Anger In Our Hearts Shows No Abiding In Him - 1 John 1-3

1 John 3:11-15 (ESV)

For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

The story of Cain and Abel is the first of many stories in the Bible and human history of anger leading to murder, leading to coverup, leading to discovery.   Cain killed his brother because he had evilness in his heart.  He killed him and then buried him.  Abel’s blood cried out from the ground for vengeance:

Genesis 4:10 (ESV)

And the LORD said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.

Imagine all the blood of mankind crying out from the ground for vengeance by God on those that slayed them.   That is what is going to take place in the end times.   God will bring vengeance upon those who kill.  But we should note that according to the above verse the killing was proceeded by envy and anger.   Jesus made it clear that murder begins with anger:

Matthew 5:21-22 (ESV)

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.

Killing begins in the heart and God sees that as just as egregious as murder.   What John is telling us in the above passage is that we were to not be like Cain. We are to, instead, love with unconditional love, as God does for us.   If we have anger in our hearts we are not loving our brother.  Note again how John states it:

1 John 3:14b-15)

Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

The evidence of our abiding in Him is that anger and hate are not abiding in us.  

Keep The Law - Malachi

Malachi 4:4 (ESV)

“Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel.

Remembering that Malachi is the last book of the Old Testament , the above verse seems to be appropriate in many ways.   

1. Since the Old Testament is basically about the Law and the New Testament about Grace, it seems appropriate to conclude the book and the Testament with the reminder to keep the Law of Moses.     

1. It is also appropriate for Malachi’s words.  The nation of Israel had gone into captivity because they failed to obey God’s commands.   The reason Malachi was writing them is that they had returned from captivity and were, once again, refusing to obey God’s commands.   

1. The last reason this is appropriate is that the Old Testament Law was given to point out the need for grace.  Man can’t keep the Law without God giving them His grace.  The New Testament is about God giving that grace to us through the work of Jesus as He fulfilled the law.   Jesus fulfilled the Law and that gives us the ability to live the Law in our lives through Him.  We can now keep the Law because He came to fulfill it for us and to enable us to fulfill it with His power. 

Matthew 5:17-20 (ESV)

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Enjoy Life While You Can! Ecclesiastes 11-12

Ecclesiastes 11:9-10 (ESV)

Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes. But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment.

Remove vexation from your heart, and put away pain from your body, for youth and the dawn of life are vanity.

Solomon continues, toward the end of Ecclesiastes, to tell us what he has learned in life.   When reading this book, we must never forget that Solomon is on a journey to experience everything in life and to give us a report; assuming we will simply listen to him and not attempt to do this at home.   Yet, that is what we do.   Solomon lives a life full of everything he can (he was, at the time, the richest man on earth) and he expects us to simply believe him.    He knows, however, we won't simply take his word for it and, therefore, leaves us these final words, we read above.   Having reached old age He tells us to "rejoice" in our youth.   Grab the gusto!!   He even tells us to "follow the impulses of  your heart and the desires of the eyes."  However, Solomon warns us, God WILL bring us into judgement for those things we pursue.   We might not take his word for the fleetingness of life and we might want to try all the vain things in life ourselves, but, Solomon wants us to know that we will be judged for those things.   We might think it is our "right" to pursue all these things, especially in our youth.   But God is taken note and will be judge accordingly.   Solomon solution is to remove everything from us that brings grief, anger and pain because life is short and fleeting.   If we don't get it, he must be referring to sin in life, as that is what brings grief, anger and pain.   When we have grief and anger in our hearts, it will lead to pain in our bodies.  Our ability to allow God to take those out of our hearts allows us to live a free life and a life full of joy and peace from God.  The fruit of the Spirit is the life Solomon envisions for us.   A life full of joy, peace, longsuffering, patience, gentleness, etc.   God gives us this life; we don't attempt to find it and live it by the choices we make.  The prime of life is fleeting.   We must allow the gift of God to live in us rather than pursue the things of our desires and bring pain and suffering to ourselves and those we love.

Imprecatory Prayer - Psalms 137-139

Psalms 137:7-8 (ESV)

Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites

the day of Jerusalem,

how they said, “Lay it bare, lay it bare,

down to its foundations!”

O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed,

blessed shall he be who repays you

with what you have done to us!

This is a troubling song to read.   The writer of the song is not identified.  We can deduct from the passage that the writer(s) was someone still in captivity in Babylon.   They are being told to rejoice and to sign a song, but they can’t.  

Psalms 137:2-3 (ESV)

On the willows there

we hung up our lyres.

For there our captors

required of us songs,

and our tormentors, mirth, saying,

“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

They are lamenting that they are not back in their beloved Jerusalem (Zion):

Psalms 137:4-6 (ESV)

How shall we sing the LORD’S song

in a foreign land?

If I forget you, O Jerusalem,

let my right hand forget its skill!

Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth,

if I do not remember you,

if I do not set Jerusalem

above my highest joy!

That is the setting.  That might give us a way to explain why anyone would write this horrible thought about having little ones dashed against the rocks.   This sounds so cruel.   To interrupt this hard passage consider:

1. This is not written by people in power.  This is written by people in a submissive state.  They are not executioners they are victims.  They are an oppressed people.  In our oppression we are not allowed to be in-human, but it does explain their outbursts for vengeance. 

2. This is a cry to God not to fellow man. The psalm is a song and prayer to God. It is referred to as an imprecatory prayer.   Whoever composed the song/prayer, is asking God to do what He already promised and that was to deliver them from their captors and send the appropriate punishment to them.  Isaiah the prophet prayed a similar imprecatory prayer for Babylon in Isaiah 14:21.   Since it is not mankind giving out the vengeance and it is a prayer for God to do so, whatever follows will be done in holy justice and mercy.   An imprecatory prayer ought not be us calling down fire on our enemies.  But it should be a prayer where we call down God’s Word to be fulfilled in the lives of our enemies based upon God’s justice, mercy and grace. 

3.  The prayer is less about the slaughter of innocent lives and more about the ending of a cruel nation.  Babylon was one of the worse nations ever to rule the planet. Their recorded acts of terror and slaughter can’t even be imagined.  They were a very wicked people.  This is why the prophet Jonah did not want to go their capital city, Nineveh.   This is not someone asking God to be fair, but to render unto this nation the seeds they sowed in their lives.  They murdered innocent children so the writer of the song simply asked God to cause them to reap what they have sown.  

This is a tough couple of verses to digest for our mindsets in this day and age.   But the horrors that were exploited onto those composing this song allow us to read it with less malice and more empathy for their condition.   We read it as a raw prayer to God and it is God who will sort out the response.  

Prayer AND Action - Nehemiah 1-4

Nehemiah 4:7-9 (ESV)

But when Sanballat and Tobiah and the Arabs and the Ammonites and the Ashdodites heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem was going forward and that the breaches were beginning to be closed, they were very angry. And they all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it. And we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night.

We don’t know a lot about these individuals mentioned in the above verse.  They are the antagonist of the book of Nehemiah.  They opposed Nehemiah’s work of rebuilding the city walls from the first moment he arrived to do the work:

Nehemiah 2:9-10 (ESV)

Then I came to the governors of the province Beyond the River and gave them the king’s letters. Now the king had sent with me officers of the army and horsemen. But when Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite servant heard this, it displeased them greatly that someone had come to seek the welfare of the people of Israel.

Their envy about the work led them to try to undermine and attack the work.   When others see God doing a great work they are often envious.  They did not want the welfare for the Jews living among them.  We are not told why, only that they did everything they could do to frustrate the work.   They plotted ways to confuse the work.   That is when Nehemiah got on his knees and ask God for protection from them.   The first response to opposition should be prayer.   Nehemiah didn’t just do the work, he incorporated spiritual activity at the base of the work.   He would later do some very practical steps to make sure the work continued.  But he didn’t waste time on the practical without first laying a foundation of the spiritual.   But he also set a guard.   So prayer was not the only thing he did.  He also put some in charge as guards to protect the work.   God expects us to pray over the tasks He gives us. But He also expects us to use the wisdom, strength and tools He provides us.   Absent tools and strength and freedom, prayer is our only option (See the story in Acts 16 about Peter and Silas singing in jail whiled chained to the walls).  But when God gives us the ability, our prayer is for the guidance and strength.  When David took down Goliath he prayed but also picked up some stones.   Everything should be bathed in prayer. But prayer is not the only thing God requires from us.  We also, at times, need to use the tools, strength and wisdom He has given us to act.  

In War, Obey God - Deuteronomy 20-22

Deuteronomy 21:10-14 (ESV)

“When you go out to war against your enemies, and the LORD your God gives them into your hand and you take them captive, and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire to take her to be your wife, and you bring her home to your house, she shall shave her head and pare her nails. And she shall take off the clothes in which she was captured and shall remain in your house and lament her father and her mother a full month. After that you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. But if you no longer delight in her, you shall let her go where she wants. But you shall not sell her for money, nor shall you treat her as a slave, since you have humiliated her.

War is a terrible thing.   God does not ignore that the sinful nature of mankind (due to the disobedience of Adam) caused mankind to kill and to destroy (see the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4).   In the above passage God gives a law that mitigates some of the harshness of war.  God doesn’t stop wars, but He does outline what it should look like.  The above law is a law that protects the weak from the strong.  The victor of the war gets the bounty from the war. In the above case it is a female captive.   God makes sure that the victor does not abuse their power.   By the law, the Israel people, in their victory in war, are to assure that  female captive is afforded:

1. Not to be raped or abused.  She is to be treated as another human being. 

2. She is given time to emotionally absorb the loss and trauma she has experienced.   She is not immediately put into a situation until she recovers from this loss. 

3. She is given the full rights of a married woman and wife and not to be treated less than.  This is a huge concept that is often loss in war. 

4.  If, after this adjustment time, the victor suddenly changes his mind, the woman is still treated as a fellow human being and is given her freedom.   

God does not want war but knows mankind will always be at war.  He therefore outlines the behavior for this human condition but making sure that those impacted by this battle are given care He designs.  

False Teaching Is Real - 2 Peter

2 Peter 2:1-3 (ESV)

But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

Peter is about to die.  He knows it because men die and Jesus said something about it:

2 Peter 1:14-15 (ESV)

since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me. And I will make every effort so that after my departure you may be able at any time to recall these things.

Prior to his death he wants to warn them of the false teachers who will be among them.   In the above passage he tells them that their are some earmarks of the false teaching:

1. False teaching has a track record.   As they have been in the past, they will be in the present and future.   We do not get away from the thought of false teaching.  
2. False teaching will attempt to come in secretly.  That does not mean we won’t see it (this is the point of #1 above) but that it will not be flagrant. It will be subtle and deceptive.   
3. False teaching will be destructive.  Make no mistake, there is no false teaching that is not destructive to our faith.  
4. False teaching, at its core, denies something about the Godhead.  It will even deny the Master who bought them, Peter states. 
5. False teaching is not for the minority.  It is for the masses.  Peter states that many will follow them.  Since it is based upon sensuality, many will follow.  
6. False teaching denies the truth.  It literally denies the Word of God.   
7. False teaching will met with certain judgment.  False teaching and false teachers will be destroyed. It is not idle.   

Peter, in his end of the life, was worried that false teaching would lead younger believers away from Christ.  That is a worthy concern as we get closer to our death.  

Support The Ministry At All Cost - Acts 17-18

Acts 17:5-9 (ESV)

But the Jews were jealous, and taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jason, seeking to bring them out to the crowd. And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, shouting, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also, and Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.” And the people and the city authorities were disturbed when they heard these things. And when they had taken money as security from Jason and the rest, they let them go.

We should look at the above passage through the lens of 3 John, which was written decades later:

3 John 1:5-8 (ESV)

Beloved, it is a faithful thing you do in all your efforts for these brothers, strangers as they are, who testified to your love before the church. You will do well to send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God. For they have gone out for the sake of the name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles. Therefore we ought to support people like these, that we may be fellow workers for the truth.

It was the practice of the early church for those teaching and preaching the Gospel to travel about and to proclaim Christ crucified.   Even though John records and writes about this practice much later than the above passage taken from Acts 17, this is where John’s words finds its source.  Paul had visited Thessalonica with Timothy and Silas.   Someone by the name of Jason supported their ministry.  He took them into his house.  He provided for them.   Because the wicked and jealous men of the city formed a mob, he was forced to pay restitution to save his life and that of his family.  The cost of supporting traveling teachers was expensive, in more ways than money.   Jason could have lost his life.   This is the message of 3 John.   We are not to be passive in our support for the Gospel.  It should cost us.  The early church was not a comfortable environment.  Everyone who came to Christ took a risk.   Everyone who came to Christ was responsible to support the work for Christ.   The mob is going to come after those who support Christ.   Count on it.   But that cannot dissuade us from supporting the message of the Gospel. 

On THAT Day! Zechariah

Zechariah 12:3-4 (ESV)

On that day I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples. All who lift it will surely hurt themselves. And all the nations of the earth will gather against it. On that day, declares the LORD, I will strike every horse with panic, and its rider with madness. But for the sake of the house of Judah I will keep my eyes open, when I strike every horse of the peoples with blindness.

Zechariah 12:6 (ESV)

“On that day I will make the clans of Judah like a blazing pot in the midst of wood, like a flaming torch among sheaves. And they shall devour to the right and to the left all the surrounding peoples, while Jerusalem shall again be inhabited in its place, in Jerusalem.

Zechariah 12:8 (ESV)

On that day the LORD will protect the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the feeblest among them on that day shall be like David, and the house of David shall be like God, like the angel of the LORD, going before them.

Zechariah 12:9 (ESV)

And on that day I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.

Zechariah 12:11 (ESV)

On that day the mourning in Jerusalem will be as great as the mourning for Hadad-rimmon in the plain of Megiddo.

Zechariah 13:1 (ESV)

“On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness.

Zechariah 13:2 (ESV)

“And on that day, declares the LORD of hosts, I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, so that they shall be remembered no more. And also I will remove from the land the prophets and the spirit of uncleanness.

Zechariah 13:4 (ESV)

“On that day every prophet will be ashamed of his vision when he prophesies. He will not put on a hairy cloak in order to deceive,

So too: Zechariah 14:1,4,6,8,9,13,20.  

There is a day coming when God will: 

1. Restore Israel.
2. Bring judgment on nations who oppress Israel. 
3. Intervene in the affairs of mankind.
4. Cleanse the earth. 

1. Restore His Glory.

1. Establish His kingdom. 

Are you ready for that day?