we do not live in freedom from
addiction to sin but we continue in deliberate and habitual sin that we don’t
have salvation from sin, and we don’t have a relationship with Jesus Christ,
and that we will not inherit eternal life with God. And they don’t teach that
if we do not obey the Lord and if we do not walk in his righteousness that we
will not enter into the kingdom of heaven. So, many people have a false hope of
salvation.
[Lu
9:23-26;
Jn 6:35-58; Jn 15:1-11; Rom 6:1-23; Rom 8:1-17; Eph 4:17-24; 1 Pet 2:24; 1 Co 6:9-10,19-20; 2 Co 5:10,15,21; Tit 2:11-14; Jas
1:21-25; Rom 12:1-2; Php 2:12-13; Col 1:21-23; Col
3:5-10; Gal 5:16-21; Eph 5:3-11; Gal 6:7-8; Rom 2:6-8; Heb 10:26-27; 1 Jn 1:5-9; 1 Jn 2:3-6; 1 Jn 3:4-10; Matt
7:21-23; Ac 26:18; Rev 21:8,27;
Rev 22:14-15; Eph 2:8-10]
Psalms 94:17-19 ESV
"If the Lord had not been my help,
my soul would soon have lived in the land of silence.
When I thought, ‘My foot slips,’
your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up.
When the cares of my heart are many,
your consolations cheer my soul.”
The Naïve and Vulnerable
So, who is it that needs to be protected from these
evildoers? They are the naïve, the trusting, the gullible, the weak, and the
vulnerable. They are those who are not discerning of all evil and wickedness,
who have not been trained in how to discern lies from truth. So they easily
trust people, particularly people who are in trusted positions and/or who have
good reputations. They need to be taught to test everything that they hear.
The naïve and the vulnerable need to understand that not
everyone is who he says he is and that not everyone who has a good reputation
can be trusted. It doesn’t matter who the person is, he is still a human being
and capable of any sin, and many evil people can appear quite righteous. So, we
have to be those who make it our practice to test everything that we read,
hear, or think we see, and against the truth of God’s word in context.
For, if we do not, we make ourselves vulnerable to believing
and to living the lies instead of the truth. And we make ourselves vulnerable
to spreading lies instead of truth, too, which then leads other vulnerable and
trusting people to believe the lies and not the truth and to then have a false
hope of salvation and of eternal life with God while they are still headed to
hell. And we don’t want to be guilty of that, do we? So test everything you
hear.
Now, the Lord is there to help you in this but you have to
be willing to receive his help. He is sending forth people with the truth but
you have to be willing to reject the lies and to embrace the truth, but not
blindly. What you need to do is to test everything you read and hear against
the Scriptures in context. So, be students of the Scriptures and let the Holy
Spirit lead you to all truth and stop believing everything that sounds like
truth.
The Godly and Righteous
Now, I am not suggesting here that you can’t be godly and naïve
at the same time. Immature Christians can still be Christians and be vulnerable
to lies and deception if they are not testing what they hear against the
Scriptures in context, and as a matter of practice. But if you remain in
spiritual immaturity then that brings into question whether or not your faith
in Jesus Christ is genuine, especially if you reject the truth habitually.
But the other group of people in need of being protected
from the wicked and the evildoers is the godly who are living righteously, who
obey the Lord and who have forsaken their sinful practices in order that they
might please God with their lives. They are those who are sharing the truth of
the gospel with others and many (or some) of them are also exposing the fruitless
deeds of darkness and these charlatans who are spreading lies.
So, Satan and his evildoers are coming against the
righteous, especially those who are out there publicly spreading the truth of
the gospel and who are calling out the lies and are exposing them for what they
are. And they are falsely accusing them, attacking them, and they are training
others to reject and deny them and to consider the righteous as evil and the
evil as righteous, and that is why evildoers are being raised up while the
righteous are being ignored, discarded, devalued and falsely accused of
wrongdoing.
But the Lord is our help. He will give us all the wisdom and
the strength that we need to continue to confront and to combat the lies and to
keep spreading the truth of the gospel, even if few are truly listening and
even if, at some point, all desert us to follow after the charlatans, instead.
We must continue to tell people that they must turn from their sins and follow
Jesus in obedience, in practice, if they want salvation from sin and eternal
life with God and if they do not want to spend eternity in hell.
[Matt 5:10-16; Matt 10:16-25; Matt 24:9-14; Matt
28:18-20; Lu 6:22-23; Lu 21:12-19; John
15:1-21; Acts 1:8; Acts 26:18; Rom 5:3-5; Rom
12:1-8; 1 Co 12:1-31; 2 Co 1:3-11; Eph 4:1-16;
Eph 5:17-27; Phil 3:7-11; Col 3:16; 1 Thess 3:1-5; Jas 1:2-4; Heb 3:13; Heb 12:3-12; 1 Pet 1:6-7; 1 Pet 2:9; 1 Pet 4:12-17]
O
Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go
George Matheson / Albert L. Peace
O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in Thee;
I give Thee back the life I owe,
That in Thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.
O light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to Thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in Thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.
O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to Thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.
O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from Thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.
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